Seven books in a week...

...and almost as many blog posts! Whew! I feel like I've gotten so much done lately. Although, I suppose it would be a little more impressive if I'd actually done some housework somewhere in there, but hey! It's a start :) I've finished the Hunger Games trilogy, and I think the first one is definitely the best. They went a little downhill for me, especially 95% of the way through Mockingjay, but it resolves beautifully. The writing is far more skillful than Twilight, the first person perspective is quite well done. There's much less contradiction, and the character actually grows like a real person. There were still a couple of things that I felt were unresolved by the end, but it didn't detract from the whole, just minor plot points that I would have liked to see pursued. I'm not sure what to expect of the movies, really. I'll have to come back to that later.

Books vs movies, and pride

I watched the first three Twilight movies last night. Ick. I'm not going to say much,  just because if I got going, it wouldn't be over quickly. Kind of like the movies... Argh! I was in so much pain! It took me several hours to finish the first one, and then I sped up the playback on the next two, just enough that I could still hear the dialog. Horrible, awful, stupid movies! Having just read the books, I can say with certainty that only about 10 percent, total, was from the books. That means a handful of lines, the names, and some of the appearances of the characters. It can't be easy to mess up that badly, honestly. What's worse is that the writing and directing are so bad that it makes stunningly talented actresses like Dakota Fanning and Bryce Dallas Howard (one of my all-time faves) look stupid, stiff, and unconvincing. Can you tell that I'm just a little annoyed about this? And keep in mind, I'm not even a huge fan of the books, so that's really messed up! Sigh... So, let's just sum this up so I can be done with it:

Reading and popularity

When I posted my impossibly long thing about Twilight on Sunday, I was already halfway through the first book. I finished the fourth one today :D I love reading like that! Good heavens, it's amazing how much reading I can get done in a sitting... After all that, though, I stand by what I said before: it needs a serious editing job, and there are a few major structural flaws in the plot (such as an over-use of dei ex machina) that would be really fun to re-write. I can easily compare it with Harry Potter, though I need to read all of those again before I try. My biggest peeve about the books are the views on marriage and the poorly constructed reasons for them to abstain from pre-marital sex (as long as the books have been out, I don't think I need to worry about spoilers), and even then, my issue is not the fact that I disagree with the author's views. My issue is that these characters are hugely popular, and they are horrible role models! I cringe to think of so many young girls reading these books. But I'd better not go off on a tangent :) Suffice it to say, I enjoyed reading them, but it will be a very long time before I read them again, and they'll fall under the category of mature reading when I have kids.