The Hunger Games and Christmas Survival

A bit of the insanity of taking three little ones to visit a Santa display.....I'm not really as jaded as I sound! 

It's now officially that time of year again. It's finally December, the month I dread most. Why, you may ask?  

Well, I've long said that I think Christmas should be celebrated only every four years, like the Olympics.  After all, getting though the holidays is truly worthy of an Olympic event.  Your need of stamina is the least of the problems.  Remembering who should get gifts is the least of them as well.  

Anyhoo... that's the inside-my-head thing for the day!  I'm not proud of this feeling, I must admit.  However, it is what it is.  Truly, I must not be the ONLY person out there who feels this way all too often?  Does the word "humbug" ring a bell?  ;) 

It's been an unusual couple of days in a very nice way.  I'd realized that I'm probably one of very few who hadn't seen The Hunger Games - the original version - and  with all the press for the new installment of the planned trilogy, I suddenly started wondering if I was missing a huge global event, common to all.  I was suddenly reminded of the summer in camp when I (and my fellow campers) must have been the few in the world to have missed the moon landing.  To put me out of my misery (read: family feeling sorry for me because I'd just gotten home from the hospital) the movie appeared in my player. (Imagine the curses as I tried to figure out the newfangled system that I have yet to master, despite daughter-who-is-pitying-me trying to wrestle with the contraption.)  

Let me just say that to me (jaded soul that I am), the holidays also mean some pretty cruddy TV and so I realized that if I want to survive the holidays with any sort of sanity at all, I'll need to figure out how to watch movies on my "favorite mobile devices."  Yikes!  Seeing those words, "favorite mobile devices" put a chill through my body as I read this new way of watching movies.  But I've never cared for holiday specials which I find infinitely boring.  And I resent the fact that our favorite shows are held up.  Um ... Scandal anyone? Love, love, love the show.  (And the last few episodes have been fantastic!)

Back to topic at hand: I really loved The Hunger Games!  Yay!  (Daughter in the background finally said, "Exactly HOW long has it been since you've seen a movie?" getting a bit weary at all my oohing and ahhing.) The costumes were incredible.  Makeup: wow! The premise was gruesome, yes, but fascinating.  There's so much attention to detail.  I was hooked, right from the first moment.  The only thing that took me out of that world were thoughts where I wondered how a certain thing came to be, how it was treated in the book I'd yet to read.

And thus, a first-time experience: every five minutes or so I couldn't stop wondering what the full story was about this character or that, why life became the way it had.  I couldn't wait to read the novel.  Normally, I read a book and a couple of years later see the movie and, of course, I'm disappointed.  Or, if I see a movie first and then read the book, I wonder why the book had all this unnecessary information, background, plots. Too much clutter.

Thanks to Kindle I started reading the first of The Hunger Game series almost immediately and am now about two thirds of the way through the first book.  Yes, fascinating!  But I've gone a step beyond.  Suddenly I find myself putting down the "book" (it IS on Kindle so it feels funny calling it a "book") and watching the movie to the point where I am in the novel.  Bliss!  This is the first time I've ever "savored" a book, like hubs has a tendency to do.  Normally, I rip through books - especially since good old ME/CFS and fibromyalgia don't allow me to retain much and if I don't get a book down in one fell swoop, by the next day it is completely gone.  But with Hunger Games, I go back and try to figure out a scenario that fits the movie, book and my imagination until I'm in a good and satisfied place.

What's even better is that despite fibro-brain, I can understand all.  It's a young adult novel but I don't feel being catered to, being talked down to.  It may be in the same league as Ann Benson's novels, most especially The Plague Tales (taking place in the past as well as the future).  I've not read Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale in ages, nor Marge Piercy's He, She and It  but I'm truly enjoying this first book of The Hunger Games and am not sure the aforementioned books are too far superior.  There are so many layers to the book as well as the movie.  Yes, I'm jaded when I hear about "coming of age" books but the moral issues here alone keep me turning things around in my head.  I guess you could say I'm interested in the "coulda, woulda, shoulda."

For anyone who wants/needs another few recommendations to escape the holiday madness, I also recommend The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldo about a time traveler between now and the 18th century.  Just the medicine aspect kept me fascinated.  I made the mistake of bringing one of the books on vacation with me - and had to end the book before I'd go to see any of the sites I'd so looked forward to.

I'm not really a reader of science fiction but these books really do capture the imagination.  You might just thank me for these titles when TV is running the upteenth Christmas showing of Peanuts and/or the Muppets. And now, back to disappearing into the Games and avoiding the holiday madness for another few days! 

As always, I hope everyone's doing their very best - only better!  Ciao and paka.


Note: Sorry, I had the wrong link to Ann Benson's The Plague Tales. It's been corrected. Thanks! 


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