SO GOOD

Suzanne Collins' Catching Fire did not disappoint. At all. I started it Thursday night, finished it Friday. Then I re-started it on Sunday and finished it Monday. So yeah, I liked it. A LOT. (It's a rare book that garners an immediate re-read.)

I love where Collins has gone with the series--the Districts are starting to rebel against the Capital. Katniss is struggling to find where she belongs in the uprising when she and Peeta are forced to face their worst nightmare. The title is perfect (and so's the cover! beautiful!). AND THE ENDING....GAAAHH. I can't wait for book three.

I loved the plotting, the characters, the setting and basically everything about the book. All the elements that made The Hunger Games a success are back.

If you can't tell, I highly recommend this series. It's adventure and action with a bit of dsytopia and some love thrown in. And, in honor of Muse's new CD released today, here's the perfect theme song for the book: Uprising.

Rating: 10/10

Scandinavian Thriller

Dang. Stieg Larsson knocked me over with The Girl Who Played With Fire.

The book left me in awe. Larsson tied his last book into this one and yet diverged it in a fabulous way. So good.

Lisbeth Salander ("the girl") is accused of murdering three people. Mikael Blomkvist doesn't believe she did it and starts investigating to find the truth. What actually happened--and what is being hidden--is much deeper and darker than he could know...

The pace starts out slower, with police procedural work becoming part of the story, yet Larsson manages to make it interesting and then bumps up the story to compelling. His commentary on Sweden's society is subtle yet condemning. The twists and turns in the plot were completely unexpected and surprising and made perfect sense. And Lisbeth Salander is one of the most interesting characters I've ever read about.

I dreamed about the first one and yes, dreamed about this one, too. Now I want to re-read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. And thank the Lord there's a third book, coming out sometime soon (I hope!).

Rating: 10/10

It provoked my thoughts

Cory Doctorow's Little Brother invaded my subconscious. I suppose what really got me about this book is that Doctorow's privacy-invading future is feasible.

Little Brother is a look at America's not-too-distant future, one where its citizens are monitored closely with cameras, chips, etc. Seventeen-year-old Marcus and his friends are happy to simply get around their school's technology to play games and hang out. But when a terrorist attack kills 4,000 people in San Francisco and his group is in the wrong spot at the wrong time, Marcus learns the hard way about freedom, rights and torture. But he believes in a free America, so he starts to fight back using awesome, hacker-inspired methods.

Here's where the story seeps in my subconscious:
I read a few chapters of Little Brother before read. At 2 a.m. I wake up to sirens---really loud sirens close by. And I'm terrified because I think the cops are coming for me. I was honestly expecting them to knock on my door and take me in because I'm part of Marcus' hacking group. I even got out of bed to check to see if the cops were in my parking lot. It took me another minute or so to calm down and realize that I was still kind of in dreamland. How bizarre, huh?

I do recommend reading this YA novel because it does inspire thought. I'm pretty conservative (but honestly apathetic--although I do vote!) politically speaking and while I could see the liberal bias the book takes, I think it's out of legitimate fear of where our nation could head. Intriguing (and dream/nightmare-inspiring) stuff....

Rating: 8.5/10

(Spoiler alert as to why I rated it an 8.5: The end wasn't super believable; I just don't believe a state's police force could overturn national security. That's not legal, is it? Good does prevail in the end but is it sad that I don't believe it actually would?)