Pushed To The Top

Cover of the 2009 expanded edition, ISBN 978-1-4215-2772-3 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

After seeing the movie Battle Royale, I became curious about the story.

As it happened, I lucked out.  Now my latest book acquisition has pushed itself to the top of my to read list.

I managed to find a copy of the novel that the movie was based on at my local Barnes & Noble.  As it happens, I had finished the last of The Hunger Games books, Mockingjay, on Monday, and was looking to start something else.  This was especially so since the number of books I had in progress was dipping close to only three (I know, I read way too much).  As I mentioned in a previous entry, I saw Battle Royale the movie Tuesday, and became curious about the movie.  I knew about the manga series (which I still am looking to pick up), but only vaguely remembered the original novel when I was reading up on the series.  Since it was not available for the Nook, I had to go for a physical copy.

I was fully intended on ordering the book from the store.  This was pretty much because I thought there was no way that the book would actually be on the shelves.  This is not really an indictment of Barnes & Noble, but more on Connecticut as a whole, at least when it comes to shopping.  As it happened, I actually got lucky.  There was one copy of the book on the shelves.  Needless to say, I scooped it up, along with a couple of comic trades and a Tintin book.  I had grown curious about the Tintin series after watching The Adventures of Tintin on DVD the weekend before.  Regardless of which, I had my copy of Battle Royale.  I knew when I picked it up, I would undoubtedly start making comparisons with The Hunger Games series.  I already had started to do that after just seeing the Japanese movie and reading the series.  With the book, I felt I would be able to make a better comparison between them since I would be comparing like to like (or, in this case, book to book).

I did not intend on starting the book until I got home from work.  But then, intentions are just that.  I started reading the forward by author Max Allan Collins.  Then a chapter, then two.  I stopped after 52 pages (not including the Roman numeric forward), having been pulled in that much.  What I had read matched pretty much the introduction of the movie in all it’s violence.  Even at 600 some odd pages, I get the feeling that this will be a pretty fast read.  We’ll have to see about that.

In any case, I feel like I would be better prepared to make a comparison between the two stories once I read Battle Royale.  Undoubtedly, that will be the topic of a future post.

Related articles

• Book Review: Hunger Games vs. Battle Royale (shelflifeofabookseller.com)
• Book Review: Battle Royale by Koushun Takami (leeswammes.wordpress.com)
• Open Letter: The Hunger Games is NOT Battle Royale (justatad.wordpress.com)

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