Bandwagons

I’m kinda weird when it comes to bandwagons.  Either I’m one of the first people on board and begging others to join… like I was with Harry Potter and now with the Imdalind Series.  OR I see a huge bandwagon and it turns me off… like I was for years with Twilight.  Now anyone who has read my blog at all probably knows what a huge Twilight fan I am now, so as you can see – even though I can sometimes be a hard sell, once I’m sold there is no going back!

So what’s the bandwagon this time?  Well, it’s actually Hunger Games.  See I made the mistake of doing exactly what I warn people against all the time… I judged the book by its movie.  I couldn’t decide whether to read the books, so I went to the movie.  BIG MISTAKE!  I hated the movie!  How could anyone like something so barbaric?  Children being forced to kill other children!  So even though person after person told me I should read them, I wouldn’t do it.  “Those are barbaric!  I won’t support that!”  

I was especially shocked when I learned that the high school kids at the small Christian school where my daughters attend were not only reading the books together as a class, they were taking a field trip to the movie!  Oh, I heard all the arguments:  That Katniss volunteering as tribute was just like Christ taking our place.  That there were bigger themes that taught good lessons, etc.  But I just refused to listen.

I think that the biggest problem with the movie is that it was only the first book.  I had no idea where the series went from there and I wasn’t really interested based on what I’d seen.  I didn’t even know there was a rebellion or any of the following plot.  

It wasn’t until I was sitting in the room with my daughter’s dentist (while waiting for the anesthetic to kick in on my daughter) and we started discussing Harry Potter and then Hunger Games that I even knew anything about the rest.  It was she who pointed out to me that the Capitol had to be set up as so completely barbaric in order for you to realize the reason there HAD to be a revolution.  This was the first time that I had even heard anything about the second 2 books and even though she didn’t give anything away… she did start me thinking that maybe there was more to it than I had given credit.

So did I run right out and read them… nope.  Flash forward about 6 months and my eleven-year-old starts to beg to read the books.  My immediate response was “No way!  Those are barbaric.”  But then another 6 months pass (with her begging periodically all the way) and suddenly her pleas have turned to “So and so is reading them…”  Really?  Ok, well maybe her mom is more liberal than I thought.  Then again “This other girl in my class is reading them…”  Oh… but, I know her mom… I know that she is very careful about what she lets her daughter read…  And of course, there's my sis-in-law, who I love dearly and who usually gives great recommendations on books.... she has been trying forever to get me to read them...

Eventually, it lead to this:  How can hate something I haven't tried?  Especially when people I trust and agree with on values say I should give it a try?  That turns me into the same kind of person that I have raved against in the past... the kind who put down books like Harry Potter and say it teaches witchcraft when they haven't read it to see if it does -- despite the good Christian people who have read it and tell them that it doesn't (me included).  Basically, I felt that unless I at least tried to read Hunger Games, I was the worst kind of hypocrite... the kind who knows they are and doesn't change.

So finally I broke down and got the first book in the series on my Kindle….  

To Be Continued...