So, I can’t remember a time where I didn’t get books or gift certificates to bookstores for birthdays and Christmas. You know, back in the days when you’d order a book and it would take two weeks for it to come in. Back in the days before the internet. Back before the days when everyone I am related to became involved in some aspect of writing/publishing/selling books.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone then that a “care package” in my family usually involves a book. Sometimes, only a book, not even a card or a note. This is how it was last Fall when I came home to a package on my doorstep with a familiar return address. My sister had sent me a book. Not just any book, but Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. I once described this as Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood meets that Japanese film Battle Royale. In the (possibly not that distant) future, after a war that almost destroyed humanity Katniss Everdeen lives in District 12, one of the outer districts that unsuccessfully fought against the Capitol sneaking out past the fences to hunt to keep some food on the table, watching her friends’ fathers go to work in the Capitol run coal mine that killed her father. As the story opens, we see District 12 preparing for another round of the gruesome Hunger Games meant to celebrate the end of the war and to, once a year punish the districts for their disobedience to the Capitol. (and, here’s where it turned into Battle Royale). Every year which district sends two tributes, a boy and a girl, to the Capitol to participate in the games. While the games have a different setting every year, they are always the same. They are always a fight to the death.
Katniss is a firebrand. A spark plug. She is fierce and loyal and in a move to protect someone she loves she ends up as one of district 12′s tributes. And, the games are awful. But, the book is touching and wonderful and an excellent first novel in a series about this dystopian future.
Naturally, after reading the first one I had to run out and buy the second one. Catching Fire is more of the same, except that now there are more visible signs of unrest in the country and Katniss appears to be at the center. Not as good as the first book, but good enough that I am thoroughly invested in seeing this series to its end. I need to know what is going to happen to Katniss, the other tributes, her family and the rebels.
Thankfully, just in time for one last non-school book hurrah before the fall semester begins Mockingjay came out on Tuesday. And, my copy came in the mail yesterday. So, now I’m alternating between stuff I want to get done before school and, that’s right, reading my last non-school book before the semester starts.
