I went into Suzanne Collins’ The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes thinking it would be a real eyeroller as I’m not to fond of YA dystopian sci-fi, but seeing as how the film adaption was around the corner and the time I sank into the Hunger Games trilogy (and being the unapologetic asshole who believes the words “the book was better” to be Mosaic Law), I said fuck it and gave it a read.
And I was surprised be how I wanted to keep going after the end of every chapter. I enjoyed getting into the head of Coriolanus Snow and his possessive infatuation with Lucy Gray and the inner working of Capitol class structure.
That’s not to say I don’t have issues with the book. The pacing is inconsistent, the actual Hunger Games are a relative bore, and some characters could have benefited from more focus.
But through it all, I don’t feel my time has been wasted reading it and am curious to see how the film adapts it.
Any books you’ve read that you thought you’d hate but ended up enjoying? Why?
I read Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station thinking that I would probably hate it. The whole autofiction trend seemed so self important and this is a book about a whiny poet complaining about his poetry writing scholarship and… I loved it. It’s such a great rumination on art. And the protagonist is struggling with so much self-doubt and self-loathing that I didn’t really need to add any more of it on my own, instead I wanted him to break through his own walls and come out the other side. It’s a great book and a great work of art.