When I was trying to build my Best of list… and failed miserably to find 5 movies I would count as “best of 2012″ I realized that there were far more movies that were, let’s face it, really not good.
Thus, I present my worst 5 of 2012 for movies. Most of these I have seen on DVD, and most I have regretted doing so.
Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Anyone picking up this book expecting version of The Hunger Games will be extremely shocked by what they read. Both books are centered around a game that forces young people to kill each other, but, beyond some incidental similarities, these two books are about as different as night and day.
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.
Battle Royale (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Today was movie day. Unfortunately, it just was not the movie I was expecting to see today.
(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)
150 px (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Over the course of three days, I managed to start and finish two books. It was worth it to complete The Hunger Games trilogy. It impressed me that I was so engrossed in both books that I actually drained my Nook Tablet battery… twice.
Football (soccer) fans watching an England match in a cinema, UK. Screen is displaying an HD-1 picture. Deutsch: Fußballfans sehen ein Englandspiel im Kino, Vereinigtes Königreich. Bild auf Leinwand von HDTV-Übertragung durch HD-1. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My dad wants to see The Hunger Games with me. This does not have me happy.
The Hunger Games (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I volunteer! I volunteer as a tribute!
Katness Everdeen (played by Jennifer Lawrence)
The Hunger Games
January has come and gone. As I write this, I am in the late hours of the 31st waiting for the first.
As of the end of January, I have completed 16 books towards my goal of 100 books in 366 days (or, if you’re following my Goodreads.com count, 114 books in 366 days… it does not distinguish between books and graphic novels).
The big surprises of the month had to be One For The Money by Janet Evanovich and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. I picked both up because of upcoming movie versions of both (and, for The Hunger Games, an excessive amount of praise from co-workers who read it). Neither one is really the type of book that I would normally pick up for various reasons. But I was very pleased with reading both, even to the point of spending a few late nights reading both. The sequels of both are already on my Nook wish list.
Also surprising was Changes by Jim Butcher. The issue with this book was not that it was bad or anything. I had read all of Butcher’s Harry Dresden books (I still say the weakest is the first one, Storm Front). The problem I had with this book was that I unfortunately read the back cover of his latest Dresden book, Ghost Story, which gives away the ending of this book. If you are reading this series, DO NOT READ THE BACK COVER OF GHOST STORY! In spite of this foreknowledge, I was completely drawn into this book.
The disappointment of the month would be The Court of the Air by Stephen Hunt. It isn’t that it is a bad book. The problem is that it throws a lot of concepts at you all at once and forces you to wade through them to keep the story clear. I found myself getting lost often trying to keep track of not only the main characters, but also who (and what) they encounter along the way.
Now that January is over, I’ll be pressing on with my task, rolling over the books I have yet to finish into this month. Already started are Hunt Among the Killers of Men, the fifth book in the Gabriel Hunt pulp adventure series, along with a return to Piers Anthony’s world of Xanth with The Source of Magic, along with Steppe, another Anthony novel.
Blog at WordPress.com. Theme: Mystique by digitalnature.
