book review: catching fire

So I was reading The Hunger Games for the what-th? time... and, quite frankly, was just a bit sick of it. I mean, I've seen the movie three times and I just didn't want to go through the whole thing again.

Enter, Catching Fire.

I've only read this one, like, twice. (Yes, I am a definite re-reader, folks. Some people say they've never read a book twice. My library isn't big enough for that kind of thing...)

This book made me laugh. You don't really expect that, reading these books. And a book that has the power to do do that is, in my opinion, a good book.

To me (at the risk of sounding like someone who over-thinks way too much and finds something to mean something in too many things...*ahem*) The Hunger Games is about so much more than the choosing of the Baker Boy or the Hunter Guy. It's more than Katniss' shooting skills and the tragicity of the whole fighting thing.

Suzanne Collins' books have done something. Much like that moment when Katniss lifted out those berries and lit that spark to fire the whole country of Panem -- she's shown us something. She's shown me how I lead a life so strikingly similar to that of a citizen of the Capitol. She's shown me that the people in developing countries are hardly scraping by on mostly nothing, growing our coffee beans and making our shoes and whoever knows what else. I'm starting to think the whole "Made in China" sticker is just a gimmick. Like maybe in the Capitol they wrote, "Made in the Capitol" and the people think everything's just fine and dandy.

Page 138, Katniss says:

"but what is the worst pain? to me, it's always the pain that is present."

I don't like sci-fi. I don't like futuristic stuff. If I go to a "If you liked the Hunger Games" bookstand, usually I don't like the book. Because they scare me. Why's The Hunger Games different? I think it's because... there's a very real element about them.

And by the way. You know the arena's? Where they fight? (Nah, Emii, what's that? Duh.) Do you reckon that, in the books, they actually make them... or just use the rest of the world?

Okay, I'm done now. Entering the real world. ;)

hilarious. really.