I devoured the first two books in the Hunger Games series in one sitting and have been counting down the days to the release of Mockingjay this week. I was one of the first to purchase it Tuesday morning and I carried it around with me all day like a security blanket. Then I read it. All night I read it. And it was over.

Like all good things that come to an end, it left me feeling a bit deflated. Now what? I often feel that way when I finish a good book, movie, or TV series. The characters have become my friends and I just don’t want to say goodbye. My sadness at the end of Mockingjay was a little different though.

The three book jackets tell a vivid story. Book one shows the Mockingjay small, almost timid, with its head down, clutching the arrow as though picking it up for the first time. Book two shows the bird as robust, surrounded by the color of flame, ready to take on the world. The cover of book three is pale blue and shows the Mockingjay with its wings spread out, surrounded by light. The book jacket radiates hope and rebirth. Then you open the first page.

Keep reading at your own risk. Highly opinionated commentary and spoilers abound.

With The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I was consumed by them, recommending them universally to nearly everyone I knew. Do you like excellent prose? Read these books! Suspense? Depth of character? Adventure with a moral message and great social commentary? READ THESE BOOKS!!

With this book I’m sort of rethinking my universal recommendation. Do you like a well-crafted but mostly bleak and hopeless message book about how war destroys everything? This bad boy’s for you!

The message is sound. War is abominable. It kills people and breaks and destroys those who are left behind. These are truths. After what Katniss has been through, it’s likely she would be left drooling in the corner of a psych ward while nearly everyone she’s ever loved either dies gruesomely or abandons her. Real, or not real? Real.

Enjoyable or not enjoyable to read? I’m leaning towards not enjoyable. It’s a must read and a compelling read but rather than leaving you cheering and begging for more, it will likely leave you saying, “Hmmmm. War is bad. I need some time to process.” And you will process. It’s not a book that will easily leave your mind. The feeling of this book reminds me of the feeling I get when I read books by one of my favorite authors, Thomas Hardy.

The first two books were built on a solid foundation of Plot, Character and Message with excellent writing to pull us into a vivid and imaginative world.

Book three seems to have a hierarchy of MESSAGE, then plot, with a smidge of character sprinkled in. Where I can name several “moments” from each of the first two books, moments that were poignant and beautiful and left me cheering, even in the deepest sadness, I had a hard time coming up with more than one in Mockingjay.

The first two books had a building sense of hope, rebellion, and impending butt-kicking triumph. The third one slaps the first two down. There is no winner in war. There is no triumphant rebellion. All is lost.

It got me thinking about the Cuban revolution, young people fighting for a brighter future, only to find that their new leader is Fidel Castro with all the implications we now know that brings.

There’s a glimmer of hope at the end of the book but it’s just that, a glimmer, with the overshadowing message that at any moment it could be shattered again. No one is safe because at their core, people cannot be trusted to be good.

And the last several pages, which should be the payoff for reading 3 intense novels, are written like a laundry list.

-We are broken.
-Peeta and I found love. Remember that fantastic moment that was described in such lush detail in book 2 around page 351? Yeah. That happened again.
-Our lives still suck.
-Gale, who we’ve all cared deeply about, leaves with no fanfare or even so much as a spot of dialogue but it’s probably for the best.
-Greasy Sae, a semi-inconsequential supporting character, remains with me and makes me soup because my mom is AWOL helping other people.
-Haymitch. Drunk.
-Haymitch. Gone.
-Life goes on but what’s the point?

Now I like to give truly gifted writers the benefit of the doubt. Katniss is the narrator. Maybe Suzanne Collins shuts off her lush evocative descriptive flair at the close of the book to show that Katniss has shut off, that she has nothing left to give to the narrative. I want to believe that it is a conscious choice to show that Katniss’s voice has become sparse, hopeless and unemotional, that even when talking about the small bits of healing she’s experienced, she can’t bear to talk about them in a compelling way because she’s just not compelled by anything left in this world.

But there’s part of me that thinks it was unintentional, like Collins gets her message across about war and devastation and then quickly ties up the loose ends in the lives of the characters we’ve come to adore throughout these 3 novels.

If her writing truly becomes so sparse and perfunctory at the end of the book to symbolize Katniss’s broken soul, then it should have gone that route many other times throughout the series, especially in book 3. Katniss spends much of book 3 feeling broken, helpless and not acting because she just doesn’t have it in her to go on.

Reading a book from the perspective of a broken hero is exhausting. It doesn’t help that she has little real meaningful interaction with other people. Maybe she can’t. Maybe war really kills all relationships. In the first 2 books it felt like it made them stronger, made reunions sweeter. Book 3 says, “Nope.”

I’m currently working on a novel. It’s nothing deep or world-changing. It’s fun to write and hopefully fun to read. I read Collins’s work with a student’s eye, trying to figure out how she does what she does so masterfully. I would be unbelievably grateful if I had her talent for suspense, character development and narrative brilliance. Even on the third book, I found it hard to analyze her writing because I was so absorbed in it most of the time.

Some good moments were Katniss’s speech into the camera after the hospital attack and I absolutely love the last sentence before the epilogue. It is beautiful. I wish it were enough for me.

One friend asked me what I would change and I keep asking myself that same question. Would I wanted it to end in flowers and rainbows and Katniss standing in Peeta’s embrace atop a parade float? No. Resoundingly no. I think the characters needed to suffer real consequences for what they’d been through. However, I feel like the first two books set you up for one thing in tone, character and momentum and the third book pulls the rug out from under you.

I can’t say I didn’t like Mockingjay but I can’t say that I enjoyed it either. Suzanne Collins is a gifted writer and she kept me glued to the pages of her novel from beginning to end. She didn’t take the easy, appeal-to-the-masses cop-out and tie everything up in a nice neat package. However I think she chose message over character and that’s a bit disappointing.

Now discuss. I’d love someone to prove me wrong, make me want to re-read it to find what I missed the first time.

If you’re still looking for a last minute Cinco de Mayo/ Mother’s Day gift, I just wanted to give a quick shout out to the girls who put together The Mother in Me, a really lovely compilation of poems, essays and reflections by young LDS mothers.

A friend who was part of the project sent it to me for review a year ago while I was pregnant with Wanda. And since I was… well… pregnant with Wanda and barfing constantly I let a lot of things slip and never posted a review.

I’m sure she’s not expecting to hear from me now but I wanted to let you know about it. The writing is beautiful and very real and I think you’ll enjoy it. Heck. It would make a great Mother’s Day present for yourself because chances are you’ll see yourself in the pages you read.

I recognize that most of my readers are not LDS, but some are and the book is quite tender and affirming of the role of mothers in a way that I think crosses religious boundaries.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

My house is filled with books. Like Elizabeth Bennet fictionally before me, I do not consider myself a “great reader.” I just love books. I love to buy them, check them out from the library, smell them, attempt to write them, touch them, look at them and occasionally dive in and read them. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and there are over a hundred I have yet to read. I will find myself at a bookstore, online, at a garage sale, in the grocery store, staring at a book and it will pull me in with its tractor beam of knowledge. “I will be so much smarter, more interesting, happier, taller if I own that book,” my self says to myself. I then purchase the book and hold it and pet it and love it and put it on the shelf or in a pile by my bed where books go to die. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and every so often I think it’s time to part ways with a few of them. Some have been sent to me to review and once I started to skim them, I realized that I was not interested in reading them. I don’t feel right selling a book that was sent to me for a review but went unreviewed because I did not think it would interest my readers. I don’t want to make money on that kind of booty so I keep the books. Some I think might be interesting to someone, somewhere, sometime and deep down in my heart I want to be the one to provide that perfect book to the person who wants it. In my pre-child bearing life I was a librarian. My house is filled with books.

My house is filled with books and I have truly convinced myself that I need to keep the collection going so that in post-apocalyptic Washington, my house can become the town library. I will sort and label and catalog all the books, even the ones I don’t like, because others on my street might like them. Should I keep the book on animal anatomy? Well. There’s a vet on my street and he might be post-apocalyptically interested in my animal anatomy book, especially if his books are all destroyed in the blast. My house is filled with books.

Today I made a decision.

Any book that I am only keeping around IN CASE I find myself in the position of being The Librarian of the Apocalypse is no longer welcome in my home. Today my house became filled with about 60 fewer books. When the apocalypse comes, you’d better have your own copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting because mine’s heading out the door. And also, what you can actually expect when you’re expecting during the apocalypse will probably not be covered in the edition I currently have on tap.

Coming out of a movie theatre the other night Dan and I couldn’t help overhearing a conversation between 4 teenagers. One of them had lost his wallet and they were all trying to find it. He said he was desperate to retrieve it, if for nothing else, to keep hold of his military ID. His friend chimed in earnestly, “Yeah, and your library card.”

To that his friend said, “Oh. I don’t think I have a library card.”

“What?! You don’t have a library card?!!

You gotta have a library card!

You can use a library card for anything.

If you don’t have a library card, you *&!?%# SUCK!”

His friends just stood there, semi-dumbstruck by his rabidly loyal defense of one of our country’s most beloved public institutions. Maybe he changed their minds. Maybe one or all of them went out to get library cards the next day.

Whatever happened, I think his diatribe should be put on a poster in an elementary school somewhere with a smiling portrait of Raven-Symoné, holding a copy of Stuart Little.

***And the Winner chosen by random.org after removing any duplicate comments by the same person (Which I then added back in) is Heather Lafter. More great giveaways are coming this month. so keep trying!***

Have you ever wanted to know how to make your own chain-mail bikini, grow rock candy, properly open a pomegranate, carve a radish rose, tie a bowtie, remove various stains from clothing, peel and devein a shrimp, get your kid to eat vegetables, serve a banana as an octopus, or understand vitamins and their proper doses?.

Are you the coach of your kid’s soccer team but you don’t have a clue about the rules and techniques of the game?

Do you wonder how long various foods stay good in the refrigerator?

Do you want to try to heal yourself with home remedies or perform first aid?

Are you horrible at Dave Letterman’s “Know Your Cuts of Meat” game and want to brush up on which cut of meat comes from which part of any animal’s body?

Do you want to know how to pick the best airline seat, tie basic sailing knots, mount a camel, compose a memorable photo, pick a lock, or mold a false fingerprint?

Have I got a book for you. It was sent to me by Harper Collins and it’s called Show Me How — 500 Things You Should Know — Instructions for Life from the Everyday to the Exotic. The book covers fashion dos and don’ts, beauty how-tos, cooking, crafting, survival skills, romantic instruction and a ton more. From the incredibly useful to the hilarious, it’s fun just to “read” all the way through. But it doesn’t involve a lot of reading because it’s almost completely picture based. The illustrations are fun and although I plan to use it as a conversation-piece on an end-table in my living room, I’ll also likely refer to it for basic instructions on how to do just about everything.

Reading through, I kept thinking, “OH MAN! I wish I’d had this last month or last year when I needed to…” Because I didn’t have this book or apparently a brain or internet connection, I gave a perfectly fine cast-iron skillet away to Goodwill because it had become rusty. Never again thanks to the page on derusting a cast-iron pan.

With Thanksgiving on the way, I’m grateful for the straightforward instructions for weaving a lattice-top pie, roasting and carving a turkey and making perfect gravy from drippings.

Thanks to this book I now know that a Vesper is an actual alcoholic beverage, not invented by James Bond, and how to make it should I ever eschew my teetotaling ways.

This is one of the best coffee table books I’ve come across and it would make a great gift. Although if you win it, you’ll probably have a hard time giving it away so you’ll need to buy another.

To enter this giveaway, please leave a comment listing one thing you’ve always wanted to know how to do. I’ll draw a random winner Saturday at 10pm PST.

And I’ve got more great giveaways and gift guides coming up! Squeee!!! I’m so excited for Christmas.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

As I head off this weekend with Eve, Fawn and friends, I leave you with a post that is not at all about vampires or dead bodies in a lake. It’s up over at Parenting.com.

This trip will likely be the closest I ever get to attending a Star Trek convention and I’m fascinated to be around real live obsessed fans. I enjoyed the books but I have a feeling that by going to Forks for the release of Breaking Dawn, I will be entering an untold realm of literary obsession that I may not be fully prepared for. I should have much to report on when I get back.

I was so excited to get my hands on the Sony Digital Reader, give it a spin and tell you all what I thought of it. When I supervised the media department at a public library after college, we were always talking about the latest technology in video, music and book readers. This was about 5 years ago and digital books were out there in the market but none of them truly felt like you were reading a book. I thought they’d never catch on.

For a few years now I’ve had the scriptures and a few other books uploaded to my PDA and it’s great for quick reference but not particularly enjoyable to use and I don’t want to feel like I’m reading from a computer. I wanted to review the Sony Reader Digital Book so I could tell you how the technology was coming along and all the reasons it wasn’t good enough.

Well, that was a couple of months ago. The reader showed up at my house and I pulled it out of the box and started using it immediately. And it feels like a book. It’s small and lightweight and the screen is such that it looks like paper, truly. The font and spacing feel like a paperback except that you can CHANGE the font size. I like to keep it somewhere between itty bitty Lord of the Rings font and granny-needs-glasses large print.

There’s no backlight, which may seem like a downside, but what book glows? Not this one. It’s really like you’re reading from paper, only it always saves your place, you can fit hundreds of books in one small device, and most importantly you don’t have that lopsided page flipping problem. You know when you’re lying on your side reading and one side is always more comfortable to lay on, depending on how far along you are in the book and whether you’re reading the left or right page? But then you switch to the other page and you have to flip over on your other side or hold the book in some really weird way?

You don’t have to do that with this book. It is never lopsided and there are buttons on both sides to turn the pages.

If you’re looking for an all-in-one digital blog reader and wireless device, this is not the toy for you. But that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for this. It does also have a black and white picture viewer, an MP3 player, and two storage card slots so you can use it to store and use a TON of media. You can even play music while you read.

It has a long battery life and the screen is viewable even in direct sunlight… like… I don’t know… a book!

There are a few negatives. The books do load slower than I’d like because you know, I like it fast. The software interface for downloading and uploading books is not super user-friendly. I fancy myself somewhat of a techie and I had some trouble figuring out how to get the books on the device the first time. There is no way to use the book while it is plugged in your computer to charge and you have to buy the DC power adapter separately, which I would highly recommend. Sony also doesn’t have the greatest selection of books in the world. They have a good amount of classic titles and a lot of new releases but the selection is not as broad as that for the Amazon Kindle.

However, I prefer the Sony reader to what I’ve seen of the Kindle because I want a book, a real book, but better. I hope they continue to grow their inventory of content.

I waited weeks to do this review because I’m so enjoying using it and because of my advertising contract now I must pass it on to one of you. So weighing in at a retail value of $299.00, I give you the Sony Reader Digital Book. It also comes with 100 free classic titles from Shakespeare to George Eliot.

Now does anyone want to give me one? It’s on my wish list. Oh the joys of carrying my entire library around all the time!

If you’re willing to enter this giveaway, even though the reader is lightly used and has my cooties on it, leave a comment listing 2 non-religious books you’d like to carry around with you everywhere. I know you all love the Bible and the Koran. What else do you love? (I’m willing to ship within the US. Anywhere else, I’ll be happy to send it if you pay the postage.)

I’ll randomly choose a winner Sunday night at 10pm PST. Oh, and Sony wants me to let you know that they’re not responsible if you fall and hurt yourself while reading it or if it self-destructs when you disassemble it to see the little men turning the gears on the inside.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

Have you read the vampire books by Stephenie Meyer? The teen vampire werewolf romance books by Stephenie Meyer? Me neither.

Okay. I did read them. A bit. Because they’re set in the Northwest and Ms. Meyer went to BYU so I feel some sense of loyalty. I was just going to dip my toes in and read a bit so I knew what everyone was talking about. That was a year ago. In August when book 4 is released, I’m going to Port Angeles with some girlfriends, staying up all night reading Breaking Dawn and tooling around Forks with the other tween wannabe mom-type people, visiting the various spots where Bella and Edward formed their bond of passionate and forbidden vampiric high school love. We picked a hotel in Port Angeles because it had a bookstore nearby that was willing to stay open until midnight on August 1st.

I wouldn’t call the Twilight books great literature but they are incredibly gripping page-turners and something about them makes me squeal like a wee girl, all the while rolling my eyes and saying, “I’m way too old for this.” And then I do things like book hotel rooms and beg bookstore owners to stay open until midnight.

Anyhoo, I recently read Stephenie Meyer’s first attempt at Adult Fiction, The Host and I was pleasantly surprised. While the teen series was fast moving and an engrossing narrative, it felt like purely a brain vacation. Packed with adjectives about the magnetically attractive hunkishness of Edward’s each and every bodily feature, from his chiseled passionately pulsing pectorals to the oh-so-steamy third-from-the-center eyelash over his liquid-gold left eye, I would classify the series as fun fluff.

The Host had a different feel. Although romance was a big factor and the book had its fair share of hot moments, it focused on deeper themes. War, intolerance, human cruelty, and alien medical procedures are just a few. The book made me think and feel and consider how I treat people. It was also really inventive and kept me guessing what would come next.

Stephenie Meyer kicked it up a notch as a writer and storyteller in the Host, which made the Twilight series seem like a warm-up exercise. I’m excited to see what she does next… that is after she’s finished writing a gazillion sequels.

The Vaccine Book by Robert W. Sears, M.D., F.A.A.P.

Dr Sears III or IV or something (I’m pretty sure it’s not the original Dr Sears.) has written a guide to Vaccines that is thorough, informative and not fear based. When it came to vaccinating my kids, I was terrified to proceed because of all the scary literature out there about possible side effects.

Friends called to warn me about the great harm I was doing my children by vaccinating them and how if I chose to do so, I could be responsible for their health problems later in life, including but not limited to autism and eventually painful death. I was freaked out. If I didn’t vaccinate, I could be ushering polio back into the world. If I did vaccinate, I could be saving the world, while sacrificing my child’s safety.

Every pediatrician I talked to said I MUST VACCINATE while every book and website I read said to vaccinate was practically child abuse.

In the end I decided to go with the collective wisdom of the medical community as delivered to me by my trusted advisor, a pediatrician I adored. She explained that the possible effects of the diseases far outweighed the possible side effects of the vaccinations and assured me that none of the clinic’s vaccines included mercury. I chose to believe her since I was too overwhelmed to sift through all the conflicting information myself.

What I like about Dr Sears’ book is that it explains that the decision to vaccinate is not an all or nothing choice. He goes through each vaccine individually, explaining how it’s made, what it contains, what it prevents, how serious and common the disease is and what side effects can be realistically expected as a result of the vaccine.

I really feel much more informed and am on my way to developing a detailed vaccination plan for my kids, a plan which may involve delaying or skipping certain vaccines or asking for specific brands to control the ingredients been injected into my kids’ bodies.

This book is definitely worth a perusal by any parent who has questions or concerns about vaccine safety. Although it seems obvious that Dr Sears supports the use of vaccines, I think he does a fairly good job of laying out the information impartially.

Click to Read My Product Review Policy

A prescription for her restlessness and boredom.

A key to becoming a knower of all knowledge.

A magical device to transform the gibberish that surrounds her into useful language.

A ticket to travel anywhere in the world and meet anyone who’s ever lived in reality or recorded imagination.

Pure joy.

I feel quite certain that learning to read is the most incredible thing that’s ever happened to Laylee and I can’t believe I’m lucky enough to be a part of it.