Book Review | Book Chatter

Catching Fire
By Suzanne Collins
Scholastic, Inc.
September 2009
400pp

The Short of It:

Catching Fire packs more action than book one and includes all of the characters you love plus a few others. A worthy follow-up.

The Rest of It:

I can’t talk about plot at all because doing so would give away the story but as far as series go, this one is pretty exciting. I liked The Hunger Games quite a bit, but felt that it was a bit familiar. I didn’t feel that so much with Catching Fire. Maybe because I was already familiar with the characters and in this book, the rules of the game and how it works is not as heavily emphasized as book one. In my opinion, this allowed the reader to focus more on the action and not so much the logistics of how it all works.

I plopped down to read this and pretty much read it in one day. I had hoped to drag it out a bit but I couldn’t put it down. It’s the kind of book that you cart around the house. I read it in between cooking, in between the Olympics and misplaced it several times throughout the day since I took it everywhere I went. That said, you must read it, but make sure you read The Hunger Games first. Catching Fire could stand alone but you’ll want to read book one to get the full experience.

Oh, and for those of you that are worried about its Young Adult classification, don’t worry. This series may be geared towards young adults but there’s a lot for an adult to enjoy here. As for young adults, there is some violence, since they are fighting to the death but it’s “survival type” violence which to me is a bit easier to digest than just killing for fun.

If you’ve been in a bit of a reading rut, pick up book one and then book two and you’ll remember what it feels like to read books for fun.

Now I am all ready for book three! Mockingjay hits the shelves on August 24, 2010. That’s a long time to wait!

Source: Purchased

Life As We Knew It
By Susan Beth Pfeffer
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
October 2006
352pp

Here’s the blurb from the publisher:

Miranda’s disbelief turns to fear in a split second when a meteor knocks the moon closer to the earth. How should her family prepare for the future when worldwide tsunamis wipe out the coasts, earthquakes rock the continents, and volcanic ash blocks out the sun? As summer turns to Arctic winter, Miranda, her two brothers, and their mother retreat to the unexpected safe haven of their sunroom, where they subsist on stockpiled food and limited water in the warmth of a wood-burning stove.

Told in journal entries, this is the heart-pounding story of Miranda’s struggle to hold on to the most important resource of all—hope—in an increasingly desperate and unfamiliar world.

The Short of It:

After reading just a few pages, you won’t be able to put this one down. It’s scary at times but hopeful too.

The Rest of It:

I have read a lot of books about the end of the world. I’m not a morbid person but deep, deep down I do believe that something horrible could happen to the world as we know it. Fires, earthquakes, tsunamis (oh my!)…I had to toss that in there to lighten it up a bit. Anyway, with the weird weather patterns and the fear of a pandemic, Life As We Knew It is not all that farfetched. Really.

After the moon’s position is compromised by a meteor hit, Miranda and her family do their best to survive in a world that is completely different from what they’re used to. There are lots of things that I liked about this novel so I thought I’d stray from my usual format and make a list:

Miranda, at age 16, is very much a sixteen-year-old but emotionally strong when she needs to be.
Miranda’s mom is a sensible woman. I’ve read so many of these types of books where the mom is just the stereotypical “mom” and lacks any kind of common sense. Not the case here.
The family works together as a unit and it’s believable.
The other characters are actually important to the story and not just there to create conflict.
Pfeffer paints a realistic picture of what could happen given such a catastrophe. These characters are hungry and you feel it. As Miranda longs for a hot shower, you are reminded of how wonderful hot water can be. I mentioned above that it’s scary at times, scary as in “This could happen!”
Even though the subject matter is grim, there is a strong sense of hope throughout the story. This is incredibly hard to do but Pfeffer does it effortlessly.
Since this is a young adult book, I could easily see a teenager reading this and really thinking about how good they have it. As an adult, I know I spent many moments pondering what was on the page.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book. I expected it to be a page-turner, but I didn’t expect to care about the characters as much as I did and I didn’t expect to think about it days after reading it.

Life As We Knew It is book one in a series. The Dead and the Gone is book two and book three, The World We Live In comes out in April!

Source: Borrowed

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