What's on the Nightstand? #10, #11 and #12 Hunger Games, Catching Fire and Mockingjay

    First things first today. I have to give a huge shout out to my new wonderful friends in the North for being the first country besides the USA to break the "100 people just from Canada on the blog stat". Considering I don't personally have a single family member from or in Canada this is an amazing thing to me. I am honored you all visited and stayed around long enough to help reach this mark. I sincerely hope you continue to visit and enjoy the blog as much as I'm enjoying writing it.
   
 Today was one of those really amazing reading experiences that are few and far between. I toted these books around the whole day because I couldn't stop reading. Aren't stories like that what we bookworms live for? You betcha!

    Suzanne Collins book The Hunger Games is wonderful! The story took me back to the first time I read The Hobbit. Immersing myself into Tolkien's story was life altering for me because it was pure fantasy and creation in it's truest form. I'd never read such a fantastical book before. The level of imagination and ability he had to posses in order to put The Hobbit together blew me away then. Now, so many years later, The Hunger Games took me back to that same feeling of WOW. We don't actually have to discuss the exact number of years later though.

    In the story, what we know as North America has been left in ruin and replaced by Panem. Within these newly formed boarders of twelve districts, everything is governed by the Capitol. To cruelly remind all the districts inhabitants of the Capitol's power, each district must choose a male and female child to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death.

    For sixteen year old Katiness Everdeen, being chosen is becoming more her reality each year. So far she's been lucky, but when her sister Prim is chosen on her first year of eligibility, Katiness steps forward to take her place. Her actions are pretty much a death sentence but she's been close to death before. And for Katiness, survival is second nature after growing up in the Seam. 
    Without meaning to, Katiness becomes a force to be reckoned with in the Game. But if she is to make it out alive, it will come down to her ability to weigh survival against it's price and life over love. 
    This is my first experience with Suzanne Collins work and even as I type I'm itching to go dive into the second book, Catching Fire, and then the recently released third, Mockingjay. So I'd say she has done a wonderful job!
    This story is beautiful and really fueled my decimated imagination tank. Alcoholic and drug abusers try to accomplish with those things what I can do with a superb book like this. Absorbed in a great book I can blissfully float away from my floors that need sweeping, laundry that needs folding, bathrooms that could seriously use a scrub down and just live vicariously through someone else for a bit. Books are written and published for this very feeling. Escaping reality for just a moment to peer into someone else's and get truly lost in it, what a rush and without all the need for rehab. 

    Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins is one of my reads this week. I can honestly say this series has grabbed hold and refused to let me go until I reached the end, and what a spectacular ending it was.
    Katiness has finally saved Peeta and herself from the certain death of the Hunger Games in the only way she knew how. The Capitol is of course furious with her actions but she's just relieved to still be breathing.Thanks to Peeta's quick thinking and charisma, Katiness is finally going back to her family and hopes to live her life out in peace. But a unexpected visit from the Capitol lets her know really quick just how much trouble she's in. 

    My heart was heavy for Katiness in this book. She has fought such a long and hard battle for so young a girl. I have to give it to her though, Lordy is she tough. I think I might have given up two clicks before half the misery she has endured. I can't tell you much more about the story without getting spoilerish, which I will not do. Most of all, I LOVED this book.

    The final installment in Katiness's story, Mockingjay, is absolutely perfect. It's so perfect I would even recommend my sister read it. Now anyone who knows The Sister can understand how significant that is. For those of you who don't know, well let's just say The Sister is extremely picky about endings. If her movies and stories don't end correctly, you might 'orta look out if you were the one to recommend it. The Sister has no issues with telling you exactly how stupid your movie or book is if it ends wrong. Probably all while wearing her angry wig too.

    I can't say much about this story without giving things way from Catching Fire so just my adoration for the series will have to be enough at this point. Mockingjay is wonderful, totally and completely wonderful. The entire trilogy is fantasy perfection and if you don't read anything else this year these three need to be the ones you do.

Till Then,

KD

Since 1991, Suzanne Collins has been busy writing for children’s television. She has worked on the staffs of several Nickelodeon shows, including the Emmy-nominated hit Clarissa Explains it All and The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo. For preschool viewers, she penned multiple stories for the Emmy-nominated Little Bear and Oswald. She also co-wrote the critically acclaimed Rankin/​Bass Christmas special, Santa, Baby! Most recently she was the Head Writer for Scholastic Entertainment’s Clifford’s Puppy Days.

While working on a Kids WB show called Generation O! she met children’s author James Proimos, who talked her into giving children’s books a try.

Thinking one day about Alice in Wonderland, she was struck by how pastoral the setting must seem to kids who, like her own, lived in urban surroundings. In New York City, you’re much more likely to fall down a manhole than a rabbit hole and, if you do, you’re not going to find a tea party. What you might find...? Well, that’s the story of Gregor the Overlander, the first book in her five-part fantasy/​war series, The Underland Chronicles.

She currently lives in Connecticut with her family and a pair of feral kittens they adopted from their backyard. (SuzanneCollinsbooks.com BIO)

For more information on Suzanne's work visit her website http://www.suzannecollinsbooks.com/