Wednesday, January 04, 2012

What Would Katniss Read?

So I was catching up on my blog reading (yeah, I'm still back in December somewhere, so what?) and I ran across the new Hunger Games ALA READ poster over at Waking Brain Cells. And I went, "Oh! The pretty! The leather! The tough faces!" and enjoyed my fangirlish little self.

Then I thought, "Why don't any of them have a book in their hands? The poster says READ. What are they supposed to read? The word READ?" Honestly, I think they missed a prime opportunity to have the shiny hardbacks of each book in the series, prominent in their hands.

Okay, I realize they're on the poster as characters from a book, and I should be happy with that. When am I ever happy? (Don't answer.) Probably District 12 doesn't have any books, except a precious few that survived. And Katniss and Gale, at least, are probably too tough and practical to do anything so unproductive as reading.

But Peeta, at least, strikes me as a reader. I picture him cleaning off the flour and sugar at the end of the day and reading, like, the complete works of Charles Dickens. He'd identify with the hardscrabble life of Oliver Twist or Nicholas Nickleby, and also the luscious descriptions of food in The Pickwick Papers.

Then I started to speculate on which book exactly each of these characters would read, if books were available in sufficient numbers. Yes, these are the kind of thoughts that occupy my mind. Join me in speculation. If you were the District 12 librarian, what would you have hidden under the desk, waiting for Katniss, Gale, or Peeta to come in?

4 comments:

Melissa said...

If it were any world, I think Katniss could learn a lot from Katsa in Graceling... :-D

Bibliovore said...

Ha! That's pretty cool, Melissa. I remember I got ARCs of both these books at that year's BEA, and for a long time I thought of Katsa and Katniss together, not just because of the name, but because the characters were so similar.

Michelle (Ramblings of a BookCrosser) said...

LOL! Great observation. Read posters usually feature a celeb and their favorite book. Maybe ALA was only given the right to use just this photo.

I agree, Peeta seems like he would be a reader. Classics could work. Or maybe a fantasy novel by Piers Anthony. My husband's obsessed with him.

I would give Gale a collection of short stories or flash fiction because he seems like a reluctant reader. Maybe horror or a mythical book like "Fire: tales of elemental spirits" by Robin McKinley and Peter Dickinson.

For Katniss, that's tough. I'd love to give pre-tribute Katniss "Green Angel" by Alice Hoffman. Green endures some heavy stuff, just as Katniss will.

Great post!

Perogyo said...

I too see Peeta as the reader. I'd see him with a book like the Outsiders.