The Hunger Games

A friend recently invited me to a new Meetup group for Muslim families in Bergen County.  I know my husband will have little interest in this, as it is another social media network, and he says he hates social media (or at least pretends to, while he does have a Facebook, LInked In & Twitter account).

So I am attending their first book club meeting next weekend.  Husbands are invited, but I won't extend this to my husband as I know he has too much on his plate for me to even ask.  On the other hand,  I have been overjoyed to start picking up books again. I am loving reading again, and while the baby does not make it easy, there are those rare moments where she grabs a book of her own and joins me on the sofa. Plus she has recently started "reading" out loud herself, which is a series of words she knows, intertwined with babble.  But to my ears, it is music.

The first choice of the book club is "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins.  I have to admit a while back I read a quick summary of this book on Wikipedia and it did not interest me.  In fact I would not have read it now, except that my friend Maleeha handed me her copy, so I had no reason not to.  That was yesterday. Less than 24 hours and 374 pages later, I am done. Perhaps this is a recurring theme with me, but I could not put it down.  Now that I think about it, it is recurring, but often has little to do with the quality of the book, just my need to know the ending NOW.

But in this case, I loved the book.  I believe this book is aimed at an audience at least a decade younger than me, but since I've never really grown up, I really enjoyed reading it.

I really don't want to give much away as it is a long story, and shocking story at times.  However the author has done a great job of making it real; I feel like it can happen, must happen in some part of the world.  Not in my neighborhood, where survival means driving to the closest supermarket, and turning up the thermostat. But I know in other parts of the world people have to do whatever they can do to ward off starvation, a major part of this book.  Could I do the same, where I pushed to struggle for my own existence? I pray to Allah that I never have to find out.