Book Reviews - Mockingjay, Bad Beginning

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins is the third book in The Hunger Games trilogy. (Click to see my review of book one and book two.) This book picks up a short time after the end of book two and finds Katniss and her family underground in District 13. The districts revolt against the Capital and Katniss, Peeta & Gale are all involved in the revolution. Once again, this book is a page-turner and well-paced. After having enjoyed all three books, I was a little disappointed in the ending and the implication that after a war nothing really changes. I did, however, like the way she resolved the love triangle aspect of the story. I would definintely recommend this triology, however be forewarned that people are killed (often in heinous ways) and it's not always fair (as is typical in a wartime environment).

Robbie and I enjoy listening to audio books when we are in the car for long stretches of time, like the hour it takes to drive to my parent's home or on a road trip. We recently listened to The Bad Beginning, the first book in the series A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Robbie has read all the books in the series and I've read the first three. Even though the books contain many unfortunate events, we both like them because they are written so differently than your typical fairy tale "once upon a time" and "everyone lived happily ever after" books.

However, we both agree that listening to the audio book was tedious and often boring. I think there were two reasons for this assessment. First, it was read aloud much slower than we could read it ourselves and it felt like the story dragged along. Robbie could probably finish reading one of these books in an hour while the audio was over three hours long. Second, the cute little definitions that the author using as parenthetical inserts throughout the book seemed to interupt the flow of the reading of the book. I guess we are used to parenthetical inserts when we are reading but not so much when we are talking. I recommend the books for some easy reading, but don't suggest the audio book unless you enjoy slow stories.

I'm working my through six books right now - you can check out my list in the sidebar. Anyone else enjoy reading several books at a time?

(For a complete list of books I've read this year and to see my reviews, click here.)