The Day of the Locust

       When i found out that we were going to read Nathaniel West's novel "The Day of the Locust", i was excited because i've never experienced a pulp novel that is about 1930's Hollywood. I must admit that the first page really grabbed me. It started with an interesting scene, it was not very hard to picture the scene because of the language that was used. It was very descriptive. However this descriptive use of language became an obstacle in the following pages of the novel. Many times, i've had pause moments and this minimised the joy that i wanted to get. Of course this has to do with the fact that English being my second language too. Unfortunately i've stopped reading this novel after the first half.

       I like it when novels tell stories of people who're the outcasts of societies. The people that we don't like to talk or don't want to say "Hi" or even hate in real life. In some of these novels, writers strive for creating a strong link between their readers and their characters (the characters that are "awful people") by creating various situations . The situations that would make way for characters to be "bad people". This way, we start to have more sympathy for those characters. Many times this had changed my prejudgements about "the outcasts of societies" in real life. Although i do not expect this from every novel i read, i just wanted to have some sympathy for the characters in the novel.

      But from what i understood of "The Day of the Locust" is not about it's characters, not about the plot which i was searching for primarily. It's more likely about experiencing the uncomfortability of darker side of Hollywood. I might re read this novel again with different expectations and may love it. Happened before. Why not happen again ?

The Hunger Games

It's important to be aware that the wealth we have exists because of other people who lack it.

"Teen gladiators from distant future! Famous as rockstars."


I don't want to write about what this book is briefly about, instead, i will dive straight into the main ideas that the book discusses. So what i'm writing here will be for people who have already read the first book or still reading it.

I think The Hunger games is a succesful mish mash of well known stories such as Battle Royale, 1984, Apocalyptico and the list goes on. Many times it reminded me this tv show called "Survivor" and how people like to see their favorite survivors arguing and yelling to each other. I've found this book more of a satire work against shows like Survivor than a science fiction. It's not heavy satire here of course, but a really good start for young readers. For that matter, i think The Hunger Games is an important book. We read a14 year old girl's criticism against the system of Panem, not one of Palahniuk's characters so it makes perfectly sense even for adult readers when all those criticism sounds superficially.

Also "The Games" kind of remind me how our lives are. I sense that the Author made the resemblance in purpose. In actual life, after growing up, we start to become alone against life. Trying to be liked by the society we live in so we can get their help for archieving our goals. At some point, we all need other people to love us and eventually we beat the weak.

One thing i did not find satisfying is that i did not find the characters interesting enough (for it's genre at least), i've never felt any connections between me and the characters, i' experienced the story more as an observer which is okay.

I would recommend this book to everybody but without expecting a deep system satire but more of an adventure story.