You have until the 19th January 2014 to grab these books free on KINDLE. The deal is only for international edition (not Australia and NZ).
Go forth and download!
http://www.amazon.com/
http://www.amazon.com/
http://www.amazon.com/
The book!
Okay, I get it now. I must admit I had been ignoring The Hunger Games more out of spite for something that was causing so much hype, than anything else. Don’t I feel silly? Yup.
Suzanne Collins has created a character that is just the right balance of innocent and ball-tearing tough. Katniss is smart, sweet and determined. She’s not about to allow the powers that be to walk all over her and I can honestly say I’m finding it hard to write this when I could be moving on to book two.
With our unexplainable lust for ‘reality TV’ it is somewhat disconcerting to have the mirror placed before us to see how it must feel from the point of view of the ‘contestants’. The haves using the desperation and suffering of the have nots as entertainment. I must admit this is not one of the better human traits we seem to have acquired over the last couple of decades.
It took me ages to decide whether to read the book first or watch the film. I read first and I have a feeling I’ll be happier for the choice.
Paperback, Luxury Edition, 386 pages
Published November 5th 2012 by Scholastic Australia (first published January 1st 2008)
original title
The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games #1)
ISBN
1742835759 (ISBN13: 9781742835754)
The Film!
There is no escaping the film trailers so I already had some idea of how the film would look. The Costume and Wardrobe department should be given kudos for making the world that is in the book turn out exactly what was running through my head.
Special effects were top notch and scenes with CGI were seamless in their inclusion.
Casting is spot on and any alterations to the story line and plot points aren’t enough to detract from the whole picture. I think perhaps having Suzanne Collins on the writing team helped keep everything authentic.
Even my hubby watched along with me (and he’s a tough one to impress)
As for which I liked more?
The book is a longer adventure with details you may miss in the film, however if you’re short on time and just want to know what on earth everyone is raving about, grab the DVD. There are even a few editions with some seriously cool extras and behind the scenes tid bits.
Both get a 5 out of 5 for me.
This is my first year making this cookie, and while they are very crumbly, they are also very delicious!
Ingredients:
- 280 grams semi-sweet chocolate
- 2 egg whites
- 50 grams sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 100 grams finely chopped walnuts
- 50 grams heavy cream
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350, and prepare baking sheets.
- In a microwave safe bowl, melt 180 grams of semi-sweet chocolate. Allow to cool. In another bowl, with a mixer, whisk the eggs until stiff, adding sugar and vanilla extract a little at a time. Continue to mix, until all of the sugar has dissolved.
- Gently fold in the melted chocolate and the chopped nuts.
- Make 2 teaspoon piles, and allow baking for 10 to 13 minutes. Gently remove these and allow them to cool.
- Now for the filling.
- In a microwave safe bowl combine the last 100 grams of semi-sweet chocolate and heavy cream, and heat up. Stir until creamy and smooth. Allow to cool, until it stiffens a bit.
- Spread this filling on one cookie, than take another cookie and make it into a sandwich. Enjoy!
Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! ZOMBIES!!!
Zombie Blondes by Brian James was a book I stumbled upon during a Half Price Books Warehouse Sale last summer, and for only a dollar, I had no choice but to pick it up. I loved the cover, and I was going through a zombie craze at the time!
For only a dollar, I don’t regret anything…
With her dad running away from his past (ratting out fellow cops, for doing the wrong thing) and the collect calls, Hannah is used to coming home with her dad in the car and finding all her stuffed packed up.
Hannah Sanders has spent the last few years of her life moving around, and being the new girl in many different schools. While the schools looked different and had different names, they were practically all the same; with the same type of cliques and the same type of people. Hannah has never been part of the popular crowd, but has always wanted to be accepted for who she was.
Her dad is doing the best he can, and Hannah knows that. So while she does get frustrated with him, she knows that they only have each other, and that they need to stick together. But when the two of them move to a small town in Vermont, called Maplecrest, Hannah feels uneasy.
Driving through the town, she realizes that it’s practically empty and that almost every house has a “For Sale” sign posted in the front yard. Something here just doesn’t seem right, and Hannah knows it in her gut. But her hopes do get a bit higher that the school she’ll be going to might be small and that there would be no issue of cliques.
But Hannah was wrong; this school is just like any other one she attended, if not worse.
As usual the popular kids are football players and cheerleaders… who all strangely look similar. On her first day of school, Hannah doesn’t make any friends, but this weird guy named Lukas, does introduce himself. While at first he seemed to a normal “weird” guy, Lukas is trying to convince Hannah that the school and Maplecrest are full of zombies.
Ignoring his crazy accusations, Hannah jumps on the first opportunity to becoming part of the popular group; cheer tryouts. After making it on the squad, Hannah realizes a few odd things here and there about both the cheerleaders and the football players, causing her to think about what Lukas said. But instead of confronting what’s going on, she decided to just push aside the thought.
Soon Hannah comes to the conclusion that maybe Lukas isn’t as weird as she thought he was, and maybe it was a HUGE mistake not to listen to his advice.
Zombie Blondes stood out to me for two reasons, it was only a dollar, and it had zombies in the title… I love zombies… don’t judge!
But when reading the synopsis, I was worried that this was going to be another book about a teenage girl willing to do anything to become popular. I don’t go for those books, I find the main character to usually be shallow, and have absolutely no self acceptance. But luckily Brian James veered away from that in this book. Hannah is hoping for acceptance and friendship instead of popularity. Hannah has never truly belonged anywhere, and she is searching for that belonging in Zombie Blondes.
With being part of a military family, I could easy compare to Hannah, and the constant moving. It’s hard to make new friends and go to new schools all the time, so I completely understood why Hannah wanted to be accepted so badly.
The only question that arose in me while reading this book, was about Lukas. He knew what the zombies, he knew about what they were doing, and he was even warning others about them. Why didn’t the zombies just get rid of him? Like they did everybody else, why keep him around?
Overall I really enjoyed it! I had high hopes that it was going to be ALL about zombies, but it wasn’t. I guess I was a little disappointed by that, but that was more my own fault, because I didn’t really look into what the story was about.
If you’re looking for a zombie twist on a high school teenage girl story, this would be the book for you.
