Trust & Obey

Happy New Years!!!

This year has been rough, to say the very least, we have dealt with a pandemic, our lives being flipped upside down, protesters, and the 2020 presidential election.

During the three-month lockdown, here in the USA, I had an insane amount of time to read some books. I read around 20 books by the time we were let lose in June and I continued to read to keep sane. With all of that said, I had quite the difficulty picking best book of the year but one stood out among the rest. My top 2020 read is….

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins! This novel was up against The Lunar Chronicles Novel Cress by Marissa Meyer, which I loved. In the end, the familiar feel of The Hunger Games was a part of what won me over, however, what really got me was the protagonist and themes.

This stand-alone prequel focuses on Coriolanus Snow, a scrappy young man who wishes to restore his family’s fallen name. After the war, the country of Panem has fallen into ruin. Even those who were once considered well off are now hiding that they have little.

The Hunger Games are also not doing well, to say the very least. It’s a constant reminder of the great war. The people are disgusted by it, don’t want to watch it, and the Capital of Panem wants to change that. They decide to make the youth of the Capital the mentors over tributes from the 13 districts and give the winning mentor a free full ride to the university. Just about every teenager needs that so they will fight tooth and nail to get it.

What makes this story so fascinating to me was that there are two Hunger Games going down during this novel. We have the tributes fighting in the arena for their lives and Coriolanus and his schoolmates fighting for a chance at a better life. Collins shows you what desperate people can do even if it’s not a life-or-death scenario but a struggle for pride. Coriolanus wants to be respected and wants power. As we watch the plot unfold, we see how far he is willing to go to get it. To add to the desire to restore pride, we also see a violent bent in practically every character. Throughout this novel, we are shown again and again that violence is a part of the human condition, like the desire for pride and prestige. It’s in our blood and unfortunately, we have to fight against it. Even the ones we call innocent, children, are this way.

This book, however, was far more violent than the other Hunger Games novels. There is brief discussion of cannibalism -due to starvation-, people being murdered out of hatred and seemingly at random, and human experimentation. Some of these things are found in the original trilogy but I would say they were touched on far more here. There’s also mention of prostitution. Finally, there is a homosexual background character, which I found entirely unnecessary. There was zero benefit to adding this character’s sexual orientation if not to only make Collins seem “progressive”.

As a whole, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes won my heart for my top read of 2020. I honestly feel I have hardly touched the surface of the complexity of this novel despite the fact I went a little long here. Even though it was a hard year, I read some fantastic books and grew a lot! I hope you were able to do the same this year and found joy in the crazy! Happy New Year everyone, may the odds be ever in our favor…

What was your favorite book of 2020? Let me know through email or the comments!