And may the odds be ever in your favor

Today I finished reading the Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins. It is the third and last book (I think) in the well known Hunger Games series. Instead of just writing only about Mockingjay I will attempt to write about all three of the books. No spoilers included.

#1 - The Hunger Games

The first book really does captivate you. It starts in what used to be the United States but a

fter an un

known disaster in the distant past, the country collapsed. What is left is a distopian society divided into thirteen districts ruled over by a flamboyant capital city. After an unsuccessful uprising in which District Thirteen was destroyed, again in the past, the capital began a yearly punishment for its unruly districts.

Each year a boy and a girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen are picked from each district to participate in the hunger games. The games are a televised fight to the death between the twenty-four children or tributes, as they are called.

The story is about Katniss Everdeen. A seventeen year old girl from district twelve who gets picked for the hunger games.

I enjoyed this book immensely! Action packed and clever it is one of the few teen novels I truly respected. My one issue with it was the love triangle. Now, every teen novel ever written has a love triangle but thats not my problem. The author made the love triangle seem like the most troubling thing to the main character. I am sorry, I would assume being trapped in a boobie-trapped arena with twenty three blood thirsty people hunting you would take precedence over whether you like your best friend or the guy that got picked for the games with you.

Anyway other then th

at, I liked it.

#2- Catching Fire.

This one is about the aftermath of the Hunger Games. At the end of which Katniss had defied the president of the capital and saved Peeta, the guy tribute from district twelve, so there were two champion this year instead of just one.

So the president hates her; she still can not decide who she loves, Peeta or Gale, her best friend; and there is another rebellion rising. In the midst of this the President(who hates Katniss remember?) declares another hunger games that will involve the winners of all the previous hunger games. Then there is a twist that I totally saw coming at the end.

Over all, not one of the best books in the world.

#3- Mockingjay

This was my favorite of them all. This book had many twists I had no idea were coming. They sprang up on me, like an evil trap made by the capital.

I do not want to give away anything so I won't say much. Only this: one way or another, through countless nightmares and harrowing situations and battles, Katniss Everdeen, The Girl On Fire, chooses her man.

I can here the exasperated sighs now. Yes that is all I am giving away. That is not the whole point of the book at all, though. It has much more happen in it.

The only thing that was a bit annoying was that, in the beginning, it was repetitive. But that is a mild annoyance if any.

Read all the books! I wish I could say "Skip the second one," but it is too important for the third one.

I enjoyed them, you will enjoy them.

Your welcome-Tallie Raye

P.S. I am so stoked for the movies!

The god of Blue

Friends make the world go round!

People, people, people. I love people!

This was the fun part of my weekend. After church Mariel and I(must remember to keep the grammar proper!) were dashing around the parking lot being silly and it was FUN! We continued to be silly the rest of the night. My sis and her boyfriend joined in.

Enjoy our loverly foolishness!

Hello!

I kept falling over. *sheepish grin*

Mariel my dear, you look like you have wings!

Mariel and I being secret Ninjas!

Ayla and her man :)

The man again.

Thats all folks! Oh wait...

My outfit I liked that night so I will talk about it.

Necklace 1-can't remember.

Necklace 2- Gift from a dear friend from New Zealand! How cool, right!

Shoes and Jeans from Target. Love them both. I know of a lot of people who think target cloths suck and yes some of them do. But I have found a bountiful amount of garments that have made me very happy at the old bulls eye.

Purse was thrifted and the sweater is from Old Navy.

Bye!

I'd rather be a dog and bay at the moon

I love reading. Reading devours my time. When you open a book you are delving into something that is none of your own. A book is created completely from someones opinions, thoughts and how they view the world. A book is the authors mind. If I like the book or not is up to me, but it is theirs and not mine so it does not matter what I think of it.

Of coarse every devoted reader who finishes a book enjoys spending hours going through the symbolism and messages hidden in pages. Or, shall i say, the symbolism and messages they THINK are hidden in the pages.

Sorry literature majors but no matter how good you are at interpreting the misteries of the universe, unless you ask the author him/her self you have no idea what-so-ever of what they wanted their book to say.

Then there are those books that you just have no clue what they could mean.

Like this book. St. Lucy's Home For Girls Raised By Wolves by Karen Russell.

When I read the back of this book it talked about cute fantastical tales of girls in floating crab shells and ghost love stories. I was like, "This sounds fun!" When I actually read the book I was like, "There must be something wrong with this woman."

The book is a collection of short stories that inhabit the same world but have nothing to do with each other. The world is this one with odd twists like ghosts and werewolves. That was not what was wrong with it.

Niether was the writing. It was fabulous! Descriptions are vibrant and alive. She is a master stories teller; gets you interested in the story immediately.

It was the atmosphere. Depressing. All the kids have either one parent or their parents are unhappy. The kids are getting into bad stuff or are bad already. They have weird disorders or are shockingly normal. The adults are of the depressing breed of big dreaming failures. Losers who know they are losers. That's awful.

What bugged me most of all was that none of the stories had an end. They ended but they had no end. Nothing was resolved. I think she meant it to be that way; maybe an example of how life works or something but it disconcerted me. I think everything I felt was kind of what she wanted maybe(I know that sentence was full of uncertainty, it was meant to be.) As if she was poking fun at you from under a sarcastic dour mask. I large joke that was meant frightened you more then amused you. Made me uncomfortable.

I think i sort of enjoyed it. Now thinking back on it I am getting kind of panicky; "Oh crap please don't make me read it again!"

It was odd in a truthful way and that was frightening.

I do not know what it was supposed to say but i would absolutely love to ask Karen Russell about it.

At least, I think I would.

Fairy Tales and Smudges

I am in an art rut.

Translation: I can not draw.

I can technically but my creativity is hovering just above the zero mark on my creative meter. So to compensate I have been stuffing my eye balls with other peoples creativeness. Meanwhile I sit and gesture draw.

This is Trina Schart Hyman. She is a master illustrator!

Look at how her cloth moves, look at the expressions on her faces. Wonderful!

My favorite is her hair. I work and work at getting the hair on my people exactly right, but hers is perfect in every picture. I do adore her art.

Enjoy

This one is adorable!
And this one, too. Look at the fathers face! (on the left)

The hair! look at the hair! So amazing...

The fact that she almost always draws fairy tales is another bonus to her! Love ya Trina!

In Honor

What?

What is it?

Float, Hope, Love, Die

I can't make sense of it.

Hope, Die, Love, Float

I was just wondering

Could you be with me?

Could you be with me?

Could you be with me?

Phones ringing by a lake

that's what's wrong about it.

ringing in New Zealand

ringing with a beagle

phones ringing in a cabin

they ring everywhere now

Wherever you had put your foot

they ring.

What?

What?

What?

Gone.

That's what.

Silence is...

Where do you go when all around is burning or yelling?

This post is being posted in the wake of me finishing the book Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

I am at a slight loss of what to say. What is to be said about a book that should be called perfect but you can not quite say so.

Not that it was bad. On the most drastic contrary possible, that book was stunning! It so engrossed me that I felt submerged while reading the dry pages. It was thick, full of deep thoughts. But it was frightening to read.

Fahrenheit 451 was published in 1953. Fifty-eight years old, this book has a stark resemblance to our society and culture today but to the extreme. I freaked out just a bit when that fact hit me.

Set in a utopia-gone-wrong society. it is about Guy Montag who is a fireman. But a firemen of a special kind. These firemen do not come to rescue you from an inferno, they come to start one. They burn books.

Every night they ride out into the city and burn houses containing books. Books are bad, burn them.

The government has made every attempt to discourage free thinking. They drown out silence with radios or TVs or music or mad noise. But in the midst of this, Montag wakes up.

In some ways it is a beautiful book. Quotes from books and people are wonderfully placed so you suddenly realize just what they mean. Montags new thoughts are full of hope and dreams. Yet there is an ugly side to this book as well. Books written in love are abused dreadfully by bad people. I felt exhausted and beaten after reading it but the beauty of silence was realized through it. I know the value of thoughts better because of this book.

Action packed and hard it is a book you should not pass by.

"What do you love about music?"

Have you ever felt a moment in life when you look back at the second you lived in right before the present and realize that, in the transition from then to now, something has changed. Changed irreversibly so. Nothing is wrong or bad about it but there is nothing happy about it either. With the knowledge of that switch nothing comes but a melancholy nostalgia for an existence that must be left behind, just past the barrier of that second. There is no going back.

In the movie Almost Famous moments like this for William Miller, the protagonist, are uncountable.

Almost Famous could be called a coming of age story but it is much more then that. William Miller is a bright fifteen year old who feels out of place in the senior class of high school. With a passion for Rock & Roll journaling he, one way or another, ends up touring with a up and coming band writing for The Rolling Stone magazine. The movie is loosely based on the life of the director, Cameron Crowe, who interviewed all the golden rock stars of the 70's.

William Miller gets pulled along a journey behind the glamour and lights of musical stardom. The raw brutality of immoral people who mean well envelope him and grow him up.

His innocent face always stands out like a beacon of rational hope in crazy parties and riotous shows. His sweet face enchanted me. He was not a jock or even good looking per say but I fell in love with William Miller. Every time he glanced up through his floppy bowl cut bangs I could see strait through his liquid brown eyes to truthful emotion. I fell in love with him because he deserved it.

Others in the band come to grips with reality through William, including the beautiful Penny Lane whom William falls for. Penny is a groupie, or Band-aid, who is there because she loves the band. William saves her life when she over doses after being rejected by a band member she thought loved her.

It was not a coming of age story, I think it was a coming to reality story.