Books

Book 244: Catching Fire (The Hunger Games #2) – Suzanne Collins

As with my recent re-read of The Hunger Games and going back to re-read my original review of Catching Fire back in 2010, I realized how much my blog has changed over the past three years. (I’ve also realized how poorly proofed my old posts are. Seriously go back and read some of them and laugh at my horrible editing! I used ‘one’ instead of ‘won’ and have ‘wont” instead of ‘won’t’ at one point. As I said in that review, DON’T READ PAST THIS POINT IF YOU DON’T WANT ANYTHING RUINED.

If one of the novels had more potential than any of the others, this is it and this is most evident in the way the writers were able to create an AMAZING film out of a mediocre book. And as with the book itself I wished the movie would’ve spent more time in the arena itself rather than on the outside of the arena, but both the book and movie did have to set up the third book.

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Books

Book 243: The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1) – Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games Trilogy was one of the first books I reviewed when I started The Oddness of Moving Things and it was the first book recommended through my suggest a book page. I of course re-read this series with all of the hype surrounding the release of Catching Fire and I’m very glad I did. I blew through the trilogy in just over 72 hours (so similar to lat time).

What is most interesting looking back at my original review from 2010 is how much my reviews/responses have changed. It seems like in 2010 I was more interested in providing a recap of the books rather than a response to the books. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it and honestly I’m sure it was exactly what I needed (something to organize my thoughts and keep me going while looking for a job), but it’s funny naturally things have changed to a regurgitation/thought explosion of my thoughts on a book, or series, or more often than not some random comment on Goodreads or Amazon that ticked me off.

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Books

Book 238: The House of Hades (The Heroes of Olympus #4) – Rick Riordan

In this, the penultimate novel of The Heroes of Olympus, Rick Riordan sets the scene for a HUGE finale in the last and final book. I’ve had my name on the wait list for this book since I finished The Mark of Athena back in February or whenever the library first let me add my name to the list and I will do the same thing with the final installment, The Blood of Olympus.

This book picks up right where The Mark of Athena left off and keeps filling up details and providing more and more tension before everything snaps between Gaea and the demigods and gods. To be fair the series could end with this book and I wouldn’t be mad as there was a pretty succinct ending to this novel versus many of the other cliff hangers I’ve read before like that at the end of the last novel. This one although much sadder, the characters and readers of the series are growing up, was much more encapsulated.

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Books

Book 237: Two Boys Kissing – David Levithan

If I were to write a book I would want it to be this book. I’m serious, I don’t think I need to write a novel anymore because this is what I would want to have written. Maybe one day I will, but I don’t need to having read this. The number of times I cried on the T (from this book and the other bazillion things going on in my life) are uncountable. It was a daily occurrence and I finally had to stop reading it on the T so I’d stop freaking people out. This review does not do this book justice, you need to go read it to really see what I’m talking about.

Levithan’s inspiration for the novel comes from an actual event and he draws other ideas from the past few years which fed into the various story lines and created this masterpiece. I’ve not read anything by Levithan previously, but I do have Boy Meets Boy on my bookshelf. If any of his books are anything like this I’m glad I’ve got another to read. Although this is classified as young adult I think everyone needs to read this novel, there is something so raw and so emotionally wrenching about this novel and Levithan’s writing that it has to speak across so many demographics.

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Books

Book 235: The Demigod Diaries (The Heroes of Olympus) – Rick Riordan

This is the second collection of short stories Riordan released in his Greco-Roman young adult series. I actually preferred this collection to the first, The Demigod Files, but I think that comes from the length of the stories and the inclusion of the final story in this selection by Riordan’s son, Haley. In addition this was the 18th library book I’ve read this year, which is pretty impressive for me and I’m excited to be supporting the library more and more these days.

The four short stories in this collection are The Diary of Luke Castellan, Percy Jackson and the Staff of Hermes, Leo Valdez and the Quest for Buford and Son of Magic. Each one of these stories stands out and included different characters which I think is why I enjoyed this collection better than the first, but as mentioned above Son of Magic is what made this collection.

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