The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins (see also Catching Fire, and Mockingjay)

I decided to read this trilogy to find out what all the fuss was about. The books are bestsellers, and the movies blockbusters, but I had only heard of a few people who had read the stories.

Here’s honesty: the plot is the most gripping in the first book, building to the climax of Peeta and Katniss’ struggle to survive the Games. It becomes less believable in the next two books, although Collins’ prose is much cleaner (Perhaps she had a larger budget for editing after writing one bestselling novel!).

What struck me most, though, were parallels between the opulent, decadent Capitol of Panem, isolated from the hunger and poverty of the Districts, and the world I live in. The well-fed crowds at the Capitol loved the Games: watching 13 tributes fight to the death. Their cheering rang eerily familiar.

Katniss hates and resents the outrageously dressed crowds that cheer her grim struggle. They have no need to fear what she has—starvation, or violence from Peacekeepers.

As I read, I realized my life paralleled the Capitol citizen’s lives, and I wondered if I have become just as calloused as they. I flip through headlines of an suicide bomber’s attack at a Turkish wedding or a malaria outbreak in Venezuala, as desperate, jobless people mine for gold, but it doesn’t seem real.

I don’t know whether Collins intended her sci-fi young adult novels to be social commentary. Yet it left me pondering who I have become, and how I can relieve suffering—not find it entertaining.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson (see also Home, and Lila, in this trilogy)

A book about an aging minister living in a small Iowa town seems an unlikely choice for a Pulitzer prize. Yet Marilynne Robinson writes this man’s reflections on his life with raw honesty, speaking in clear, lyrical prose.

Robinson could have written this book depicting her protagonist as a kind, grandfatherly figure, reminiscing about his difficult life, somehow grown precious in the passing of time. And on the surface, she does that: we see how his parishioners take care of him, cleaning his house and bringing him food. We, and Ames, understand his image (not unfairly rendered) as a grave, respected man of faith.

Yet Robinson explores what only Ames knows. He is dying, of heart disease. He struggles with bitterness toward the neighbor's son, Jack Boughton, who speaks to him with practiced deference. He does not want to leave his life, having reveled in its unexpected beauty--a wife, decades younger, who chooses him as her mate; a child, seven years old, inquisitive, energetic.

Ames ponders the grace of existence--as he thinks of leaving the world, it becomes luminous to him. "The moon looks wonderful in this warm evening light," he writes, "just as a candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning. ... It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence" (Robinson 119). Ames has a wonderful sense of the significance of each human life. He sees living as an unutterable gift, and each person as a part of that grace.

The Stories We Tell, by Mike Cosper

I used to have an internal debate every time I was deep into a book that was fascinating, but I knew was building up to a scene portraying sin. The Brothers Karamazov, for instance, explores the struggle of understanding a sovereign, loving God in a world where innocent children suffer. Yet at the beginning I was disgusted at the sleaziness in several of the main characters. Dostoevsky, like many great storytellers, throws sin into sharp relief in his novels. Something about that rang true, and yet—I struggled to keep my heart pure.

In this dilemma, I find Mike Cosper’s advice wise: as we attempt “thoughtful engagement with the media we consume,” he says this “requires two key ingredients ... conscience and community”(Cosper 153). I’ve learned to pay attention to my reservations, and reached out for accountability. But more than that, I resonated with Cosper’s explanation of “the gospel of grace” (Cosper 52). and how that changes what I bring to the text—not fear or curiosity but awareness of how destructive the sin portrayed is, and how much more desirable Christ’s restoration is.

I love a great story—especially when it is told in a way that satisfies my literature-loving soul. More than that, I love stories because I’m human, made in the image of a God who wrote me into His cosmic, eternal drama.

Mike Cosper writes about our obsession with stories: “The stories we tell are all a part of the stories he’s telling. We tell stories because we’re broken creatures hungering for redemption, and our storytelling is a glimmer of hope, a spark of eternity still simmering in our hearts (Eccles. 3:15)”. Cosper’s premise is simple: none of our stories are original—we endlessly re-create with material from God’s metanarrative.

Onward: Engaging the Culture Without Losing the Gospel, by Russell Moore

Moore points out one of the most distressing realities in church culture in the United States: what he calls the “almost gospel,” which he says is “not enough to shape consciences strong enough to cry out with prophetic witness” (Moore 93). This almost-gospel is concerned primarily with securing entrance to heaven, and leaves our lives on earth relatively unscathed.

Yet Christ calls those who follow him to a far more holistic gospel—one that redeems us “out of the darkness into his wonderful light” (I Pet. 2:9) that changes the way we live in the world. Before we can call others to value human life, build strong families, or respect religious diversity, we must model these in our own churches. If we truly follow Jesus, the one who “gave up his divine privileges” and “took the humble position of a slave” (Phil. 2:7) we are not only concerned with escaping hell, but with understanding what His kingdom is like—and surrendering our lives to help it grow, regardless of the cost.

Whenever I have looked at the injustice and brokenness around me—seeing fragmented families, the constantly rising death toll of abortion, the confusion over sexuality and gender—and prayed about this, Jesus calls me back to what Moore articulates so well: “Mission ... is a matter of both gospel and justice ...personal redemption and social order” (Moore 93). I am called to submit to Jesus, so that first I can be changed, before I try to change anyone else.

American Masculine, by Shann Ray

Shann Ray has eyes that speak as powerfully as his words. As he answered the questions from our class, I noticed that they had a particular quality—one I see only in people who have gone through terror and grief, but have found redemption afterward. His eyes crinkled, and I saw the humor that helped him weather years of struggle—to find his way, to make a living, to get published.

I loved his advice about writing, but what I loved more was seeing the resilience of his spirit, no trace of bitterness from the darkness, but gratitude for the light. It shocked me, to be honest, since I expected a tortured soul or a savvy self-promoter. Instead, he was compassionate, whole, transparent.

In American Masculine, Shann Ray writes stories drawn from his experiences of growing up on the Montana plains. He writes of alcohol, broken relationships, violence—the ugliness set against towering mountains and vivid skies of the West.

The stories speak of unsentimental redemption—sparked when his characters face themselves, see their need, understand what good is, and reach for it.

Birthday Letters, by Ted Hughes, and Ariel's Gift: Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath and the Story of Birthday Letters, by Erica Wagner

That many of the great poets become widely beloved after their death is a unfortunate reality—and, in Sylvia Plath’s case, a tragic one. Plath, who has become known for making “confessional” poetry famous, committed suicide on February 11, 1963. She left a manuscript of poems written over the previous year, compiled for publication, titled,“Ariel and other poems.” Ted Hughes, her estranged husband, was left to decide what to do with this manuscript and her other unpublished work.

Ted Hughes offered a rare gift to the world in Birthday Letters, his only confessional work—the genre appropriately chosen as he reflects on his life with Plath. Hughes said, corresponding with a friend: “I think those letters [to his wife, in Letters] do release the story that everything I have written since the early 1960s has been evading. It was a kind of desperation that I finally did publish them ... I just could not endure being blocked any longer. ... now the sense of inner liberation ... Quite strange” (qtd. in Wagner 17).

When Hughes wrote these poems, published thirty-five years after his wife’s death, is not clear, yet it is terrible to think of this man, haunted by a grief that kept him silent. Certainly Birthday Letters reveals that whatever else Ted Hughes may have been, he was not indifferent. Instead, he combs back through their meeting, their wedding, and their life together, searching for the hints of suicidal despair. Yet he redeems himself by offering us his own account of his suffering—and all the raw honesty of his wife’s.

Every Riven Thing, by Christian Wiman

I have an on-off relationship with poetry—mostly off, since poets cherish their obscure images, seeing profundity in cracked concrete or jagged glass. Which, I suppose, could be profound, but I rarely find myself picking up a book of poetry to read meditations on either.

When my professor read “Every Riven Thing,” the poem from which this book takes its title, though, it was different. The exquisite wordplay caught vivid images of Christ living within his creation. Look it up, and if you have the time, ponder the mystery: God, unmarred and infinite, filling a cosmos so desperately marred.