and may the odds be ever in your favor.

if you took the time to read the title, you should know what this post is about. if you don't, well, you live under a rock and i'm surprised you have access to this blog.

this starts with me coming home from college. being an RA, i had to stay foreverrrr and i finally made the three hour drive home with all of my stuff and my fish (who died two weeks ago. feel sorry for me.) and my cactus. (atticus is fine. if you're wondering.) i got home around ten thirty and my parents and my brother were nowhere to be found.

they were picking my brother up from the detroit airport. because he'd been in peru.

so the next day i wake up and i'm like, look at this stuff that i have to unpack! and i come downstairs and my dad is reading the hunger games.

one thing before we fully get underway.

when i say the hunger games, i mean the first book. because it's called the hunger games. the other two aren't called the hunger games. so i am not talking about the trilogy. just the first book.

oh, here's my big bad disclaimer too.

i give no effs about spoilers. if you haven't read the books or seen the movie and you don't want anything spoiled, turn back now, because i'm not going to spare your feelings and i'm going to treat you like you know exactly what's going on. i'm the author of this blog and i can do that if i want to. kay thanks bye.


now that we've gotten that out of the way.

so my dad is reading the hunger games and i'm like, i wasn't going to read that until next year, when the hype died down, and he was like, well it's due in a week and it won't take you long. it's pretty good.

so i steal away to my room and i devour it in about three hours while listening to the new pornographers, so oddly, i associate "all the old showstoppers" with children murdering each other.

and guess what?

i didn't like the book. at all.

by page fifty katniss annoyed the piss out of me. by the time that she was in the arena things were getting good, but she was still annoying. peeta was a completely static character and i couldn't relate to him at all because as far as i could tell, he didn't have emotions.

i finished the book and thought, well that was kids killing each other, katniss was annoying, peeta was decently lame, and i have no idea where she's even going to get two more books from.

but here was the biggest problem that i found with the book.

i didn't feel the gravity of the situation at all.


think about it. these are twenty-four kids chosen against their wills to fight to the death in a huge arena where they'll probably be stabbed, strangled, eaten, or else they'll starve to death in the cold. and everybody in the country gets to watch it like it's the fuggin' olympics. just let that sink in for a minute, please.

no, it didn't sink in at all. not one bit. i wanted to feel just a fraction of what katniss was feeling, and i couldn't, because of how the book was written.

then i went into english major mode and i came up with this.  


i have attributed my hatred of the hunger games to katniss’s narration and its effect on the novel as a whole as perceived by the reader. 


italics to emphasize my thesis. and hatred is a strong word. dislike-age.


remember that i'm an english major?


in a nutshell, i couldn't feel the gravity of the situation that katniss was in because she couldn't perceive it herself as a character in a first person point of view.


this can mean one of two things.

1. suzanne collins is a genius and managed to capture this flawless narration and characterization and keep it steady, even in strife on katniss's part. like making out with peeta in a cave while he slowly died of blood poisoning.
2. suzanne collins can't grasp the situation either and can't find a way to write about it properly.

you can decide. and i'm not saying that she's a bad writer. i feel like one of the only people who can write about this subject properly is stephen king.

can you imagine if he got a hold of this material? think about it.

i finished it around one in the morning and i was severely disappointed. all of the hype! and i didn't like the book. was i becoming too hipster?


it's always possible. the other day i yelled at somebody over my foster the people album. the one that i had last year. they thought it was new.

so today, nearly two weeks after i had finished the hunger games, hannah and emma, the twins that i coach with, invited me to go see it with them. i wasn't going to say no. before i had even read the books the movie looked good, and i have this thing where i have to read the books before i see the movie, which is why i'm slogging through this beautifully written nobel prize winning novel just because i want to see the movie.

so i meet hannah and emma at carmike and we take seats in the back and we're eagerly awaiting the movie. i am absolutely praying that the movie is going to be better than book. i will actually be able to truly see the gravity of the situation, not just from katniss's little lens.

plus i just want to watch children murder each other cinematically. i mean, come on. i'm psyched about clove's knives.

so we get through the previews and there's one for the avengers, which i saw last friday. and i want to see it again because i've gotten a crush on mark ruffalo. like, hardcore.

you know you're getting old when all of your celebrity crushes are suddenly over the age of thirty and you're like, "damn i like that gray in your hair, man." but seriously, mark ruffalo, ladies. hottest bruce banner ever.

back to the point. the movie started and i remembered how much i love jennifer lawrence for being a badass and not being a stick, and then i laugh because gale is, as of yesterday, miley cyrus's fiance, and then the movie is totally underway.

as far as movies go (ahem, harry potter.) it was incredibly true to the book. i cried a little when rue died. peeta's camouflage was totally cray cray (did i just type that?) and cato terrified me. glimmer killed by tracker jackers was as absolutely disgusting as i'd pictured it, and through all of jennifer's lawrence's facial expressions...

i felt the gravity of the situation.


things i was disappointed in.

1. i appreciate katniss's forehead/knife battle. but it would've been much more awesome if she'd totally almost died in a pool of her own blood. like in the book.
2. what happened to peeta's leg being practically torn off at the end? that was the best part of the book.
3. and not that i really wanted to see it, but cato's death took about five seconds. what happened to twelve hours of agony?

i mean, nobody wants to see cato being torn to pieces by mutated wolves for twelve hours. but that was something i thought lacked in the book, katniss's ability to cope with listening to it. so they could've done something.

the people of the capitol were creepy. every time i saw the gamemaker i whispered, "you bastard" which caused emma and hannah to giggle.

oh, and when that mutt jumped out at peeta, i screamed, threw my arms up, and knocked my glasses off. then i panted like a wounded horse for a good five minutes.

i have never seen a horror movie, and probably never will. unless you count american psycho, but that was just funny.

my favorite part of the movie that didn't happen in the book: rue's dad flippin' his shit down in district eleven. you cannot restrict hope, gamemaker.

i've been told that the next two books aren't as great as the first one, and seeing as i didn't like it, that doesn't bode well for me. i'll probably read them anyway and possibly hope that katniss has gained some semblance of emotion. if being a victor hasn't given her emotion, well, she's probably a zombie.

after the movie was over, hannah, emma and i sat in the theatre and read all of the weird names in the credits out loud. about halfway through, all of the names suddenly became french and we really weren't sure why.

so this is the first time in the history of my existence that i have liked a movie better than a book. i don't know how i'm feeling about that.

but i'll tell you one thing: this nobel laureate prize winning novel that i'm reading? this movie better be worth slogging through the book for.

plus it stars mark ruffalo. so at least i have that to look forward to.

come on, ladies. for forty-four, he is verrrrrry attractive.

and he's the hulk. so. automatic badass points.