Hello readers! Kristin, here, FINALLY writing our first book club blog!
Way back in September 2010, at our annual sleepover in Kaufman, it was my turn to pick the next book - a fact that I remembered as we were bringing our stuff into Mark and Karen's house. Usually I would have spent a few days before book club coming up with the best ideas I could, but with all the other stuff going on with Jen and Sarah in town, it completely slipped my mind that I picked next. After some quick iphone BarnesandNoble.com browsing, I brought 2 suggestions to the table: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Hunger Games. Obviously, the vote went to The Hunger Games. To be clear, we were only required to read the first book of this trilogy. But as you know if you've read it, these books are way too rad to stop at just one. Everyone enjoyed the first one so much that we were all rushing around to find the 2nd and 3rd ones to borrow. (This is where I give a huge shout out to my dear Emily Neuberger, who was willing to loan her copies to some people she'd never even met! We love you!) Since we were enjoying them, we decided to push book club back to December to give everyone time to finish the whole trilogy.
When we finally got together to discuss the trilogy, we were on our annual Christmas outing to Dallas to exchange gifts and have dinner at Margarita Ranch. We spent some time simply discussing what we all liked and didn't like about the story, characters, and writing. Most of us seemed to think that the 2nd and 3rd were not as good as the first, but were still really great (as you'll see reflected in the ratings below). I don't want to get too specific with details of what we talked about, because I want to be spoiler-free for people who still haven't read the series. I'll just include some of the questions we discussed.
- Team Gale or Team Peeta? Why?
- Would Katniss have acted differently if the games weren't televised?
- Why do you think everyone watched the games for over 20 years and never tried to stop them?
- If you were chosen for the games, how would you have acted?
- With the current popularity of reality tv, do you think this could ever happen in America for real?
When we finished our discussion, we wrapped up with our traditional rating of the book ceremony. Since we read a trilogy, we all gave a 1-10 score for each book individually and then for the trilogy as a whole. Here's how it went down:
Kristin: 10, 10, 10 - 10 (clearly I loved it)
Camille: 9.67, 9.5, 9.5 - 9.5
Erin: 10, 9.5, 9.5 - 10
Stacey: 10, 9, 8 - 10
Allison: 9.75, 9.25, 9 - 9.5
I think it's safe to say we would all highly recommend this series to anyone! Check it out, if you haven't read it. And if you have, post some comments and let us know what you thought!
Stay tuned for next time, when our blogger will be Erin, and our book will be The Maltese Falcon!
