I Read an Amazing Book

Yes, folks, the book finally lived up to the hype. I read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins over the weekend, and if you know me, you know I have 2 kids and 2 jobs and a huge house to clean and a husband to communicate with and friends to be friendly with and yadda yadda yadda, so as much as I love to read, I hardly ever get to do it so to finish a book in one weekend is in a word: amazing. [Takes big breath.]

I didn't sleep much.

The book is incredible. The type of book that makes me want to just slam my laptop shut because I will clearly never be that good, but that I'm still glad the book was written, because I do appreciate being so thoroughly entertained.

The book is kind of a combination of The Running Man and The Long Walk (both by Stephen King, who compliments Collins himself, saying "I couldn't put it down.") Neither could I Mr. King. Neither could I.

She doesn't in any way copy either of those two works, but the theme and the setup are similar. The characters are wonderful, and there is absolutely NO telling in the book at all. None. Collins is a showing master. By the end of the first paragraph, I knew that our MC is very poor, and that today is a desperate day. By the end of the first page, I knew so much more about her, and her family, but the author never TOLD me. I figured it all out myself.

I don't normally like books in first person present tense, but it totally worked with this novel. She sets up an awesome love triangle, even though one of the characters isn't around for much of it. I could go on and on.

I'm so excited that I ordered Catching Fire already. I ordered it before reading The Hunger Games because I was able to get a really good price on it through my daughter's Scholastic order form, and I hoped it wasn't going to bite me, the way it did when I bought the first two books from a very popular series at the same time. I managed to drag myself through the first one, and I tried to read #2, but finally gave up about 20 pages in. They're just terrible.

But back to The Hunger Games. No. No, I'm done. I can't say enough good things about it, so I just need to stop now before I embarrass myself. Perhaps by misspelling the word embarrass. Did I? I'm not in the mood to spell check right now.