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Lee

https://calliestales.wordpress.com/

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Lee is Currently Reading

Lee is currently reading

Dark Matter

by Blake Crouch (Goodreads Author)

bookshelves: currently-reading

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Jan 20, 2026 01:22PM

Lee is currently reading

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games, #0)

by Suzanne Collins

bookshelves: young-adult, dystopia, currently-reading

Reading for the 2nd time

read in May 2020

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Lee said: " I did come into this with a negative attitude, but I really wanted to be wrong. I didn't want to be disappointed. I wanted to like this, but this is a book that never should have happened. If it needed to happen, it should have stayed in a parallel u I did come into this with a negative attitude, but I really wanted to be wrong. I didn't want to be disappointed. I wanted to like this, but this is a book that never should have happened. If it needed to happen, it should have stayed in a parallel universe. It didn't need to be in this one.

Coriolanus Snow is eager to be a mentor for the 10th Hunger Games hoping that it will be his chance to make sure the Snow name stays in the mighty-house that it has been for so long. When he is assigned the girl from District 12, he questions if he is going to be able to do it.

First off, why is this a thing? 600 pages and nothing of importance happens. Nothing that made me go, okay sure that's good information. I finished it and thought "this should have been a Wikipedia entry or if anything a descriptive book like Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." Maybe then, it would have been more interesting. At least we could have gotten more information about the other Hunger Games and tributes? I don't know, but this book is pointless.

They really wanted to make Snow a hero, but I'm sorry, hero where? He's still trash in this book. Not to the degree he was in The Hunger Games, but he was still trash which I guess is a good thing because that would have made me angrier, but it also didn't make for a compelling story at all. Here he wasn't a hero, anti-hero or even a villain. I don't think this made me understand his later actions more either. He was incredibly blah throughout this story. He didn't stand out and he was the main focus! So just imagine the side characters. None of them stood out which is baffling considering the amount of memorable characters Collins wrote in the original trilogy. I mean, Buttercup is more memorable than anyone here.

After returning to a series after such a long time, I understand that moments of nostalgia and ties to the original are important, but there were moments when I felt like the nostalgia was thrown in for nostalgia purposes. The announcer for the games was a Flickerman and I know that kids follow in the footsteps of their parents and really probably do in The Capital, but that's an example of one thing that annoyed me and felt like it was thrown in to be thrown in.

It took so long to get to the Hunger Games in this book and as long as it took to get to them, it was over far too fast. Blink and it was over. What could have been an actually interesting part of the book, wasn't. It was so BORING! I think part of it is because it was so different from the Hunger Games readers are familiar with as so much of it was still being developed, but ugh. Seeing it from the mentor side of things is not a way to see the Games. I need that anxiety as they fear for their life. Snow's feelings weren't it, in fact, not really sure he had any during it.

I knew there was going to be a romance in it, but.... no. Just no. It never clicked for me. It was poorly written and felt like it was mainly written for the purpose of explaining his level of hatred to Katniss later on. I didn't get it, I didn't feel it which I think is the name of this book. I didn't feel anything.

So much of this book felt like it was never a story that Collins had imagined as a backstory for Snow while writing the original trilogy, but instead came up with for the purpose of writing this book. So many things felt like they were just snapping puzzle pieces in.

I'm disappointed that this book exists, but more so that I read it. This isn't the backstory I wanted and wished that we had gotten literally any other backstory. ...more "

progress:

(page 0 of 652)
"Welp here we go." — May 20, 2020 08:32AM

May 22, 2020 03:29PM · see review

Lee’s Notes & Highlights

The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur

2 highlights

the way you speak of yourself the way you degrade yourself into smallness is abuse - self-harm

Lee’s Quotes

“Depression isn't a war you win. It's a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It's one bloody fray after another.”
― Shaun David Hutchinson, We Are the Ants

tags: aliens, death, depression, life, loss, love, space, suicide, teen, ya

584 likes

“We read to know we're not alone.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands: A Play

tags: misattributed-to-c-s-lewis, reading

26975 likes

“Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
― Neil Gaiman, Coraline

tags: books, dragons, fairy-tales, inspirational, paraphrasing-g-k-chesterton

45220 likes