Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Thanksgiving! I'm surprisingly quite happy with mine even though I'm sick. Watson and I are just chilling in my apartment, watching tv and thinking about what book we want to curl up on the couch with. :-)

Speaking of books, I just finished reading Mockingjay for the third time. I have to say I like it more and more each time I read it. I know there are a lot of mixed feelings about how Suzanne Collins chose to end The Hunger Games trilogy, but I like it.

Since, I'm sick (and a little lazy), I'm just going to list some reasons why I like Mockingjay instead of going into full-on essay mode. (Please forgive me.)

What I love about Mockingjay

• Girl power! :-) I love that a female, Katniss, is the face of the rebel war effort. She is a very strong character in all three books, but there's a transition in Mockingjay where we see her go from fighting for her own and her family's survival to fighting for her country as a whole. She sees the bigger picture and decides to fight even though it may cost her what she was originally fighting for. We see this a little in Catching Fire when she decides not to run off to the woods to get away from President Snow and his threats, but again there's something about a female being the driving force in a war that is really empowering to me. 
• Changing roles: A lot of people were really upset about Peeta's absence (physically and then psychologically) in Mockingjay. I missed Peeta, don't get me wrong, but I really appreciated this opportunity for Katniss to realize what she had in Peeta and to fight for him as he had done for her. Through really awful circumstances she learns how to love him unconditionally, and I think that's beautiful.
• Real characters: I really appreciate Collins portraying Katniss as a real, imperfect person. She doesn't always say the right things, think the right things, want the right things. She's conflicted. She gets angry. She's selfish at times. She often wants to give up. The story is so much more powerful because our heroine struggles, and even at the end she's not perfect. She's depressed, cautious, and scared, but she learns how to keep going anyway. To me that is much more inspiring than a character who does everything right and then lives happily ever after. That's just not real. But Katniss' story is real, and I can connect with it.

There are lots of other little things I love about Mockingjay, but these are the big three. Maybe they can help you appreciate the book a bit more. It really is a beautiful ending to a difficult story.

Also, I just saw Catching Fire in theaters. It was AWESOME! So true to the story. You should definitely see it! :-)