Cannonball Read 17

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

“Here’s some advice. Stay alive.”

The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) by Suzanne Collins

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I think what I want to talk about on this my third reading of The Hunger Games is why I think it was a breakout bestseller, and why all the books that tried to copy it and profit off of YA “dystopia” as a genre in its wake got it wrong. Hint: they went for the surface level and completely ignored what actually makes this book great. Another hint: It’s not actually the fact that it’s a dystopia. Anyone can do that and it doesn’t […]

Return to the Arena

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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Bingo Square: Green Suzanne Collins is back with another book in the Hunger Games world. This time it’s a prequel, following Coriolanus Snow – later President Snow, of course – as he navigates the world of the Capitol. 18 Years old, the once glorious house of Snow is struggling. Their money is gone, and all that’s left is their penthouse apartment and their class status. Snow needs to make it to graduation and go to university in an attempt to keep himself, his grandmother and […]

If you can’t beat em, make em bleed like pigs

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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Bingo category: Book Club (a whole bunch of them) The prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes has a young Coriolanus Snow, the future president and villain of the first three books, as its protagonist. I didn’t really want to read it because. . . President Snow sucks. But I requested from my library anyway, just to see what I thought. And here we are. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes takes place 64 years before The Hunger Games trilogy […]

Coriolanus release the fistful of cabbage into the pot of boiling water and swore that one day it would never pass his lips again.

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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The book begins with Coriolanus Snow, 18 year old son of a somewhat fallen house, in secondary academy 11 or so years after the big war. They are soon coming up to the tenth annual Hunger Games, which are not yet the Hunger Games we all know, but barely more than a joyless, punitive bloodbath. For the first time, members of the academy will be selected to act as mentors to the tributes (yes like Haymitch would become) to both promote and care for tributes. […]

A Welcome Addition To YA Dystopias

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

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Were we all a little burned out on dystopic YA fiction for a while there? Yeah, and the movie studios sure didn’t help. Yet here in 2020, something about a pandemic has made dystopic fiction that is specifically YA a lot more appealing though, so who better to reignite my interest in the genre than Susanne Collins herself? Did I get so obsessively into the Hunger Games trilogy back in ’12 that I neglected to finish my Masters thesis on time and had to take […]

When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

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So because of the recent news of the prequel book(s?) coming out in the next few months, and especially given the chosen subject of those books, I wanted to revisit the series again and since every library still has 100 copies of each of them, seemed perfectly doable. I, for one, am more interested in the new because she’s chosen to look into Snow as a character more, and explore some of the early days of Panem. For one, from what I recall about the […]



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