...you guys know I suck at reading books.

ADD means that no matter how engrossing a read, I can't stop my brain from wandering off mid-paragraph. I have struggled with it for years. It didn't matter how deeply involved my mind was, I would find myself having to read and re-read page after page, eventually throwing the book down and stopping 2/5 of the way through a really amazing book and never finishing. I would think about that book on my shelf and just feel immense guilt, but my brain just cannot stand it when I'm not multitasking. The story can be life-changingly awesome, but my brain wants me to be doing at least two more things while my eyes are drifting across the pages. It's been a huge problem. It only worked for me in high school, when I was sneaking pages of the very first Harry Potter novel -- and that's because I was "multitasking" listening to French or Economics lessons while being somewhere far, far away.

Thankfully, I did find the cure: audiobooks. Audiobooks and my commission work. I buy the audiobook version of any book I really know I want to read, and I let it be read to me as I work on other people's commissions. It's a great way to keep my mind engrossed as I'm engaging my subconscious with my usual artistic process.

Gone are the times where I get six chapters in only to realize I have to re-read an entire chapter because I missed six pages in a row while my brain was drifting off to when I ate lunch or whether or not I answered that email or whatever. And the Hunger Games, which I finally started about a month ago, actually got me so into the story that when I finally got to the third book, Mockingjay, I was willing to buy the actual words-you-have-to-read-with-your-eyeballs book, put it on my iPad, and read it nightly as I lay down for bed.

I guess that's my big pitch: the book is good enough that even with my horrible ADD, I am reading it in (more or less) the traditional sense. I did have all three audiobooks, but about 5% into book three I acquired the "real" e-book and have been reading it page-for-page on my own time, with my own eyeballs, each night.

And goddamnit, I can't put it down. Yes, I've dragged out the reading of them, but it's been a conscious effort. I've been reading 20-30% of a book at a time and I've forced myself to stop for days for fear that I'll end the series too quickly if I don't make myself stop. It's that good.

This series has made me cry at LEAST three times by my count, maybe four. And books have never made me cry. Even movies have had a hard time of that. For you fans of the series, all I have to say is this:

Rue.

Rue, and the people's gesture of thanks. You know what I'm talking about, I don't have to explain it. I can't say much more than that, though; it's just goddamn about time this generation got a heroine in young adult fiction that actually deserved the title.

I love Katniss. She has flaws -- and not the cop-out, "she can't be fat, she can't be mean, so she must be clumsy" Hollywood Rom-Com (or *cough*Twilight*cough*) flaws. She thinks some truly horrible things at times. Human things. We all have our bad days. It's what makes her good moments so truly good.

And to that end, she has powerfully admirable qualities. She knows how to weigh her priorities. I would argue that she is, at least among the popular books, this generation's best candidate for a strong, deserving heroine.

In case you know absolutely NOTHING about this series: first, lucky you. Second, there's a film series being produced (again, lucky you). Go see.

I've even considered when I was at my height of fandom for this series -- when I realized I wouldn't shut up about it, when the mere mention of it by someone else made the hairs on my neck stand on end -- oh god, what if I'm just like one of those Twihards who is totally into a series that really isn't that good, isn't well-written, doesn't send a good message to its readers? What if I've been sucked into a series that isn't that great for kids, but I'm blinded by my fandom?

But I realized just a few days later, as I was reading the third book -- Mockingjay -- that there's no way that could be. Without causing a spoiler alert, all I can say is that Suzanne Collins -- while her writing is VERY simple and easy to follow -- knows how to avoid being totally and utterly predictable. Katniss isn't the perfect symbol of rebellion. Gold does not spill everywhere she steps. And that's exactly why following her is so enriching.

My Dad, who is so Conservative it hurts but is enough of a well-read horror and sci-fi fan that he's willing to put aside his impulse to presume the book has some liberal agenda, suggested (to my joy) that it may be "my generation's nod to the horror of Orwellian totalitarianism", and I think that's a pretty apt assessment. I think I may have even convinced him to read them. While my father has a bad habit of citing subjective Conservative websites for information that is supposed to sway my political opinions and still refuses to admit he's is a Deist rather than Christian, like so many of America's founding fathers who he admires so much... (as an atheist I love to butt heads with him on this topic, being a huge fan of the FFs myself and bucking the usual "young whippersnapper" archetype with a more Federalist view that I know he can appreciate) ...He is a very smart man, and his fictional literary tastes have always been good guidelines for me. So it always makes me happy to say, "here, Daddy, read this" and have him oblidge. I feel it's the least I can do to pay him back for giving me good guidance in fiction as a kid.

I wanted to say that I'm sorry that King is the only author we could really share, but if you really think about it, that's not a small hand-me-down; King's really been almost like a full genre unto himself. Bradbury, even Vonnegut, they all -- to me -- had a distinct flavor that very much deserves individual readings, but I feel like King was really the basket that came along in just the right way to share those styles and package them all up nice and neat for my generation to read and digest.

I have my favorites from both -- Cat's Cradle and Fahrenheit 451, if I have to name them -- I read my share of both, but they both seemed to reach me in this "through a pane of glass, almost, but not quite" sort of way; King seemed to make the connection, for me. Even with his funny little quirks, I felt like he was the spark of electricity that finally made it from the carpet fibers to the tips of my toes. I'll always thank my Dad for that, even though I'm a fickle and impatient reader.

I am trying to get him to read more fiction, nowadays, as I worry all he reads now are non-fictional political works, and I miss reading his Stephen King-inspired short stories where you realize halfway through that you're sitting in a boat with a man narrating a tale about how he drowned after a fight with his wife. I mean, I think that kind of creativity deserves to be fostered, and if it takes forcing my Dad to read a young adult fiction series that I can vouch for (for God's sake, he went to see the film for Twilight: Breaking Dawn OF HIS OWN ACCORD WITHOUT A TEENAGE GIRL IN THE HOUSE, what the hell! -- in his defense, our hometown has a movie theatre with two screens that change every four months, and there's not much else to do, but FUCK, Twilight?!) then I'm willing to take that risk. X3

I got off course, but my point stands. You, general FA audience, will most likely love at least one of the characters in the Hunger Games, if not many. Someone will reach out and grab you and make you deeply care about District 12 or District 8 or District 9 or some poor sod in the Capitol who doesn't understand just how deprived they really are. It's enough to almost make you fantasize about being right there with those people (damn -- district 11 -- well, you don't get to pick where the Capitol puts you, which just enforces the point even more), enough to wonder if you could hack it among them. Most of us couldn't, but it makes you want to shut up about all the things you bitch about daily and try being a little tougher. That's a good thing to say for fiction, isn't it?

I guess what I'm rambling about here at 5 am is, if you haven't read these books, read them, dummy.

HD out.