Tag: books

After flying through The Hunger Games, I put a desperate call out for the second book in the series, Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins. My brother luckily had the book & gave it to me before his wedding shower. I started reading on our way back from VA & even with a busy week of work & TTC, I finished it by Friday.

I’d love to tell y’all everything about Catching Fire & why I enjoyed it, but I also don’t want to spoil it for anyone. I hate it when I know what’ll happen before I even open the book thanks to reading or hearing about it elsewhere. So yeah, this is a post to say that you should just take my word on it. You’ll enjoy the action, the young adult romance, & the family dynamics. What I enjoyed about the first book is somewhat repeated in the second book, but it didn’t come across as boring or repetitive. And while I didn’t speed-read it quite as quick as the first in the series, once you read Hunger Games you’re going to HAVE to know what happens next as I did.

Now I’m already a third of the way through Mockingjay & I can’t figure out how they’re going to wrap the whole series up with just 260 pages left to go.

Different friends & family have been recommending The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins to be for years. You know I love Suzannes {:)} & enjoy a young adult series {hello, I’m looking at you Twilight & Harry Potter}. I’d requested & received it from the library a couple times & then wish listed & received it from paperbackswap {I got tired of paying the library overdue fees for it}. But the premise for The Hunger Games kept holding me back. Futuristic North America that’s a dictatorship other country. That this dictatorship punishes the 12 districts every year by forcing them to send in two teenagers in a fight-to-the-death match televised nationwide then celebrate the one of murdered/outlasted everyone else? Sounded too much for me.

I needed a break though from thought-filled book club books & TTC stress, so a couple weeks ago I took off to the pool by myself on a sunny Sunday.  Four hours & almost 200 pages later, I was hooked. Suzanne does such a great job with the story & characters that Katniss felt like a friend. I’d suspended all my disbeliefs and felt like I was part of Penam feeling the struggle & the highs along with Prim & Gale & Peeta & Haymitch.

You might’ve seen my FB message asking for the second in the series, Catching Fire. I finished The Hunger Games by Tuesday night & wanted needed to know what happens next. Thankfully my brother & sister-in-law-to-be own all three & brought the book to my parents’ house so that it was waiting for me when I arrived Friday night. Yep, you guessed it. I’m already 150 pages in & you’ll get a Catching Fire review soon. Put aside your doubts & go read The Hunger Games now.

There’ve been a few books in the past year or so that I haven’t been able to read. Mostly ones where people complain about being pregnant. Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult stood out for me for the opposite reason. The premise of the book focuses on an infertile couple, Zoe & Max. I was a little apprehensive that this book would hit a little too close to home. While there were definitely infertility medicines & procedures discussed, Zoe was doing IVF so it’s not exactly the same as us. I’d heard there were some inaccuracies in her infertility meds part, but if so, I didn’t catch them.

If you’ve read any other Jodi Picoult novels, you’ll recognize that she again in Sing You Home gives each character a voice {their own chapters & fonts}. I enjoy that ~ the feeling of being behind-the-scenes with each of the main characters.

I thought Jodi did a great job of portraying what infertility is like from a guy’s perspective. These two quotes from Max resonated with me {from chapter two so not really a spoiler}:

“I did everything she asked me to. I stopped drinking caffeine, I wore boxers instead of briefs, I started jogging instead of biking. I followed a diet she’d found online that increased fertility. I no longer put the laptop on my lap.“

I’m not sure about all that but I have mentioned the laptop & biking thing to Jason. He was already a boxer dude. But he & his buddies haven’t been an issue for us. This next quote though scares me because I know this is sometimes {I hope rarely} us.

“I can’t really tell you the moment it went wrong. Maybe it was the first time, or the fifth, or the fiftieth that Zoe counted out the days of her menstrual cycle and crawled into bed and said, “Now!” Our sex life had become like Thanksgiving dinner with a dysfunctional family- something you have to show up for, even though you’re not really having a good time.“

The infertility quote from Zoe that stood out & pretty much sums up my last twenty months quite well, “And to think, some people who want to have a baby only need to make love“.

Besides all the IF talk {really most of the book focused on other things}, I enjoyed learning about musical therapy through Zoe. I’d never really thought about that job, but looking back many of Ma’s fellow nursing home patients did perk up in the group singing/instrument playing activities. It really makes sense.

This book also brings up other hot-button topics like religion, depression, education, social politics & today’s families. I won’t say more beacuase I don’t want to give anything else away.

I know I talked a lot about the IF aspect of this book, but even if you’re not into infertility, I think you’d enjoy this book. Like other Jodi Picoult novels, Sing You Home makes you think & question your own thoughts about things {way to be specific, Suz!}.

I have read every novel Jodi has written {except for Perfect Match which is in my TBR pile}. Her books do follow a similar style & usually have a big twist or two at the end. This one also does that, but to me that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Not exactly knowing what would happen had me reading in suspense until the end. Over all, if you’re a Jodi Picoult fan or not, I’d recommend requesting this from your library.

My book club originally chose Corelli’s Mandolin for July. Only one of us got through it. So in mid-June, we switched things up & re-picked The Giver by Lois Lowry. This is one of those books that I would have sworn I’d been forced to read in HS. I think it’s on most YA school lists.

But halfway through I realized, this wasn’t familiar, I hadn’t read it, & I couldn’t wait to figure out what happens. You connect to boy, Jonas, who’s the main character as well as The Giver himself. At the end {maybe spoiler alert}, I still am not sure what happened. I was a bit disturbed by it & hope & pray our world doesn’t turn out like this in the future.

I’m really looking forward to our book club discussion Wednesday night & will probably update this post with more thoughts afterwards.