Why I should really read the book before watching the movie…

I’m not sure if my book-loving friends would be cheering in triumph or pulling their hair out in frustration from hearing or reading about this, but after about four years of having them sit on my shelf collecting dust, I have finally started reading the Hunger Games series.

Should I duck and run for cover??

Okay, I’ll admit, it’s been many years since I’ve really felt like I had any time at all to read the books I’ve managed to accumulate since leaving high school. Don’t get me wrong, I love books. And I take book recommendations very seriously. It was actually my younger brother who reccomended the series to me several years back and when a close friend of mine found out that I hadn’t read the books yet, she gifted the series to me for Christmas that same year. It wasn’t until seeing trailers for the newest movie in the series – Mockingjay: Part 1 – that I decided I probably should make time to read the series.

I read Hunger Games on my Kindle Paperwhite over the course of a few weeks, and just yesterday I finished reading my gifted copy of Catching Fire. While both were superbly written, I found myself comparing them heavily against what I had seen in the last two movies. Scenes from the films were what crossed my mind during those pivotal plot points. And that was actually quite disappointing for me as a reader. Mostly because I knew that by seeing the movie first, I didn’t really get the chance to imagine the story played out in my head without anything else to reference to. I didn’t get to see the story from my point of view.

Has that ever happened to you?

Maybe it’s just me and maybe I’ve just had experiences with reading books BEFORE seeing the movie adaptation to know what a big difference it is to come up with your own version of the story in your head before it’s brought to life on the big screen. And I’m sad I didn’t get that with the first two books in this particular series.

I think that’s why I’m so determined now to finish Mockingjay before the next movie comes out. I want to be able to enjoy the story to come and get to experience it the way I have with other books I’ve read in the past. I like getting lost in my favorite books and setting the scene in my own imagination. It’s much more fun afterwards once the movie is made! Because while a production team and a director can interpret a story one way, I still get to hold on to my own version of it, untainted by someone else’s.

That’s not to say that seeing the movie before reading the book is the end of the world though. I’m almost embarrassed to say that if I had never watched the Hunger Games movies, I probably wouldn’t have had enough to interest to pick up the actual book and read it. Movies can have that power at times. They can take people who normally would turn their nose up at a book actually take the time to seek out one, simply because the film adaptation piqued their interest. In their own way, books made into movies help generate more readers, which I think the world could use more of. Don’t you? 🙂

Personally though, I’ll be thinking twice before seeing another movie adaptation before reading the book first. I don’t want to miss out on something potentially magical just because I couldn’t bother myself to open a book.

I dread first blog posts.

I’m sure I’m not alone in this. Sure, there’s excitement that comes with making a brand new blog, the hopes and wishes you have for future posts that catch the attention of scores of people on the internet, the fun of making your actual blog page reflect the real you (or the ‘you’ you’re trying to present to the cyberworld, that is). But then you get to the hard part – the writing part.

It’s sometimes easy to forget with all of the fun prep time that comes with making a blog that you actually have to write stuff once all is said and done.

I’ve done this so many times. I’ve started something new, done an introduction post, then either whizzed off into the waiting horizon with sporadic posts left in my wake or I’ve never written another post ever again. No one gets to know me or my writing beyond what I choose to tell them in that very first post. I guess I feel like maybe first posts are cursed for me that way. They can make or break the blog itself. They can determine whether I’ll bother coming back to make a second, third, or more post.

I don’t want this to be another bad luck post.

So I’m just going to keep this short and simple before forcing myself to move along to writing another post that I can actually queue up to post regularly, rather than letting this blog sit around collecting dust immediately after I publish this.

All you really need to know about me is that I’m a 20-something avid reader who also occasionally writes. I’m hoping to actually utilize a blog for once as a way to document my recent dive back into reading for fun, and the inspiration it’s been giving me to start spending some time on my own writing again. I apologize in advance for any future posts centered on young adult novels, my cat, and any degree of fangirling, as I can guarantee that if I actually stick with this blog, there will be a lot of that going on here.

— SG