This holiday season has passed just a bit too quickly for me. I don’t feel refreshed and rejuvenated and ready for another semester; instead, I feel downtrodden and slightly more exhausted than when I left Canada a week ago. But isn’t that what Christmas vacation is all about? Stress? The real time for relaxation is summer; always has been.
I have a few more goals I need to accomplish before this break is allowed to be over. Mainly those goals consist of reading books that are not required literature for my degree in English. So far I have read two mindless sappy romance novels, one book on grammar, and one book I actually liked: The Hunger Games.
Image from here.
I had heard a little bit about this book over the past year, but not enough to convince me to read it any time soon. However, it just so happened to stumble across my path while I was being sick with the Swine Flu in the middle of the desert, and so, with nothing else to do besides wallow in my own pitiful existence, I picked up the book and started reading.
It was good. Real good.
But (and I’m sorry to admit this), despite the book being very wonderful to read, I reached the unfortunate point I always reach when I read a really good book: jealousy. I grew to hate the book; I hated the delicious words that I devoured with fervor—I hated it because somebody else thought to write it before me.
It always happens this way. If Jane Austen were alive today and among my circle of friends (well, I don’t have enough friends to complete an entire circle—more like a line segment of friends, if my Geometry serves me well), I am pretty sure I would claw her eyes out with sheer rage for thinking of Darcy and Willoughby and Emma and Elizabeth before I could. I’m catty like that. J. K. Rowling? C. S. Lewis? Roald Dahl? Lemme at ’em! Rawr!
That’s no way to live a life, I know. Not being able to enjoy the amazing works of art that people have created simply because of my anxiety that I will never be able to create something equally amazing? That’s petty. And foolish. But it’s me.
It is for this very reason that I have procrastinated the starting of the second book in the series. I just know that it’s going to be better than the first, and I don’t think I can handle that kind of intense jealousy in my life right now. I have enough to deal with trying to keep the Happiest Swine Flu on Earth at bay—I don’t need another author to hate right now, when I need to be preserving all my energy for staying alive.
My only consolation is that when I write my own book, I will have a way better cover than this series has. Judging by the cover alone, I am sure I would have never read it if I hadn’t practically been forced to do so.
So, any votes? Should I just suck it up and start book two? Or forget about it and put The Hunger Games behind me for good?
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