Wordy Wednesday(s)

March – A Feast for Crows

This is how I feel about this series. 

Seriously, does this series never effing end? I finished the last book in the boxed set that my parent’s got for me for Christmas with a feeling of grim accomplishment, knowing (as it turns out, thinking) that there was only one more tome to read.

There are apparently three.

Three.

But I can’t stop reading now – I’m more than halfway through. I stopped caring about the characters roughly 300 pages ago, but you don’t read upwards of 2,000 pages just to bail halfway. So now it’s become a matter of will power. I will finish these books.

In other news, I read a really interesting post about the representation of women in Game of Thrones and I’m devastated because I can’t find it again. But basically it went through the character development of the main female characters (Catelyn, Cersei, Arya, Sansa, Dany) over the first 4 books. Most interesting for me was the observations the author made about Cersei and Catelyn – the only “adult” women who reach significant levels of power in the series (so far) promptly go batshit crazy and ruin things by killing people and just generally making bad decisions #casualsexism.

April - Nothing to Envy

So I’ve decided to save the remainder of GoT until I’m stuck on a plane since they are pretty great travel books (because they are so damned huge). Which has left me with some free reading time which I’ve devoted to more “intellectual” reads.

I find North Korea to be a really fascinating place, and after reading this article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/16/escape-north-korea-prison-camp), I really wanted to find out more about how the North Koreans view their country.

“Nothing to Envy”  is the result of interviews conducted with six former North Korean nationals who have escaped the clutches of the rogue state. Demick has rigorously fact-checked their accounts (as much as is possible) and says that it does represent the real lives of real North Koreans.

It’s pretty amazing how normal it all seems. I mean, apart from having to keep a portrait of the Kims in your house (and clean it frequently) and constantly policing what you say to everyone and anyone, what really struck me was how humans are so innately similar. The subjects of the book struggle with unruly teenagers, workplace rivalry and social standing – things that just seem too normal for people living under possibly the world’s most oppressive regime.

Something else that was highlighted was how, for lack of a better word, lax the control of the population is in some respects. People reprogrammed their radios to listen to South Korean radio and crossing the border? They walked across the river. I’ll just repeat that. THEY WALKED ACROSS A RIVER and Bam! In China. Of course, it is risky, but still. Cross a river and you’re relatively free (first time China’s been referred to as “free”, yes?).

The final point for thought was only touched on at the end of the novel – reacclimatising North Koreans to the “real world” when the North Korean regime falls. With malnutrition rampant, and having grown up in a world of scarcity there is a real difficulty in the best way to rehabilitate the North Koreans. One particular woman spoke of the difficulty she had the first time she ventured out into a shopping centre food court – there was too much choice, and it was overwhelming. In fact, the lifestyle changes for many North Koreans are so drastic and some actually miss their former home. It’s a crazy thought and has really stuck with me.

May – The Hunger Games

So I really want to see the movie, but I simply couldn’t let myself without reading the book first. So following the Law Ball, my brain an aching bundle of mush which wasn’t good for any kind of uni work, I took the opportunity to curl myself up on our brand new couches (which are delightfully squishy) and lose myself in some young-adult fiction.

First of all, the concept isn’t so novel for me, because I’ve already seen Battle Royale (which incidentally, I think was way freakier), but still I do love a good romp through a dystopian future, so I strapped myself in anyway.

It’s a good novel, and 13 year old Lucy would have been all over it. 21 year old Lucy was constantly annoyed that it hadn’t been written for an older audience though, simply because many of the themes and occurrences which could have been so deeply investigated were just glossed over because of the intended age bracket. Of course, you can’t hold this against the book, and I think in many ways that it is a credit to the novel, since you’re forced to think (quite deeply in some places) about the how and the why of the political backdrop and the oppression of the society (SPOILER: seriously? No one had a problem with the dead children being turned into mutant dog things???). However I do know that there are two more novels, so maybe they will be a bit more “political”.

All in all, an interesting read and I will definitely be picking up some cymbals and jumping on the bandwagon.