Challenge Accepted! June Books

June. Oh June. I read only two and a half books.

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins (A book with a love triangle)
Continuing along with The Hunger Games series, I read Catching Fire, the second book. I think I possibly liked #2 better than #1. I don't want to give any spoilers, so I'll just say A) the characters in this one were all so much more interesting, complex, and diverse and B) the love triangle sucked. Gale? Seriously? I'm #TeamPeeta all the way.

I mentioned last month that Fi wanted to read the series too. I went ahead and let her. She whizzed through The Hunger Games and has now started Catching Fire. She used to want to be Hermione Granger and do magic. Now she wants to be Katniss Everdeen and shoot arrows.

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins (A book by a female author)
As for checking off Reading Challenge categories, yeah, I'll admit it, I had to stretch for this one. It was the only way I could simultaneously finish the series AND check off a box. "Book by a female author" ... it was always going to be a throw- away.

I didn't enjoy this one. It must be a YA trilogy thing, but I just don't enjoy the way the third part of these stories unfolds. Death and destruction, rebellions, endless warfare. Bleh. I felt the same way about Mockingjay as I did about Allegiant in the Divergent series. I soared through the first two books then had to trudge through the last. It took me a while to finish it. I will say this: the ending to this series is far more satisfying than the end to the Divergent series.


As for movies, I watched Mockingjay Part 1 after finishing the books and was okay with it. It wasn't great, but it was entertaining. As usual, though, the book was better. (And I didn't even like the book, just Katniss and Peeta. And Haymitch. Haymitch is my favorite. Katniss should've ended up with Haymitch. Just sayin'. I've got a whole theory about this.)

Also, Fi may be allowed to read the books, but she will NOT be allowed to see the movies. It's one thing to read about blood with an imagination of an eight year old who has never seen such gory images and therefore can only take it so far in her mind (or even let them pass over completely). It's another to see those images in all their horrific detail, thus imprinting them in her innocent little brain. She can watch them when she's older. A policy she thinks is totally unfair and preposterous.



I did start reading a third book last month, but I'm still only half way through. I'm reading Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama (Mr President himself), but it's a little dense (in a good way) and very thought-provoking. The main theme throughout is race, particularly what it's like being a black man in America, even more particularly, a black man with a white mom and white grandparents trying to figure out where he belongs in America. It's so full of things to think about and ponder over that it's taking me some time to get through it. I read a chapter, then have to sit on it. Hopefully I'll be finished with it soon. If I only read two books a month, I'll never complete the challenge! I'll do a more comprehensive review on Dreams... at the end of July.



To see what else I have read this year:
May
April
March
February
January