Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was roped into reading this classic YA for reasons, not realizing I had actually read it way back when I was in school in 7th grade. I started reading it and said, "Damn, I hate it when authors use this kind of tone for kids, emphasizing 'secret' so damn much in extremely short and supposedly powerful ways that just sounds so faux-mysterious."

A second later it dawned on me that I knew the rest of the story. Another second later, I realized it wasn't because the survival trope was so damn common.

It was because I HAD read it and just plain forgot it.

Huh.

Well, anyway, it made me think about how survival tropes haven't really been around anymore. I mean, sure, we have Hunger Games and just about every Anime out there, but there's not too much in modern lit, not that I've seen. Notable examples to the contrary are Life of Pi, etc., but many of these serve as either satire or dark commentary.

Whatever happened to this kind of genre, especially SF? Heinlein's juveniles used to be full of it.

How odd.

Oh? What about this book? lol

It's fine. It made me angry and nostalgic in turn.
Mostly entirely because of the Boy Scouts. I remember survival training and then I remembered that the whole thing of the BOY SCOUTS is dead now. Survival training and survival literature have both died.

I think that's kinda ironic.


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