1Q84 + Battle Royale, or how Japanese books saved me in sickness andHurricane Katrina.

Well I have not blogged in a hot minute.  My bad.  Really, I've been super busy so it's not totally my fault.  In the past twelve days I've worked way to much and I was sick all weekend.  I finished my book 1Q84!  The longest book I've ever read!

1000 pages of long-winded, dry, meticulous detailed Japanese writing from a very male perspective.  Nonetheless, I really enjoyed it.  I also read the first Hunger Games book and I will discuss that series when I finish all three because that will need it's own blog.  While I wait for my boyfriend to buy the other two Hunger Games - we agreed I'd buy the first and Battle Royale and he'd buy the other two HGs - I am re reading Battle Royale.  Yes I am one of those people who thinks BR is much better and HGs is a rip off.  But that's not even really the issue I have with HGs.  So I am rereading BR to juxtapose and reveal my thoughts on a later date.    

Reading Battle Royale has been a wonderful throwback to me when I was 14 years old. 

 I have a vivid memory of being in McComb Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina at my grandparents.  They were - like everyone in Mississippi - poor, they lived in a trailer park.  McComb wasn't flooded from the hurricane but the town I lived in sure did and so after Katrina we went to my grandparents.  Unfortunately due to no electricity or running water my grandparents trailer became a big metal oven.  So we got a fold out canopy and put an air mattress underneath it.  Viola! Home.  

One night my mother went in the trailer at night to sleep in the tub of the bathroom with my youngest bother, Christopher.  He was only two at the time and my mother was worried that he was being bit by too many mosquitoes.  We all were, but he was too young.  This detail sticks out to me.

I don't think about this time in my life often but it is surreal to do the same activity (reading Battle Royale) that I did almost seven years ago in such a different situation.  Reading Battle Royale and having my older brother, David, with me were the only things that kept me alive and sane while we were going through that.  Rereading the book has been... relieving perhaps?  I think it was important to read it again with older eyes and see how much I've grown/changed.  Oh jeez I'm being all sentimental.  If you can consider Battle Royale sentimental.  

It is basically about kids forced to kill each other.  Except it's not cute and hopeful like Hunger Games.  It's more Japanese and angsty.