Reading has always been a delight for me, ever since I was a little kid when my dad thought me how to read before kindergarten and would take me to library all the time. As my childhood got more and more, for lack of a better word, complicated, I found solace in books. I could lose myself in the intricate fictional worlds created by words on paper. I loved a wide variety of books as a child; my favorites included anything by R.L Stine or Christopher Pike (especially The Season of Passage), series like The Babysitters Club, The Box Car Children, and The Chronicles of Narnia, and classics like the Bridge to Terabithia and Frankenstein.
Even though I have always been an avid reader, having a Kindle has totally upped my reading game. It's so easy now to find, to download, and to start reading a book. It's also SO much easier to read at night (no more trying to use those stupid book lights, or having to keep my bedroom lights on while preventing my husband from sleeping). I also delight in a lot of the Kindle's features, like being able to highlight passages, to search for anything I am looking for within the book, and to look up unfamiliar words in the dictionary at the click of a button. And it's so much easier to hold than a clunky book.
I've read a lot of great books recently (including my first Ray Bradbury book, The Martian Chronicles, which was absolutely delightful.) As I was searching for my next book to read, Amazon recommended "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes", the prequel to the Hunger Games. I read the trilogy over a decade ago (ahhh I cannot believe it has been that long!) and totally forgot that the prequel came out in 2020. I decided to read it, and I liked it a lot. I hesitate to say it was delightful because the subject matter is so dark and creepy. It follows the evil, corrupt President Snow as a teenager to try to explain how he got so evil. I've always loved prequels like that (like Wicked, a "prequel" to the Wizard of Oz that attempts to explain how the Wicked Witch of the West turned evil). But in most prequels like that, you end up at least slightly empathizing with the antagonist, a lovely twist and wonderful lesson on how one could possibly ever actually love their neighbor (by understanding them). But with this prequel, it was incredibly disturbing to see Snow's complete lack of empathy, even as a child. He experienced poverty and starvation as a child, so you would think that would make him at least somewhat empathetic to others in dire straits. But no, not at all, he is just plain pure evil. After finishing the book, I immediately wanted to read the trilogy again (even though I usually have this thing against re-reading books, as I have always maintained I'd rather spend my reading time experiencing new books, I also have to admit to myself that my memory is just terrible, and re-reading is basically reading again for the first time).
After finishing the trilogy for the second time, which was just as action packed and thought provoking as I remembered (and I read it just as voraciously as I had the first time around), I decided to watch the movies. I watched the first two yesterday (one I had seen before, the other I had not), and while entertaining, totally do not do the books justice. Books are always better. Books allow for much more in depth character development, especially when you can read the inner thoughts of the main character. Books also simply allow for more characters, more plot points, more intricately involved connections, more of everything. I also love that your imagination is required to create the worlds and characters described. But a few things I do enjoy about movies that were once books, including seeing the characters more vividly (and in some cases, more accurately). Especially in the case of the Hunger Games, I most definitely suffer from white-washing characters in books (assuming that everyone is white, because I am white). I really hate that I do that. The movies correctly portrayed people in District 11, like Rue, as Black people, and made the decision to make Katniss's stylist Black as well. I enjoy being able to see the diversity on screen that I neglected to include in my imagination. There were also some scenes included in the movie that were not in the book, like watching the District's reaction to the Games, including the beginning of the revolts, that actually added to the complete story very well.
But there is SO much about the books that the movies cannot or do not include, but such is the nature of turning a multiple hundred page book into a 2ish hour long movie. I will continue to delight in reading the book BEFORE the movie, and simply allow the movie to hash out some details I may have missed.
With delight,
♥Jamie
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