I'm a The Hunger Games Trilogy late bloomer. I know the first book was released 2008, and it became even more popular when the movie came out on 2012, but I just wasn't feeling it, you know?
All my friends know what a bookworm I am, and almost all of them kept asking me if it was good. And I kept getting these shocked looks when I told them that I haven't read it, and that I've no plans to read it.
It's quite known that I'd read absolutely anything (well, except for Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, and a handful of other authors I really don't like, but that's another story), but it doesn't mean that I'd read everything. I'm open to trying authors I've never heard before, and despite the saying "don't judge a book by it's cover", I've been known to pick up a book and start reading it just because the cover's pretty.
I don't read books because everybody's reading it. I've never been known to jump into a reading bandwagon. And there are certain times when I've already read a book even before it became popular. Case in point: The Twilight Saga. I've finished the first three books, and was waiting for the release of the fourth. I even told my friends to read it, because while I never thought of it as a really good book, I felt as if it has potential. But did anybody listen to me? No. And then when the movie tie-in was announced, well it was pretty much everyone could talk about. And it irked me. It irked me so much that when the books were all sold out, I gloated over the fact that I have all four books, in hardbound. And no, I didn't allow then to borrow my copy. (Bitter, huh?)
So what made me change my mind?
As I've said on my Instagram post, I had four reasons for reading it.
Number one would be because I ran out of books to read. I have several books that I downloaded from torrent, but since I'm not familiar with them, I decided to skip them first. Hunger Games has been on my Kindle, then my iPad, ever since the books came out. So I told myself, what the heck and just got on with it.
Two, was for my friends to stop telling me "but you're a bookworm, you love to read, how come you never read Hunger Games?" blah blah stinking blah. It's like I'm committing a grave sin, the way they look at me when I say that I don't like to read it.
Reason number three would be because I'm tired of defending and explaining myself that being a bookworm doesn't necessarily mean that I'd be devouring every available book there is.
And lastly, number four would be to satisfy my curiosity. Almost all my book-lover friends read it, and they kept saying how good it was and all that shit. So I decided to see for myself what the hype was all about.
So I finished all three books in two days, but since I'm a naturally fast reader, time isn't a good indicator of how good the book was. I thought it was good enough to keep me reading, but frankly, I got tired of Katniss and all her self-centered, self-loathing thoughts. The first book was ok, but when I got to the middle of the second book, I got bored already. I was hoping that Katniss would die in the arena so that the book would finally end (despite the fact that Katniss is the main protagonist, and let's face it, the lead characters seldom die). By the time I got to the third book, I was already speed-reading. I expected the third book to have more action, and in the story it did, but it was just dragging on and on and on. I'm so glad when it finally ended. I did wish for a much more detailed epilogue, though. I felt like it left me hanging.
All in all, it was a good book. Definitely a step up from the Twilight Saga (which was so ugh), but still worlds away from my favorites: JK Rowling's Harry Potter Series, and Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson Series and The Heroes of Olympus Series.
Oh, and I haven't watched the movie, too. But maybe I will, now that I've read the book. Also because of Jennifer Lawrence. I liked her in X-men First Class, loved her in Silver Linings Playbook. Might as well see how she portrayed Katniss. =)
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