Booking It

Now that I've seen the movie, Chef has inspired me to buy the rest of the Hunger Games books (I bought him Mockingjay after the movie, the one he'd been trying to get from the school library for the past month without success.) I felt that the story was well constructed and his reaction to the books has me curious.

The post-apocalyptic storyline really appealed to him, so I once again suggested that he pick up the series I devoured when I was the same age, John Christopher's The White Mountain, The City of Gold and Lead and The Pool of Fire. Now he seems more interested when I compared elements of the two series for him.

Tonight, I got to class and found the other TA reading the Hunger Games, which evolved into him telling me that he wanted to read it before seeing the movie, and me explaining that I saw the movie first and now want to read the books. Then several of us started talking about books and favorite authors, with one person saying the Hunger Games reminded him of a Steven King short story.

That turned the topic to my favorite King book (okay, it really is a tie between Dead Zone and this), the Stand. I have the first edition of the first version of the book, a book that clearly shows how many times it has been read, first by my dad, then by me. For a birthday, dad also got me the unedited version that King released later. The other person mentioned that Flagg (the Walking Dude) from the Stand features prominently in the Gunslinger series, so now I'm going to check those out.

The professor got into the conversation and was looking for things to read for a long plane trip, something that would be a page turner in the way he found Hunger Games to be. I gave a brief synopsis, several of us debated elements of the book and I apologized that I would not see him before he flies out tomorrow, because those books are readily available on the bookshelf behind me. One person said "rent the DVDs from Netflix," and I told him I owned them and could bring them next week.

Professor asks "Does the book have Molly Ringwald on the cover?" and the next thing you know, he runs up to his office and brings it back down. Someone had given it to him a while back and in classic absent minded professor style, he'd forgotten about it. I checked it, and it is the updated release.

That will keep him busy for the outgoing and returning flight-and give him some strange dreams for a while.

It's always good to start talking books with people, get some good suggestions, but then give another. It's just rare that the person you have given a suggestion to can go pull it off their bookshelf exactly when they're looking for a good read!

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