"Catching Fire" & "The Mockingjay" by Suzanne Collins

Read it.

“The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins

Excellent, excellent, excellent. I loved this book. It had action, it had romance, and it had a climax- resolution that was reminiscent of Harry Potter (you know the kind that starts in the middle of the book and you cannot put it down until you are though). Yep. just great.

The Hunger Games takes place after the fall of the countries in North America. All that was left was 13 districts and the Capitol of Panem. Panem is reminiscent of the idealist Russian Communist countries that were written about in the 1960s and the Districts, at some point before the book begins, rose up to fight against the Capitol. Each of the Districts were crushed except for District 13 which the Capitol could not put down, so they burned District 13 to the ground. As a reminder of the strength of the Capitol every year one boy and one girl are chosen from each of the districts to fight in an arena until the death. Their will be only one winner.

In this tale we learn about Katniss, one of the contestants of the seventy- third Hunger Games. We learn her background, her motivation, he strategy and the toll that it on her while she is in the arena trying to survive.  As she is in the arena we witness Katniss develop two very strong relationships with two of the other contenders. One is with a young girl name Rue that seems to act as a sudo- sister for Katniss. The next is the other boy from District 12, Peeta. During the development of the relationship with Peeta you cannot help fall in love with him. Peeta is one of the few characters that I have grown so attached to in a book.

Must Read.

One note about the writing: There are many, many sentence fragment. In the beginning of the book I kept having to go back and reread the sentences to make sure that I understood them right. Didn’t have to though, it seems that I understood them exactly as they were written. This is just a warning; or really more of a heads up. If you read it just be aware, but I guarantee that you will be used to it by the first quarter of the book. 

“Dracula” by Bram Stoker

I am only going to say a few things about this book.

First, I didn’t really know what the book was about, and everything I figured would happen in the book happened in the first four very action packed chapters.

Second, that is the last time you will see action. The rest are doctors and professors notes and journal entries trying to understand what has overcome the dear Miss Lucy, and then later what had to be done to prevent the spread onto other people. This comes into importance later when Mrs. Harker also begins to show the same symptoms.

Third, they really could have named the book Van Helsing and everything would have been okay. Van Helsing is the one the figures everything out, explains the phenomenon that is occurring, and devises the plan to kill Dracula. Dracula is in the book but a fragment of the time compared to Van Helsing.

And that is it. It’s a classic. If your interested in reading it do it, but I’m not going to put an all out recommendation for everyone to read, because yea; it was kind of difficult, and not much fun.