3 Young Adult Books That Touched Me, Plus Hunger Games Movie Stills

Phaenomen by Erik L'Homme

A book by a French author that's awfully hard to come by in the USA - I'm actually not sure if it's been published in English. Beatifully written, though, superb plot and nice pacing. Technically it's a science fiction novel, because the 4 main characters have super-human powers, but I've always thought of it as more of an ... I don't know what, actually. The plot looks like this: Violaine, Claire, Nicolas and Arthur live in a clinic for teenagers that are pretty much hopeless cases, with other mentally disabled kids. The clinic isn't the nice, cushy place it pretends to be, and in reality the only one who treats them with any respect is one Doctor Barthelemy, who is abducted early in the novel, something that Claire witnesses. The crew decides that the clinic holds nothing for them and choose to try and save the good doctor. First they search his room, the only clue they find being a paper belonging to the Doctor. They trek all over France in their search when they come to the attention of the kidnappers, and the organization behind them. The baddies do what anybody else would, namely, hire a team of hitmen. Only our little team have the aforementioned "superpowers", which they slowly begin to discover and use. However, they aren't exactly bright, these kids, and there was a reason they were sent to the clinic for mentally disabled children.
I realize the plot sounds a little over-done and certainly weird, but the last thing this book is a stereotype. The four have this humanity surrounding them, and a way of making you love them even though they operate on a different mental level than you, and not necessarily a better one. They're not genius, they're not super strong, but they have incredible minds with an incredible, touching way of looking at the world.
Since I doubt you'll be reading this one anytime soon, I'll tell you how it ends. (That means SPOILER ALERT, guys).
They die. The hitmen shoot them dead while they're trying to run away. At least that's how I remember it, because I read this book a few years back.
I cried.

It's actually 3 books in one big, 500+ page book. Or it's a big book divided in 3 smaller books. You choose.

Story Time by Edward Bloor

This story is actually kind of morbid and creepy. It's also freakishly fascinating and thought-provoking. I found a really good summary on Teenreads.com, namely this one, and I've taken an awfully large quote from it.

George Melvil, certifiable genius, and his niece Kate Peters, certifiable shoo-in for the lead in Lincoln Junior High's production of "Peter Pan," are offered spots at the prestigious Whittaker Magnet School. Whittaker Magnet, known for having the highest standardized test scores in the country, is housed in the same building as the supposedly haunted county library. While Kate has zero desire to attend a basement school full of brainwashed test-takers, George is intrigued by the opportunity to attend a school where he won't be judged unfairly on his small stature and interest in academics.
Their careers at Whittaker Magnet begin with an orientation from the domineering, treacherous Cornelia Whittaker Austin and sightings of a madwoman with a chainsaw in an upstairs window. Things only get stranger from there, involving secret passages, a librarian who only speaks in nursery rhymes, weapons of mass destruction and priceless books that house demons. (...)
So whether you're one of those people who can get a perfect score on the SAT with both eyes closed or if you chew number-two pencils to bits at the very thought of filling in all those circles, STORY TIME will make you think. And smile. And think some more.

 End of quote. Thank you, Teenreads.com. Now this is a book you really can't put down because it's a little unpredictable. I really recommend it, although not to 8 year olds. This is not for you, sweethearts.

Pictured: a really good read.

Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

If you're mad at me for including this on my short list, I understand. All that's being talked about lately is the novel, the movie, the soundtrack, omg trifecta!, blah, blah, blah. But the annoying thing is that this book is really, really good. I'm not going to provide you with a summary, because come on, the book and movie are all that have been talked about lately and don't tell me you didn't go see the movie. I certainly did, and you can read my musing pre-movie and after seeing it here and here. I won't be doing an additional post about the books, though, so consider this the Book Review Post. (By the way, this is the Silver Dreams trifecta: trailer post, movie post, additional post about the actors, books, setting, etc.)
I really liked the movie and I had a bookstore gift card, so I went ahead and bought the first book in the triology, because it made sense. Then I went home, showed off my self-control by leaving it in the bag for a few days, and then snuggeled up with it one afternoon. So.
It was a little weird in the beginning. Something felt ... off and I couldn't figure out what it was. On page 33 I figured out what it was: it's written in present tense, not past. To give you a feeling of how that reads, the rest of this review is in present tense.
Because I'm interested in writing, I pay special attention to character development, word choice, and so on. I notice how Collins always uses the word "say". It comes to my attention that the Capitol isn't described in a very detailed fashion. In my mind, I always picture scenes from the movie because that's what I have to go on, and to picture anything else feels weird. In general, I feel that Collins leaves a lot to the imagination. I'm unsure if this is a good or bad thing. The world Katniss lives in, Panem, is described in little chunks spread throughout the entire novel, and the description is thin.
I feel that Katniss gets an unfair advantage over the others. The arena is perfect for her, as perfect as it can get, because she's familiar with woods and can survive there. If the arena had been, say, full of rocks and cliffs, she would die so much more easily.  Katniss gets an 11 in the pre-game evaluation for some reason that contradicts with what I imagine the Capitol to be like. None of the Career tributes can climb trees, which makes little sense. Rue shows up when Katniss needs her and dies when it's convenient in the plot. I'm sorry, but it felt like that to me.
I know I'm being a little harsh with my criticism here, and I will get to the praise in a minute. Just remember that the other two books listed here I read a long while ago.
The Hunger Games captures a reader's attention in a special way. Firstly because it's a whole new world you dive into, with concepts unfamiliar to you. Second, because the premise for the story - the Hunger Games themselves - is thought-provoking and controversial. Thirdly, there's always something happening in the arena, and that something is life-threatening and something you can't predict. Fourth, the leaving-everything-to-the-imagination thing lets you design this fictional world the way you choose, and that will make you happy.
I wonder how the mental imagery while reading is for those who haven't seen the movie. Does it make the book better or worse? Here are some movie stills showing District 12, the Capitol and the Arena.

Notice how this is awfully similar to the arena. But this is what I imagined District 12 like. It fits the description well enough.

This I imagine differently. I'm referring to the outfits more than anything

I mean, come on. Let's get really outlandish here! Make the tributes memorable!

This dress reminds me of a tomato. Does not remind me of book description. Not sure which one I like better.

I really like the movie outfits here. Actually, the entire chariots scene was well done.

See, extravaganz. There it is! Look at it!

Reminds me more of a gym locker room than what I read in the books. Again, unsure which one is better.

I have trouble remembering the faces, let alone names, of half of the tributes. Is the foxy girl really named Foxface? She isn't, right? Tell me she's not!

This is Katniss' natural habitat. I'm actually unsure if this is her hunting behind District 12 or the arena. I'm leaning towards the later.

Go, Katniss! RUNRUNRUN! I was cheering her on like a crazy person during the movie.

I just added this because it was funny. It's a promo, I think.

The Hunger Games Was Awesome

The Hunger Games movie staring Jennifer Lawrence was fantastic. I've never read the books, but I bought the first one today because I loved the movie so much. How many of you cried when Rue died? There was a girl in the movie theater a few seats back who was bawling her eyes out. My friend and I made were wiping away stray tears with tissues.
And when the Gamemakers (is that what they're called? I'm sorry, I don't know) tried to kill Katniss with fire, or when the other tributes were trying to kill her and she was up that tree, or when she got bit by that freaky wasp, we were holding hands and quietly cheering her on. I think there's something in Katniss' personality that appeals to people, no matter what age. She's strong but still fails, and still cries. And you want her to win. No matter what, you want her to win.
The crowds in the main city - you see them and you think they're sick. Absolutely disgustingly revoltingly sick. But then you think, what about me? If you were in one of the better-off districts you'd be one of them too. It's thought-provoking, and probably what made me decide to buy the book. You want to see more of this crazy world because it works. It makes sense, in a twisted way. And you want good to win, but how do we define good? Did the Gamemaker deserve his death at the end of the movie? Wasn't he good too, in a way? But then you remember that he is (was?) Gamemaker - he designed the bloody public death arena several times, and you can't forgive that.

Can you?

NCIS Fanfiction Recommendations

Hey guys! I realize I'm doing this kind of late, but in light of NCIS' 200th episode, I thought I'd post some of my favorite NCIS fanfictions. Be warned that I am a Tiva person.

Beauty / Skincare Favorites

Today I'm going to share a few of my favorite beauty products.

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: II

If you haven't read the first one, do that here first.

So now that I've gone ahead and read all of the Hitchhiker books (except for the last one by the Artemis Fowl author guy), and for the life of me, I can't remember what happened. At all. I've got details in my head, like mice where running the world ... in the second book? Maybe? And wasn't there a TV show to unveil that super-computer that told us about the 42, and that it didn't know the question to go with it? That's from the third, book, am I right? Unless it's the fourth. No, the fourth is the one where everything started contradicting everything else and the fifth is the one where it ultimately stopped making any sort of reasonable sense.

Not that these books make sense in general.

Duac Acne Gel - A Review

I have mild-ish acne, and my dermatologist gave me this stuff called Duac Acne Gel. It's a facial gel and pretty much like cream only it's partially clear and the consistency is slightly different.
Also, it works wonders.

Rebecca Black: Person of Interest

Rebecca Black has a new song, guys!

And now for the real news: it's not even that bad. The lyrics are a little awkward and partially repetitive, but I swear, her voice is okay. Check out the music video below and make up your own mind.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I

Most of you will know of this Google trick:

Enter "what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything" as a search word, and the calculator pops up and informs you that the answer to this is 42. Obviously.

That's from a book. Not that Google spits out that answer, but that the answer is 42. The book is insanely famous, and 4 books come after it. Technically 5, but the fifth was written by Eoin Colfer, the Artemis Fowl author, and so I actually don't really count that book as a part of The Series. (Yes, I just capitalized that so it would seem important and meaningful and also because it was fun). We're talking about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, who is very much dead.

Here's a picture of him that I think makes him look like a very friendly person indeed:

Now you can better imagine him, and I can go on. If you feel that my writing style is somewhat strange today, it's because I've started reading The Guide, as I will now start calling it, and it (The Guide) is capitalized because it is still a title, albeit a shortened one, and I do not feel like using italics every time I write The Guide, damn it!

Do forgive me for my rant.

God, I can't believe I just wrote that. It sounds so weird. "Do forgive me". That's something a British person would say.

No offense to the British, of course.

Anyway. Let's focus. Stay on track. Not discuss British accents.

I'm telling you about The Guide because I myself am reading The Guide. Well, not directly The Guide, okay, yes, I'm reading The Guide, but ... okay. Let's simplify this. I am reading The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is merely a big book with many, waifer-thin (I'm talking Bible page thin) pages - 815 numbered ones, if you really must know.

It contains all 5 of the original, real, Douglas Adams books that follow each other. Their names are not important right now. It also contains an introduction by a certain Neil Gaiman, who I've never heard of, but it said in the book that he is (was?) the (quote): bestselling author of novels like American Gods and Neverwhere (end of quote). There was also some other stuff about graphic novels and a history of Douglas Adams and The Guide, which is probably why he (Gaiman) was chosen to do the introduction. The first title sounded damn familiar to me (the one with the Gods). I'm not looking it up on Wikipedia, though. I've got The Pact firmly in place, thank you. (If you don't know, what The Pact is, check out the Buffy posts I did a while back. The Pact has nothing to do with The Guide. Now relax.)

*Hint: please be aware that in this post, I'm not discussing the book's actual contents with you. I'll do that in later posts. Notice how there is an "I" in this post's title, meaning that the next post in this series will be of the same name but with a "II". Roman numerals, you know?*

So back to our 815 numbered pages, 144 of which belong to the The Guide, I presume, because it says here that the next story starts on page 145, and certainly the publishers would have the decency to start a new book on a new page. I'm currently on Bible-thin page 113, which means I don't have too much left to go. I'd tell you how many pages I still have to read to finish The Guide (which is a reference to the Hitchhikers's Guide, not the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, please be aware of that). But I have a headache and therefore don't want to do math in my head, and finding an online calculator seems like too much effort to me at the moment.

To make this post more visual (it's been a lot of text and one picture of Douglas Adams up to now), I've included a picture of the cover of The Ultimate Guide, which is not to be confused with The Guide, like I've said before. This is what it looks like: (not my picture, found it online)

There it is, my paperback clunker that bends easily because of it's 815 numbered, extemely thin pages. I'll get back to you on it's contents one of these days.

The Hunger Games Trailer

Gah. Gah. GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

This is the trailer for The Hunger Games, a movie coming out sometime based on books that I have never read. I watched the trailer and I was ... words can't describe it. (Actually, that's a really stupid thing I've noticed lately. When we really want to say how something was, there often isn't a word for it. Somebody, please go fix that)
Anyway. I was fascinated, intrigued, thoughful, expectant ... I think I'm going to drag all of my friends to see that movie with me when it comes out. Because I've been thinking about it, and I'm very interested.

Insert deja vu here.

Remember Buffy? How I was so fascinated, intrigued, excited to see the next episode? And then I checked Wikipedia (damn that site)? And suddenly I was all, pshh, boring, blah blah blah, don't force another minute of that show upon me?

I can't let that happen here, with this movie. Because I made a freaking resolution. And also, because I really do wanna see that movie.

The worst part is that there are books. Meaning the movie is based on books. Books, which are covered (in freaking detail!) on Wikipedia.

I could just check Wikipedia. Only I can't. Because of the resolution.

Oh, I'm screwed.

My First Buffy The Vampire Slayer Episode ... Ever

Today I watched Buffy The Vampire Slayer for the very first time in my life. It was an experience, let me tell you.
I was busy being sick and feeling sorry for myself (and also randomly surfing around in the internet) when I though, hey, let's watch something. That something turned out to be Buffy.
And it was okay. (The it, by the way, was the very first Buffy episode from the very first season. It made enough sense to start at the beginning)
I thought, that by starting at the beginning, everything from the basic idea to the characters would be somehow explained to me. Isn't that always the way it is? Well, I was wrong. They do not tell you at the beginning that Buffy is a vampire slayer. I mean, okay, the title kind of tells you that much, but I mean details. The whole who-what-when-where-why-how thing. Information!
What they did tell you at the beginning was that it was Buffy's first day at a new school. They did not tell you why Buffy has that weird name of hers. They also did not tell you what year this played in. I had my doubts because of what Buffy was wearing. I mean, look at that shirt. Does any teen girl wear shirts like that in these days?

Okay, so it's unbuttoned and actually shows off some cleavage and seems tight enough (also she was wearing it with a miniskirt) but still. My point still stands.
Throughout the episode, some of that vampire slayer business is cleared up. You meet a mean girl (I forgot her name), a social outcast (I think her name was Willow), two guys who seem to be friends with Willow and are probably "losers" too, one of which has the hots for Buffy. You meet this freaky librarian guy who knows about Buffy and does not think it's cool she wants to quit being a slayer. (Yes, they say it like that. Also: you learn that Buffy wants to quit being a slayer)
Then Buffy goes to a club, randomly meets Willow, tells her that life is too short to be shy and very quickly regrets her advice because now Willow is going somewhere with a vampire guy, and that's never good.
Meanwhile, under the ground, there's a freaky yet familiar looking guy. I wanted to get a picture of him so you could go "oh my gosh where do I know him from" like I did but I couldn't find an image. Damn. Anyway, he's doing this chanting type stuff when this guy just rises up from a pool of blood (Yeah! Like that scene in Hellboy!) The Risen Man wants blood, for strength, I think, because there's some talk about him being strong for the harvest? Yeah.
In general, there's a lot of talk about The Harvest, whatever that is. Like this one random stalker guy who creepily gave Buffy a cross necklace and said something about The Harvest before she went to the club. And the weird librarian who is supposedly some kind of "watcher" mentioned it, too.
By the way, the loser guy who likes Buffy found out about her being a slayer. And yet her own mother doesn't know. Strange.
Okay. Back on track. Willow is with the vampire guy and, and so is the second loser, on he's with this vampire girl ... yeah. It's hard to explain. Both vampires are trying to get humans for the Rise From The Blood Pool Man to eat, I think.
Anyway, DANGER! And I won't tell you the rest in case you want to watch the episode yourself. Which you should, because Buffy the Vampire Slayer is pretty famous so you should have watched at least one episode. And you might as well start at the beginning so you can pretend you know what's going on and why.
That was my logic, too.

What I can tell you is that Buffy is badass. And I love badass characters.

Abduction - The Reality

So. I went ahead and watched Abduction with Taylor Lautner.
It was an entertaining movie.
The plot actually sucked, though. I mean, the idea was good and all -  but really?
Movie was still fun, though, and I liked it.
Damn the crappy plot.

Abduction - My Expectations

Today I'm going to watch Taylor Lautner's new movie Abduction with a friend of mine, because I love action movies and Taylor Lautner is a pretty good-looking guy. Anyway, this is the first part of my movie review. I actually haven't seen it yet, that's going to happen in  a few hours. But I've watched the trailer, so let's talk about what I think will happen.

So first, the trailer. Here it is:

So if you look at the cast (Taylor) you can tell that they're marketing to teenage girls with a taste for action movies. I will bet you that Taylor has at least 1 shirtless scene. But who's complaining?
Did you know that the girl is played by TAYLOR LAUTNER'S EX? Isn't that kind of awkward? Sure, it's their job to do stuff like that, but still. I'm convinced that the two will kiss in the movie. Remember the marketing concept : stuff that attracts young teenage girls?

So yeah. Check in later today for my review, which will probably be unfairly good because again, I love action movies and Taylor Lautner is good looking.
On a side note, it said on Rotten Tomatoes that, quote, "A soulless and incompetent action/thriller that not even a veteran lead actor could save, let alone Taylor Lautner". BUT: it also said that 47% of the audience liked it.
Which actually kind of makes sense. Half of the audience consisted of teenage girls that didn't really care that much if the storyline was excellent or not. I'm not saying all teen girls only went for Taylor's abs, I'm saying that quite a few only went for Taylor's abs.
Me somewhat included.
It's like this: it doesn't need a wonderful plot for me to like it. I liked Sex And The City 2 somewhat, while very aware of the fact that it was crappy. I did not like The King's Speech all that much, while aware of the fact that the acting was exquisite.

I'm convinced I'm going to like this movie a lot.