From "The Hunger Games" to Dave Ramsey

by Sariah S. Wilson

Today was a reading day. This is one of the luxuries of entering your eighth month of pregnancy - you can have days like I had today. I didn't have any errands to run or any place that I had to be - my husband took the boys to get their hair cut and to pick up medicine and did a great job of entertaining the baby today (her brothers are also very good at that).

My reading day technically started last night. That was when I started "The Hunger Games" by Suzanne Collins. This is a book I first heard about when I read a favorable review in The Romantic Times. Not too long after that, I ran across a review by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly where he said he couldn't put it down. Next up was Stephenie Meyer saying she took it out to dinner with her and snuck it under the table so she could keep reading. I don't know if the kudos/favorable reviews get much better than that.

So while in Barnes and Noble using a Christmas gift card, I decided to pick this book up. I thought the premise sounded fascinating and it had such high critical reviews that it sounded like it would be worth checking out.

Once I started reading, I didn't want to stop. I truly can't remember the last time that I got that caught up in a book (possibly Harry Potter 7). It used to happen more frequently when I was younger, but as I get older and my responsibilities increase, I find that there often isn't time to get as into a book as I would like. It takes more these days to draw me in. The little people living in my house want silly things like food and clean clothes, which severely cuts into my reading time, I'm afraid.

Last night at 10:30 I thought I would go upstairs and read in bed for about an hour or so and call it a night. Instead, I suddenly realized that I had no idea what time it was or how long I'd been reading. I looked at my watch - 12:30! How had two hours passed so quickly? I knew I had to put the book down. I didn't want to, but I had to. The baby would be up at 6:00 and I needed to get some sleep.

The next morning I sent one of my sons to go upstairs and get my book for me. And then I read until I finished. And I actually yelled out loud in frustration when I read the words "End of Book One." This is a series? What? I have to wait? (And according to the Scholastic site I have to wait until September 8 until I can get the next one. If they do a midnight thing, I am SO THERE.)

Since this is an LDS blog, I will warn you that there is violence in this book. *I* didn't feel that it was gory or over the top but probably about right for a book that centers around a blood sport, but your mileage may vary. It is classified as YA, so no steamy scenes or language. Some of the deaths mercifully take place off screen, and I didn't feel completely grossed out by the ones the heroine witnesses (although be forewarned that they are still scenes of people dying in not fun ways).

This is the kind of book that you devour quickly, but it stays with you for days and days because of the topical messages on things like celebrity/fame, beauty, government and reality television. Here's the back cover blurb:

COULD YOU SURVIVE ON YOUR OWN, IN THE WILD, WITH EVERYONE FIGHTING AGAINST YOU?
Twenty- four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death – televised for all of Panem to see.

Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

You can read the first chapter online. Be prepared to make a late night run to a bookstore if you do that. And hopefully you'll refrain from reading it tomorrow and hold off until Monday when you can rush out and pick up your own copy. It is GOOD.

But that wasn't the only thing I read today. I also picked up Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover." Apparently I'm a little late to the Dave Ramsey party, but I found he made a lot of sense and I'm looking forward to implementing his strategies into my life. I didn't have a profound, epiphany type moment as others have described having, and I think this is probably because my moment came in December when I had a profound change of heart when it came to money matters. I have continued on my journey of cutting my grocery bill literally in half, but having twice as much food to show for it. For the first time ever my extra freezer is stuffed to capacity and we have an actual food storage downstairs (and I may never have to buy toilet paper again since I've been getting tons of it for free for the last two months). My attitude toward money has already changed, and I'm excited to start getting a paycheck again and better implementing Dave Ramsey's strategies to helping our family. I don't know that I can get out of debt in the 18 months he thinks it should take, but I can be better about it than I am now. I'm looking forward to starting.

Has anyone else read a helpful/great book lately?

(P.S. - I ran across a recent review of "Servant to a King" by Alison Palmer, currently my newest favorite person. Check it out!)