But seriously, do I even want to review this one?  Do you even want to know what happens?  No, admit it.  You don’t.  If you’ve read The Hunger Games, you just want to know if it’s not disappointing.  No.  It’s not.

My book club read The Hunger Games earlier this year and so they all read my copy of Catching Fire as well as a few others including my mother-in-law and husband.  Every single one of them LOVED it and NEED the third book NOW.  If I had been thinking properly I should have had them all jot down mini-reviews as it was passed on.

Catching Fire comes out today (in case you’ve been living under a rock and haven’t had it penciled on your calender for months)!  You’ll want to run out right NOW and pick it up.  I can guarantee that you’ll likely read it in one sitting.

Because I’m a dork and don’t have any cool Catching Fire giveaways to offer, here are some bloggers who are:  The Scholastic blog (signed copy!), Reading Adventures, Booking Mama, Pop Culture Junkie, The Book Smugglers, Frenetic Reader,  Greenbeanteenqueen, The Story Siren, and Presenting Lenore.

So have you read The Hunger Games *gasp* and are you running out today for Catching Fire?

Links of interest: Maw Books review of The Hunger Games. Suzanne Collins website.
Genre:  Young Adult/Dystopian
Published by Scholastic Press.  September 1, 2009
Hardcover, 400 pages.  ISBN: 0439023491.
Catching Fire is available from local independent bookstores, Powell’s and Amazon.

But I will say this:  I NEED the third book NOW!

I’m almost a bit tempted to tell people that if you haven’t yet read Hunger Games (my book review) then you might as well wait until the third book is published and then read them all together.  Because you won’t want to wait between books.  But if you like to wait, then by all means, don’t deny yourself.

My neighborhood book club read Hunger Games two months ago and when we met last week I brought my copy of Catching Fire.  They were all clamoring so bad that we drew names for the order in which they’d read it.  The first who finished it already, told me very sarcastically “Thanks a lot.“  She’s not to happy about having to wait either.

I honestly wasn’t sure where Catching Fire was going to take us.  I really, really thought it was going to go a completely different direction and then it didn’t and then I wondered how it would be different from the first book, then it twisted again, then stuff happened, then more stuff happened, and then the last twenty pages just flew by and stuff is still happening and the book ends on this HUGE cliffhanger!  (How’s that for my eloquently stated review?!)

Catching Fire book trailer:

Argh!  We all need a little anticipation in our life right?  Must think positive thoughts and will time to pass faster.

Links of interest: Maw Books review of The Hunger Games.  Suzanne Collins website.
Genre:  Young Adult/Dystopian
Published by Scholastic Press.  September 1, 2009
Hardcover, 400 pages.  ISBN: 0439023491.
Catching Fire is available from local independent bookstores, Powell’s and Amazon.  Seriously? I’d preorder this one.

The reason that I was initially holding off on reading The Hunger Games was because of the brief synopsis:  a girl fights for her life while on a reality TV show.  Yeah, I don’t think so.  Not my type of book.  Reading about reality TV?  Not my thing.  And it’s considered science fiction?  Another strike.  But it simply could not be ignored.

Briefly stated, The Hunger Games takes place in an undetermined time in the future.  America as we know it has been completely destroyed and in its place is the capital and twelve districts.  There used to be thirteen districts and during an uprising, the thirteenth was destroyed.  Each year, as a reminder to its tributes of the power and will of the capital, two tributes, one boy and one girl, are chosen from each districts and forced to participate in The Hunger Games, a televised event in an outdoor arena where only one tribute can bring home honor to his or her district.  To win means killing all of your opponents.  To lose means that you’re dead.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss’s younger sister is chosen as tribute and in a moment of bravery Katniss volunteers to go in her stead.  Her district hasn’t won the game in decades and she knows that she has little chance of winning.  But that’s not going to stop her from using her bow and arrow skill to have her coming out on top.  But things get complicated when the other tribute in her district is Peeta, the bakers son whom she knows from school and once gave her starving family an act of kindness by giving them bread.  Not only must Katniss and Peeta kill and stay alive from the other 23 tributes, they must square off against each other, not easy to do when they have such mixed feelings for each other.

The Hunger Games book trailer:

Really exciting stuff.  Seriously.  Like stay up until three in the morning exciting.  You can’t stop thinking about it.  AND it’s going to be made into a movie!  AND Suzanne Collins is writing the screenplay.  I can not wait for both the movie and the sequel, Catching Fire, which comes out in September.  Reviewers are going to be scrambling for ARC’s for this one.  *cough,I want, I want, I want, cough*

Hunger Games totally lives up to the hype.  It’s fun, it’s different.  Just make sure you have plenty of time to read it because you’ll want to read it in one or two sittings.

Suzanne Collins website.

When Marcus is finally allowed to go home (without knowing what happened to one of his friends), he realizes that freedom is no longer what it used to be.  Homeland security spends all of their time and manpower policing ordinary citizens.  He’s had enough.  Fortunately, Marcus is a complete computer geek.  Through hacking, programming, and creating an alternate untraceable internet he uses the power of youth to fight back to regain his constitutional rights, personal freedoms, and liberties.  He takes on the systems and proves that the government is no match for a kid with computer skills and a lot of heart.

Fortunately for me, the geeky talk was above my head but not so far above that I couldn’t follow what was going on.  I could have done without the seemingly five pages of some of the technical “how I did it” talk.  I kept asking myself, is this real?  Can people really do this?  I’m an almost thirty something SAHM who feels extremely smart when she changes some simple HTML code and it works!  The technical talk was balanced with enough social change, romance, and teenage anxieties that the story was fun.  Teenagers will love Little Brother, especially techno geeky teenage boys.  It reminds me of books like Brave New World and 1984, but updated to appeal to kids today.

The Adoration of Jenna Fox is the type of book that you don’t want to know to much about and I was glad that I didn’t.  I loved learning each new detail as they were revealed throughout the book.  There are a lot of ethical and moral dilemmas presented throughout the book as well as discussion on what it means to be human.  Where does our identity come from?

The writing is very tight, no words wasted here.  I’m not sure I liked the epilogue.  It seemed a bit too forced, but it didn’t hamper my overall enjoyment.  Recommended.

The book trailer:

Visit www.whoisjennafox.com and Mary E. Pearson’s website and blog.

Messenger is set in the village that Jonas from The Giver escapes to and now home to Matty from Gathering Blue.  The villagers are all people who have left their own communities to find a new way of life, a better way to live.  They are a happy people, accepting of all disabilities but that all changes when greed and discontent begin to ripple through the village.  Now they want to close the border to all newcomers.

Kira’s father asks Matty to travel through the forest to his old village to bring back his daughter before the border closes.  Their trip is perilous and dangerous and Kira and Matty find their lives in danger.  Jonas sets out to save them, but can he?  With each of their special abilities, can they make it back to their village safely?  And if they do, will it be a village that they want to return to?

I liked this one better than Gathering Blue but still not as much as The Giver.  But all three are definitely worth reading.  Lois Lowry is an amazing author and I’m glad to have discovered her this year.  Better late than never!

Book review of The Giver
Book review of Gathering Blue
Book review of Number the Stars
Book review of The Willoughby’s
Lois Lowry’s website and blog.

Do you have a favorite Lois Lowry book?

We meet Kira tending her mother’s body out in the field waiting for the last of her spirit to drift away.  Now orphaned and with a limp leg, Kira is afraid that the village will also send her to the fields and to the mercy of the beasts.  Being a cripple, she was never supposed to be allowed to live in the first place. The Council of the Guardians takes Kira in because of her great talent with embroidery and they put her to task at repairing the Singer’s Robe, in preparation for the annual Gathering, in which for a full day he sings of their history.  It’s on his robe that the whole history of their world is illustrated.  As she is brought in closer to the inner-workings of their society, Kira realizes that she has more questions than answers.

I have to admit that I liked The Giver (read my book review) more than Gathering Blue but am looking forward to reading the final installment, Messenger.

But (yes, there is a but), I do think The Host was a good 150 pages too long and too wordy. There seemed to be a lot of unnecessary descriptions and I wish it was cut down. A lot. In fact, when I reached the part where they arrived in the caves (if you’ve read it, you know what I mean, if you haven’t well then, I’m sure you soon will) I actually put the book down for about four days without picking it back up. I even asked my neighbor (ALL of my neighbors have read it) if the characters ever get out of the caves and when does the story pick up? She assured me that they do and it will. She was right and once I crossed that hurdle I quickly finished up the book. In fact, I stayed up way to late and once I turned the last page, I looked at the clock to find it was 2:30 in the morning.

I read somewhere the tag line of The Host being “Science Fiction for those who don’t like Science Fiction.” Which would actually be me because to tell you the truth, I haven’t read much science fiction as it’s not my genre of choice. So seeing that I was indeed a member of the intended target audience, I was curious to know if that tag line were indeed true. The Host bases it’s story off of science fiction. We’re talking “worm-like” aliens have taken over Earth by inserting themselves into the human bodies and forcing the human mind or soul out. In fact, the aliens believe that they are doing humans a favor because the humans are so violent and messed up. And well, these aliens are loving, peacekeeping, and much to nice. The Host was definitely of the science fiction persuasion, but the tag line was true. It didn’t bother me and thank goodness it was more about a love story than anything else.

Wanderer, nicknamed Wanda (a name that I couldn’t stand to read, has been inserted into Melanie, one of the last remaining human lifeforms. Melanie had survived by being on the run with her boyfriend Jared and her little brother Jamie. There is only one problem. Melanie refuses to “fade away” and Wanda finds herself having to deal with the human who won’t “get out of her head.” Wanda inherits not only all of Melanie’s memories but her physical longings as well and finds herself falling in love with Jared. She decides to do something nobody in her alien race has done before, and that’s sympathize with the humans. She becomes determined to find Jared and Jamie and soon discovers more than she bargained for.

Jared and Jamie have found a pocket of resistant humans and when Wanda does finds them not everybody is happy. After all, this is Melanie’s body but Wanda’s mind. Through Wanda’s interaction with the humans, she discovers what it means to truly be human. She also learns about love. I thought there were some interesting questions brought up. Is love about appearances? Is it a physical attraction? Can two people love the same person and continue to co-exist in the same body together? Well, that last question probably isn’t very probably and likely when thinking about ourselves. Also, what does it mean to be human?

There really was only one way for this book to end and I did see it coming a mile away. I honestly, don’t know how it could have ended any other way. But that didn’t stop me from wanting to see it for myself. My mother-in-law (waving hello, because she reads all of my posts) really liked the Twilight Series and was really excited to read The Host. So I was looking forward to hearing what she thought about it. She said she didn’t like it. And for one reason. Star Trek. Did I remember that episode were Dr. Beverly Crusher falls in love with a man only to find out that he is a worm-like parasite living in that hosts body? In fact, I loved Star Trek when I was younger and my family and I watched it every night without fail. So I had to think back on this one and after looking it up I do remember this episode.

In this particular episode (which is also called The Host), the host body is hurt, so Dr. Crusher has to perform a transfer and Ryker volunteers to be the next host body until another suitable replacement is found. Can Dr. Crusher still love her boyfriend even if it’s Ryker’s body? And it gets even more interesting when the new host body does show up and it’s female. (And if you’re a Star Trek fan, this is the first appearance of the Trills, the symbiotic lifeforms that play a large role in Deep Space Nine, mostly through the character Dax. Just a bit of trivia for you.) Anyways, here’s a little trailer for Star Trek, The Host trailer.

And my mother-in-law is right. Quite similar. I wonder, is Stephenie a Star Trek fan? Did she see this episode when she was younger? Did it sit there in the back of her mind and now can’t remember where she came up with the idea of a worm? I’m sure all authors get their inspiration from all kinds of places. The similarities didn’t really bother me and in fact I didn’t even make the connection until our conversation. So there you have it, I indeed did pull together Star Trek and Stephenie Meyer together in the same review. Now who else is going to give you that?!

The Host is definitely worth trying. Like the Twilight series, I think it will be one that you love or don’t love, a hit and miss. Stephenie does an excellent job pulling together the paranormal with a human interest love story that will keep you turning the page for more (well, once you get out of the caves, that is).

Up next: a HUGE Stephenie Meyer giveaway! So big, it’s getting it’s own post. Seriously, don’t miss it!! And check out my thoughts about attending Stephenie’s book signing for The Host here.

In this perfect society, everything is very orderly. At age one, each child is assigned to a family unit (born from a woman whose occupation is that of birth mother). Two children to a family, one male and one female.  At age eight, each child’s “comfort object” is recycled and they receive a bicycle. And it’s age 12 that each child is given their occupational assignment in which they will serve until it’s time to live at the “home of the old.” There they live until it’s time to be “released.” And as a mother, I was very affected by the release of babies and infants. Especially, when Gabe, a one year old, is selected to be released because he didn’t sleep through the night yet. Can you imagine?!!

Jonas is about to turn twelve and attend the Ceremony of Twelve and receive his assignment. He is unsure of what position he will receive because he doesn’t seem to have any interests towards a particular job. He is shocked (well, as shocked as one can be to someone who’s emotions are suppressed) to learn that he is given the highest position in his society, that of Receiver of Memory.

From The Giver he receives special training and it is upon his shoulders alone that he holds all the memories, feelings, and history of his society. He learns of snow, cold, heat, red, blue, green, war, death, pain, grandparents, Christmas and love. As he receives the truth there is no turning back. Does he have the power to change his world to convince people of the truth?

An excellent book that I highly recommend to those who haven’t read it, but I believe that wouldn’t be very many of you. Visit Lois Lowry’s website here. Read my review of Number the Stars by Lois Lowry here.