becausethegirlloveshungergames:

Hunger Games printable book-marks.  I am fully behind this, sod team Peeta or Gale I am team Katniss.

GALA MAGAZINE: The Hunger Games

Our magazine’s maiden issue is finally out! Here’s an excerpt of my review for The Hunger Games movie:

“Much to the approval of many bookworms who loved the novel to bits, the film adhered closely to the source material’s storyline. Some of the changed scenes would induce little to no rants from the fans, because Ross’ paint-by-number approach was well-played and it just added more layers to the intricate world already present in Collins’ narrative…

Anyone who had encountered The Hunger Games in its printed form would know that even if the gladiatorial match was flaunted as the focal occurrence, the lynchpin of anything and everything is none other than the main protagonist, Katniss Everdeen. And truth be told, if there’s one thing in the movie that took the cake right off the bat, it was Jennifer Lawrence’s portrayal of our very own arrow-toting girl on fire.”

See the full story—grab your copy now! :)

FANDOM ON FIRE V.01: Hunger Games Goodies

I’m dying to post my thoughts on Gary Ross’ big screen translation of The Hunger Games right now, but the odds of me not getting fired when I do that are not in my favor. Haha! Can’t leak! I wrote a full-page review for it in our magazine GALA, which will be out in bookstores, coffee shops, convenience stores, etc. on April 1. (Please do grab a copy! It’s an events magazine and we cover everything from festivals and fun runs to album launches and movie openings.)

Anyway, I think I can find a way around this little dilemma. I can post things that I didn’t include in the review, like book vs. film nitpicks, favorite moments, and things I’m looking forward to in Catching Fire. You know, the usual things regular Tumblristas know. *wiggles eyebrows*

In a non-review related HG news in Airizverse…I got new goodies! 

1. The Hunger Games Companion. Here’s a book to stand cheek by jowl my other favorite The Hunger Games meta-essay compilation of some sort, Lea Wilson’s The Girl Who Was on Fire. While I  fangirl THG like it’s my day job, I still love in-depth discussions that go beyond the usual “shipping” stuff. I love metas. I’m about 90% sure I’m going to like this.
2. The Hunger Games Tribute Guide. There’s nothing particularly new in this book, but it’s a must-have for all THG fans. It includes colored photos and quotes from the movie and a few detailed information about all the districts. I would have appreciated this more if I bought this before I saw the film, I think. But as I said, it’s a treat for any THG fan who wanted to have anything and everything about the film and the book.
3. The Hunger Games soundtrack. It’s The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond, featuring tracks by Taylor Swift, The Decemberists, The Secret Sisters, Arcade Fire, The Carolina Chocolate Drops, and many more. The songs were written and produced exclusively for the album.

   Any miser’s going to shake his head and say “You could have just downloaded the songs.”  Yes, I could have, but like the usual books/ebooks stuff, I think there’s nothing like a physical copy of it. It’s not solely mine, though; my friend paid half the price, even if she only wanted to rip the songs from it. :p

   More Hunger Games post in the future! Happy blogging and may the odds be ever in your favor! ;)

HAPPY HUNGER GAMES WEEK! It’s the week we’ve all been waiting for! I’ll be watching an advanced screening of THG tonight (yep, March 21st) at SM Manila, because (1) I’m excited and (2) I need to write a review for it for Gala Magazine (I may or may not provide a separate review for my blog though, so stay tuned!).

PS: I’m really sorry for the sparse updates! It’s our deadlines week at work, too, and I can barely visit my blogs. I’ll make it up to you guys this weekend. Oh, and I’ll answer the questions later, too. Have a good day!

TOP 10 BOOKS (in no particular order)

Hello, I was wondering of you would be a post on your top ten books. The top ten books you couldn’t live without. One doesn’t have to limit themselves to just ten but I wondered which books you would put above the rest. Thank you and cheers. — meganbarns

This is kind of hard, you know? It’s like picking up the most awesome folks among a circle of truly fabulous friends that are amazing in their own way. Anyway, the following are the first 10 that came to mind. I have a series of runner-ups, so stay tuned:

1. Season of Mists (Sandman volume #4) by Neil Gaiman. My life without The Sandman graphic novels would be like owning the whole The Beatles discography minus Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heart’s Club Band. Seriously. I met my favorite writer of all time through these series of graphic novels starring the seven entities that are neither mortals nor gods—Destiny, Death, Dream, Destruction, Desire, Despair, and Delirium. It may not be the best, but Season of Mists is my favorite of all the volumes in the series.
   Here’s a blurb from GoodReads: “Lucifer has grown tired of being the lord of Hell. He kicks out the demons and the damned alike, closes up shop, and gives the key tp Hell to Morpheus. Beings from all the world’s mythologies converge on the lord of Dream to seize this instrument of power.”
    
2. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.
   I was trying not to pick from the classics, but I just couldn’t help it. Here’s Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. As I said in one of the previous asks, I  see it as the masterpiece that sparked the ember of activism in me…and every time I reread it, I feel like I’m fanning the flames some more.
   This preface from the Gutenberg ebook edition pretty much sums up what I want to say: “So long as there shall exist, by virtue of law and custom, decrees of damnation pronounced by society, artificially creating hells amid the civilization of earth, and adding the element of human fate to divine destiny; so long as the three great problems of the century—the degradation of man through pauperism, the corruption of woman through hunger, the crippling of children through lack of light—are unsolved; so long as social asphyxia is possible in any part of the world;—in other words, and with a still wider significance, so long as ignorance and poverty exist on earth, books of the nature of Les Misérables cannot fail to be of use.”
    
3. Sabriel by Garth Nix.  It’s an important book for me because through it, Nix introduced me to the realms of paranormal young adult fiction and gave me a permanent morbid streak. I wish more YA books are like this book—the content is  more about character and plot development, not about who the girl will pick as her lifetime partner or stuff like that. Nix is a tease when it comes to romance. It’s almost nonexistent in the book, and you won’t see it unless you want it to exist.
   Here’s a blurb from GoodReads: “Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Mage Abhorson, is missing, and Sabriel must cross into that world to find him. With Mogget, whose feline form hides a powerful, perhaps malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage, Sabriel travels deep into the Old Kingdom. There she confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life’and comes face to face with her own hidden destiny…”
    
4. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand.
   Be a filter, not a sponge. They say you either really love or really hate this book, but I landed in the gray area. While I did not subscribe to everything that Rand said in this book, I got to admit I learned a lot from it.  For a long while it even became one of my favorite novels.
   Blurb from GoodReads: “On the surface, it is a story of one man, Howard Roark, and his struggles as an architect in the face of a successful rival, Peter Keating, and a newspaper columnist, Ellsworth Toohey. But the book addresses a number of universal themes: the strength of the individual, the tug between good and evil, the threat of fascism. The confrontation of those themes, along with the amazing stroke of Rand’s writing, combine to give this book its enduring influence.”
    
5. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak.
   One of the best books I’ve read so far. Since Neil Gaiman’s quirky Goth girl interpretation, I’ve never been this fond of a personification of Death.
   Blurb from GoodReads: “It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery…Set during World War II in Germany, Markus Zusak’s groundbreaking new novel is the story of Liesel Meminger, a foster girl living outside of Munich. Liesel scratches out a meager existence for herself by stealing when she encounters something she can’t resist–books. With the help of her accordion-playing foster father, she learns to read and shares her stolen books with her neighbors during bombing raids as well as with the Jewish man hidden in her basement before he is marched to Dachau. This is an unforgettable story about the ability of books to feed the soul.”
    
6. The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano.
   I don’t normally like soulmate stories, but this one is such a bittersweet, exquisitely told tale of two people that can’t seem to connect, even if they know they’re the only ones who can complete each other.
   Blurb from GoodReads: “A prime number can only be divided by itself or by one-it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, both “primes,” are misfits who seem destined to be alone. Haunted by childhood tragedies that mark their lives, they cannot reach out to anyone else. When Alice and Mattia meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit. But the mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him thousands of miles away, and the two are forced to separate. Then a chance occurrence reunites them and forces a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface. Like Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night- Time, this is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love, and the weight of childhood experience that is set to become a universal classic.”
    
7. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Do I really need to explain this? I wouldn’t be the bookworm that I am today if I hadn’t come across this book. 
   
   Blurb from Goodreads: “In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister Primrose, regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before — and survival, for her, is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that will weigh survival against humanity and life against love.”
    
8.  1984 by George Orwell.
   Ever since I read this, I’ve always dreaded the possibility of an Orwellian future. I mean if you think about it, it really can happen! The internet Blackout Revolution brought about by SOPA and PIPA were chillingly reminiscent of the book’s theme. Blurb from GoodReads: “Written in 1948, 1984 was George Orwell’s chilling prophecy about the future. And while 1984 has come and gone, Orwell’s narrative is timelier than ever. 1984 presents a startling and haunting vision of the world, so powerful that it is completely convincing from start to finish. No one can deny the power of this novel, its hold on the imaginations of multiple generations of readers, or the resiliency of its admonitions a legacy that seems only to grow with the passage of time.”
9.  Paper Towns by John Green.
   This has a personal reason, but even if it
   hasn’t, I think I still my bookworm heart wouldn’t be complete if I hadn’t read this book. It’s like an updated Looking for Alaska. Blurb from GoodReads: “When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night - dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q … until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q. Printz Medalist John Green returns with the trademark brilliant wit and heart-stopping emotional honesty that have inspired a new generation of readers.”
10.  The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami.
    My first ever Murakami book, which started my love affair with his other novels. ‘Nuff said.
    
    
    Blurb from GoodReads: “Japan’s most highly regarded novelist now vaults into the first ranks of international fiction writers with this heroically imaginative novel, which is at once a detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets of World War II.  In a Tokyo suburb a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife’s missing cat. Soon he finds himself looking for his wife as well in a netherworld that lies beneath the placid surface of Tokyo. As these searches intersect, Okada encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists: a psychic prostitute; a malevolent yet mediagenic politician; a cheerfully morbid sixteen-year-old-girl; and an aging war veteran who has been permanently changed by the hideous things he witnessed during Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria.  Gripping, prophetic, suffused with comedy and menace, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a tour de force equal in scope to the masterpieces of Mishima and Pynchon. 3 books in one volume: The Thieving Magpie, Bird as Prophet, The Birdcatcher. This translation by Jay Rubin is in collaboration with the author.”

Tomorrow Will Be Kinder (Studio Version) - The Secret Sisters

My Bookworm Valentine. Valentine’s Day is approaching! As a gift for you guys, here are some geeky hand-drawn cards, inspired by the awesome doodles of elledoubleyou and butthorn. Feel free to print these out and give them to your loved ones if you want! ;) It will surely make a happy, Cupid-esque single this February 14. Haha!

Card 01: Katniss Everdeen & Peeta Mellark from Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games (whoops! Looks like Cupid managed to slip one of his arrows in your quiver, Kat!).

Card 02: Daenerys Targaryen & Khal Drogo from George R. R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones. I originally planned to draw Cersei and Jaime, but I guess the Khaleesi’s love life is less…poisonous. If you know what I mean.

Card 03: Of course we’ll have a gay couple! It features Jack & Grayson from Alaya Dawn Johnson’s Love Will Tear Us Apart (anthologized in Zombies vs. Unicorns and Wilde Stories 2011). Grayson’s drooling because Jack still smells like a happy meal to him. :p

Card 04: Touchstone & Sabriel from my ever-favorite fantasy YA series, Garth Nix’s Old Kingdom Trilogy.

Supposed-to-be Card 05: I have a lesbian valentine card too, but a friend took it away before I had the chance to scan it. It features two girls from Malinda Lo’s Ash, a lesbian retelling of Cinderella. I drew Kaisa and Aisling with their backs to the viewers, looking up at a small clock that reads 12:01. The caption says, “I’ll love you even after midnight.” Maybe I’ll just post it later, when I feel not-so-lazy to doodle again. LOL

theyrenotgonnapickyou:

The bird, the pin, the song, the berries, the watch, the cracker, the dress that burst into flames.  I am the mockingjay. The one that survived despite the Capitol’s plans. The symbol of the rebellion.

thehungergamestrilogy:

The Hunger Games Theatrical Trailer 2!

To anyone who still hasn’t seen it, Lionsgate has released the official poster of The Hunger Games movie a few days ago. There are also two official stills: one featuring Katniss and Peeta clad in their Cinna-designed, yet-to-be-lit jumpsuits before the tribute parade, and the other featuring Team District 12 either watching the recap of the chariot parade or the announcement of their training session scores. 

EDIT: There’s more!

Is it March 23 yet?!

(source: mockingjay.net)

the world will be watching