Hunger & Sickness

Up until a friend mentioned it to me recently, I’d never even heard of 'The Hunger Games’ books, or the movie. In fact, it wasn’t until he had mentioned it that I noticed the film was being advertised everywhere. The media was completely saturated by hype over this film. So, as usual, I figured I would ignore it and let the hysteria subside before I even bothered to find out what it was all about.


But that was before I got sick. For the last four days, I’ve been curled up in bed with the worst cold I can remember having in a very long time. On the second day of lying in bed feeling sorry for myself, it was my birthday. My 30th birthday, actually, but let’s not get into that, because I’m still very much in denial of my age. My sister in law gave me three bookss a birthday gift – the ‘Hunger Games’ trilogy. She told me that she’d just read all three of them in the space of a week, and that they were great and I absolutely had to read them.


Now, I’m not very good at having time off work. I find it hard to relax, because I feel like I’m shirking responsibility. So I figured reading one of the books would help distract me from that, even if I wasn't entirely motivated to get into them.

So I set myself up on the couch under a comfy blanket, and started reading.


Now, I know that when a book gets hyped the way this one has, you often expect it to be kind of predictable and mass market gratifying. And maybe that’s what it is. Maybe it was the sickness that made me emotional and moved me more than I would have otherwise been moved; but I have to tell you – any book that can make me cry only two chapters in has got something going for it. Sickness or not. I could not put it down. Over the course of that day, I read everything except the last chapter - and I only stopped there because I had a dinner obligation that I couldn't get out of (sick or otherwise). I spent the entire dinner thinking about the book, and hanging to get home to finish it off.

I finished it at about 10pm last night, and honestly, I have to say that thinking about that book kept me awake for hours. I was so, so tempted to get up and start on the next one. An now, i'm here at work, and while I have a mountain of work to catch up on, I kind of wish I had brought the book with me so that I could get started on it while no one is looking.

So I guess you could say that sometimes (and only sometimes) the hype around these things is probably justified.