While it gets off to a slow start, the cauldron soon starts to bubble and by the end it is fiercely boiling even under my watchful gaze. I was incredibly skeptical at the thought of a second Hunger Games, but it turned out to be more exciting and intense than the first, with a real sense of fear and danger. The ending delivers an incredibly juicy promise for the third book.

Summary:

Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and her longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol – a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.

Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she’s afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she’s not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol’s cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can’t prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

I’ve been reading the Giller Prize shortlist every year since 2007 and, after another tedious slog through five books I never would have read otherwise, I’ve decided that I’m not putting myself through that again. I am giving up the Gillers.

My top five for 2011:

1. Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne
So pure and so overflowing with love that it creates the most beautiful little ache in your chest.

2. Animal Farm by George Orwell
Read it to feel instantly smarter and more well-rounded.

3. Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Instant and enjoyable sci-fi cred.

4. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
The last book of the year and not the first of the new year because I couldn’t put it down.

5. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
No tricks, just exquisite subtleties, an expertly unfolded masterpiece.

My bottom five for 2011:

1. The Sentimentalists by Johanna Skibsrud
How did this win the Giller Prize? The most disappointing of a disappointing lot.

2. Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay
Sarah opens her lock a third of the way through the story, and that shuts the door on what’s worthwhile about this book.

3. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
Just goes to show that you can go to the most magical place on Earth (that’s Oz, not Disneyland) and still have an excruciatingly boring time.

4. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
My sense of humour must be sorely lacking, because as I waded through the absurdist comedy looking for anything else in this book, it stopped being funny.

5. Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
No more of Atwood’s stagnant general fiction for me – give me her exhilarating speculative fiction such as The Penelopiad, which almost made my top five list.

Summary:

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by 12 outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to death before – and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Mallory Tompkins was a young man with long legs and check trousers who worked on the Mariposa Times-Herald. That was what gave him his literary taste. He used to read Ibsen and that other Dutch author – Bumstone Bumstone, isn’t it? – and you can judge that he was a mighty intellectual fellow. He was so intellectual that he was, as he himself admitted, a complete eggnostic. He and Pupkin used to have the most tremendous arguments about creation and evolution, and how if you study at a school of applied science you learn that there’s no hell beyond the present life.

Amusing and charming even after 100 years. The little town of Mariposa is so welcoming, the characters so recognizable, its streets so warm and its lifestyle so accommodating. It makes me long for bygone times; can you miss something you never had?

Summary:

Set in fictional Mariposa, an Ontario town on the shore of Lake Wissanotti, these sketches present a remarkable range of characters: some irritating, some exasperating, some foolhardy, but all endearing. Painted with the skilful brushstrokes of a great comic artist, the delightful inhabitants of Mariposa represent the people of small towns everywhere.

From the preface:

Very soon after graduation I had forgotten the languages [I studied], and found myself intellectually bankrupt. In other words I was what is called a distinguished graduate, and, as such, I took to school teaching as the only trade I could find that needed neither experience nor intellect. I spent my time from 1891 to 1899 on the staff of Upper Canada College, an experience which has left me with a profound sympathy for the many gifted and brilliant men who are compelled to spend their lives in the most dreary, the most thankless, and the worst paid profession in the world. I have noted that of my pupils, those who seemed laziest and the least enamoured of books are now rising to eminence at the bar, in business, and in public life; the really promising boys who took all the prizes are now able with difficulty to earn the wages of a clerk in a summer hotel or a deck hand on a canal boat.

Summary:

In the hopeful 1950s, Frank and April Wheeler appear to be a model couple: bright, beautiful, talented, with two young children and a starter home in the suburbs. Perhaps they married too young and started a family too early. Maybe Frank’s job is dull. And April never saw herself as a housewife. Yet they have always lived on the assumption that greatness is only just around the corner. But now that certainty is about to crumble.

“Nice? It’s the only thing,” said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. “Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”

I much preferred drifting in boats with Rat and Mole, and visiting Badger in his hidden home in the woods, over storming Toad Hall to reclaim it for its irresponsible master. I had a hard time getting along with the arrogant Toad, and can only wish that I had a set of such forgiving friends. Other than Toad, life beside the River was so very beautiful that I could only hold up both hands and gasp “O my! O my! O my!”

Summary:

Emerging from his home at Mole End one spring, Mole’s whole world changes when he hooks up with the good-natured, boat-loving Water Rat, the boastful Toad of Toad Hall, and the society-hating Badger who lives in the frightening Wild Wood.

In true Atwood fashion, The Penelopiad is not without fairly annoying interludes of poems, songs, ballads and other jarring forays from the prose … but what sublime, hilarious prose it is, and it makes the voyage worth it.

Summary:

In Homer’s account of The Odyssey, Penelope – wife of Odysseus and cousin of the beautiful Helen of Troy – is portrayed as the quintessential faithful wife, her story a lesson through the ages. Left alone for twenty years when Odysseus goes off to fight in the Trojan war after the abduction of Helen, Penelope manages, in the face of scandalous rumours, to maintain the kingdom of Ithaca, bring up her wayward son, and keep over a hundred suitors at bay, simultaneously. When Odysseus finally comes home, he kills her suitors – and twelve of her maids.

In a contemporary twist to the ancient story, Atwood has given the retelling of the myth to Penelope to find out what she and her twelve maids were really up to.

Summary:

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum’s classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious Witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil?

Summary:

All the special fears and delightful fantasies of a child’s dreamworld come to life as a cyclone lifts Dorothy from Kansas and deposits her in the enchanted country of the Munchkins. Here she meets the famous Oz characters: the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, the Cowardly Lion, and the Wicked Witch of the West. And here her adventures along the Yellow Brick Road on the way to the Emerald City and the Wizard himself evoke the rich, universal appeal of a classic fairy tale.