Strange Dreams, Strange Feeling

That strange feeling that something amazing is going to happen is still with me today. I can't understand it, but hey, I like it!

On a less happy, but no less strange note, my spate of really odd dreams continues. This time, two friends (T.H. and K.C.), a famous music personality (none other than Lady GaGa. No, seriously), a character from a T.V. show (Prince Charming from the show Once Upon a Time), a whole bunch of strangers and I were all involved in a Hunger Games style competition that started out with each of us camping. In the same spot.

K.C., T.H. and myself ended up (somehow) all in a run-down fun house. We had split up earlier on, and all ended up there. I was searching around the house, torch and all, when I came across a mouse. Somehow, I knew that mouse was actually K.C. who, it turns out, was a Harry Potter style animagus in this dream. Because we're friends, I simply smiled at the mouse frozen by fear (or possibly my torch's light) on the windowsill and said, 'Don't worry. I won't tell anyone.' Then I left the room.

I don't know why K.C. turned himself into a mouse. The man's got kick-arse Kung Fu skills. I digress.

I hear some noises and go investigate and Lady GaGa, in full monster outfit, is attacking T.H., who isn't doing so well. So I kill Lady GaGa. Yep. Twisted dream.

(I'd just like to point out here, as an aside, I don't hate Lady GaGa. In fact, I quite like her music - it's catchy and fun to dance to. I also adore her costumes as works of art. I'd never wear them, but whatever. To each their own. For the record, Lady GaGa, I'm really sorry I killed you in my dream. To be fair, you were trying to kill one of my friends.)

There was an awkward moment when T.H. and I faced each other, then we just nodded, and went our separate ways.

T.H. died later, but I didn't have time to feel sad about it because I was in the middle of helping Prince Charming battle a dragon (I know where this came from. In last night's episode of Once Upon a Time, Prince Charming battled a dragon). To be honest, it was less a dragon than a weird human-dragon hybrid.

The pair of us manage to get the dragon-man thing weakened, but really angry. We, in identical armour, I might add, stand side by side in preparation for the final charge, when some guy, also in identical armour, throws a knife straight into the dragon-man's throat, killing him.

I turn around and though I don't recognise the guy, I know he's not on our side.

And that's when I woke up.

There you go. Analyse that!

With my imagination in full, freakish bloom, I will now go and write. Until tomorrow, then!

Necrologist

One who gives an account of deaths.

- Noah Webster's American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828

Book Review: The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I've been hearing a lot about this book, and with the film due out next year I decided that I definitely wanted to read it. Luckily for me, I didn't have to buy it. My recent birthday yielded the best result possible: this book as a gift (incidentally, if ever you want to please me, buy me a good book!).

I was, at first, quite terrified that the current trend for terrible stuff in young adult fiction (point in case: Twilight) would continue. You know, the type of writing that insults the intelligence of youth and assumes they're all shallow, maladjusted half-people.

Well, can you blame me?

Turns out, thankfully, not.

Katniss, the heroine of the story and from whose perspective the tale is told, is a slightly embittered person (she rarely lets people outside of her family close) who nonetheless loves her family dearly. More to the point, she's tough. She's a hunter, a fighter, a survivor.

Go team!

I really don't want to give too much away with this book, but needless to say, it captures the angst of the divide between youth and adulthood exceptionally well. We've all been, or will be, there - that bizarre space when you're no longer a child, but not quite an adult; where nothing makes sense and you're so uncertain of anything, least of all who you are.

Katniss' character, her motives, her confusion and her vulnerabilities (yes, she has those), make her one of the most believable characters I've read in young adult fiction to date. I'm quite convinced that I would have behaved in the same way she did, given the extraordinary circumstances in which she finds herself.

A fan of adult fiction (largely adult fantasy... no, not that kind, you potty-minded people! I mean the genre fantasy), I found the language a little simple for my tastes, though I have to point out that its directness and immediacy are actually part of the charm.

And it's a young adult story, I must remind myself. If I was around the age of, say, 11, this would have shot up to the near top of my favourites list (the very top being Over Sea, Under Stone).

It's fast-paced, has plenty of action and, yes, made me gasp out loud. I highly recommend this book for lovers of young adult. I will definitely be getting stuck into the rest of the series as soon as I can!

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