From Books to Television

Latimer: I just saw the Game of Thrones Season 3 trailer this week. God, it looks good! Mostly it reminded me of the brilliance of Tyrion Lannister.

He must be the top reason for watching Game of Thrones. He’s my top reason at least. He’s witty, intelligent and calculating. He’s not good by any means, he’s in it for himself, but you have to respect him like you can’t respect many of the other characters, because Tyrion knows how to play the game. 

His dwarfism makes him an unsuspecting player, it defines him a little at the start, but eventually he just becomes one of those characters almost Sherlock-like in his quickness. He’s got the best comebacks and in Peter Dinklage’s hands he is portrayed in such a cool way. Every moment he’s on screen, you find yourself screaming; “You rock!”

I’m starting to think about the quality of TV shows lately and how some books and comic book series make excellent TV shows.

I heard that Lauren Oliver’s Delirium series (which shamefully I have but haven’t read yet! Grr, bad Latimer!), is being made into a TV series instead of a movie.

Supposedly there is a lot in it that is more suited to TV than a movie. I think Game of Throne’s is the same, it makes an excellent TV show, but lots of the richness (and grim roughness) would have been lost in a movie.

And of course The Walking Dead is a comic book series that makes a fantastic TV show (that I have yet to fully watch, I’m so behind! :( )

I wonder what Harry Potter the TV series would have been like? In a parallel world where it was a TV series, maybe produced by HBO with astronomical financing and effects (and I bet it was epic!).

The Vampire Diaries makes a good TV series, but it would have been a bad movie. And then I do think that Hunger Games and Twilight make better movies (the TV series’ would have been a bit too drawn out). 

And then there’s The Sandman by Neil Gaiman. I’m reading it at the moment (and enjoying it, but that’s a later post!), and I keep thinking… ‘this would be a great TV series’. Apparently it’s one of those ‘it’s on, it’s off’ series. But… wow, seriously, watch out for it if it ever comes!

It seems to be a good time for TV! I can’t wait to hear of the next series to make it onto the little screen! Derek Landy’s Skulduggery, or Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl maybe? They might be fun to have running through our weeks :)

 

Silver Linings

In which Latimer finds something sparkly to love!

Latimer: I watched the Golden Globes this week; I don’t know why really, maybe the universe was trying to tell me about Silver Linings Playbook?

I was sitting with a cup of tea, chatting and complaining to my flatmate, Orbie (typical behaviour when watching awards ceremonies). The camera panned the room and stopped briefly on Jennifer Lawrence sitting with Bradley Cooper.

I paused.

“What’s going on here?” I said, intrigued (firstly I thought they had gone together so I was confused, thinking… what… what about Peeta?! Haha). Orbie, shrugged and went back to messing on her phone.

As the ceremony went on, I learned why Jennifer Lawrence was sitting beside Bradley Cooper… Silver Linings Playbook! But what was that exactly?

Well from the brief trailers I saw, I decided to see the movie and find out!

And…  I am in love with it! It’s one of those things whereby I’m overtaken by a desire to scream from a cyber-rooftop – “This is great!”

I texted Ridley –“ Watch this! You gotta watch this!”

It’s such a good story line, the characters are fun and quirky and, wow, all the actors are amazing.

Bradley Cooper’s acting is absolutely jaw-dropping. He’s gorgeous of course, but in this film he isn’t playing the good looking character, he’s playing this broken, delusional, bi-polar person, who’s manic and funny and sad all at the same time. He does such an amazing job.

For definite, Silver Linings Playbook is going in my favourite’s pile; with the books and the movies and all the sparkly things I have collected over the years.

When they dig me out from under the pile (when I’ve gone feral and incoherent; “my preciousssesss!”); they’ll be scraping Lord of the Rings DVDs and old Doctor Who episodes off me, and I’ll struggle out of their hands, dressed in clothes I’ve fashioned from the pages of Harry Potter books, clutching a DVD of Silver Lining’s Playbook, screaming:

“Excelsior!!”

Artist Spotlight: mseregon

deviantid_by_mseregon-d55ou3dOne of our favourite artists on deviantart, mseregon, is current creating a new series of drawings which we’ve been following! We pop over often to see what new image has been uploaded. What is this series I hear you ask? It’s a brilliant idea, she’s drawing women who are main characters in various fantastic novels that she’s read. Fan art is such a fantastic way to express and share your feelings with others about a particular book and to extend your time in the world of the characters. So this series is fan art at it’s finest.

Ridley: I just love the way mseregon picks one colour per character and implements it in various parts of the picture, simplistic but very beautiful and effective! It’s also given me more of an appreciate for how many brilliant, strong female main characters there are now in literature. I don’t know why, but when I was much younger, I seemed to find it hard to find books without male leads. Not so now!!

Latimer: I’ve really been enjoying this series so much! mseregon has such a wealth of book knowledge behind her; she’s always picking such great characters to draw! Every time she uploads a new image I’m over in her gallery :) The one colour per character really works so well, very graphic (I can’t wait for the next images!!). 

Here we’ve been given permission to share her pictures with you. Each image has a link to it’s place on her gallery so if you’d like to you can pop over to see more, leave a comment or just tell her how great she is! :)

First up we’ve Katniss from the Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. If you haven’t read these books, definitely check them out!  A great series and the reason behind the new popularity in dystopian novels at the moment!

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Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Our favourite novel with one of the best independent, smart female main characters ever, and not to mention the ultimate fictional crush that can be found in the swoon-worthy Mr Darcy! Elizabeth’s dress is adorable in this and the colour is so pretty.

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Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre :) by Charlotte Bronte. There is something very beautiful about Jane’s plainness.  The grey-blue really suits the character of Jane. This picture conjures up a great image of such a strong character. Makes us want to delve back into Charlotte’s world!

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Karou from Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor. With her dramatic blue hair in the book, it is the absolutely perfect colour to have picked for her picture. Her laid back pose in this is just brilliant. The book by Laini is a real page turner, some really magical world building to be found in it too.

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Tris from Divergent by Veronica Roth. Now we are both ashamed to say we haven’t read these books yet! They are on our list!! This picture definitely peeks our interest, if we hadn’t already bought the books, we would be a-buying after this. Tris looks like one kick-ass character!

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Sookie from The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris. Everyone knows Sookie by now, even if you haven’t read the books you’ve surely seen True Blood, with the  handsome Eric Northman?

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Tessa from The Infernal Devices series by Cassandra Clare. If you are currently clueless as to who this is and have never heard of Cassandra Clare, for shame! Get thee to a bookshop, or Amazon! I would recommend City of Bones as your first venture into the Shadowhunter Chronicles.

The purple is really spectacular in this and it’s very similar to how I’ve pictured Tessa too!

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Alina from Shadow and Bone of The Grisha series by Leigh Bardugo. Honestly can’t say too much about this yet, it’s one of the next books on the reading list… really can’t wait, it looks like a fantastic story!! Alina looks brilliant in her regal gown :)

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Claire Fraser from the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon. The frills of her dress and her hair are brilliant. Again….Outlander is a series that we need to check out, mseregon is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to book ideas!

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And finally, Temperance from Legend Unleashed by M. Latimer-Ridley…. yes, us! Wow. We were surprised and so happy when one of the next images in the series was our Temperance Levinthal! Look at her, the pose really captures her nonchalant personality!

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This isn’t the end of the series, not yet! mseregon has a few more images up her sleeve, we’ll be certain to follow along until the end!

Look up at them all, they’re so pretty!

If you want to keep up-to-date on mseregon’s works or get some really brilliant book suggestions: you can follow her on twitter, tumblr or deviantart!

Happiness Curve

IMGLatimer and I have a happiness curve. Well, it should be a happiness slope really. It goes from the lofty level of the thrilled ‘Huzzah’ and plummets down to the blue depths of the ‘Bleugh’. We thought we were great, making up the name, ‘happiness curve’ but after a quick Google search, it turns out it’s already in existence…darn it. But! This is our version, and it’s a little different.

While both ends represent happiness in the usual curve, with ours, one end is total happiness and the other is…not. Both points are so extreme, only sounds can truly express them. There are, of course, little steps along the sloping road, the ‘that was epic!’ the ‘yay, yay!’, the ‘oh noo!’ and the ‘why me!’.

 happiness curve

Throughout the process of our book being published, Latimer and I have swung from both extremes, pinged and ponged from one to the other. From when we finished writing it with premature ‘huzzahs’ to the double synchronised ‘bleughs’ as we forced ourselves to format, ‘one more time’.

Despite this though, skating up and down the slope has to be one of the most exhilarating and fun experiences that we’ve had in our short lives. We’ve had the ecstatic arrival of our book cover, where we spent over a week frequently wandering around staring at the image with dopey smiles while bumping into people, poles, bins and getting tangled in dog leads. To the following week where we nursed the resulting bruises, and started the brain-hurting job of teasing out the tangles within our manuscript.

But publishing is not the only place you’ll find happiness curves; there are those that occur within a really good book, well mini ones anyway. Actually, it is always more of a happiness squiggle. Once sucked into another world, you can roll along through moments of sqwee-ing, jealousy, danger, action and sadness. It can often be like a rollercoaster. This fantastic ride is something we’ve always strived to achieve in our own writing. So we hope you enjoy the skating along the happiness squiggle within our book, Legend Unleashed (which you could win in our new giveaway, see below!).

Huzzah!! Free things! :D

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Don’t forget to click and enter the LEGEND UNLEASHED GIVEAWAY, ah go on, you know you want to. Click it! Haha. :D

Do you have a happiness curve, squiggle, line or circle? We love to hear about all your different shapes and where you are on them!

Internet Hiking

Latimer and Ridley are off on a wintry adventure!! :)

Latimer and Ridley are off on a wintry adventure!! :)

Latimer and Ridley are wrapping up warm this December (got cool new winter fashion and everything!).We’re leaving our internet camp to go trekking across the webs to visit other blogs! HUZZAH!
We’ll have guest posts, promotions, interviews and reviews. It will to be interesting! We’ll make new friends, say hello to people and (terrifyingly) find out what people think of ‘The Book’.
If you won’t get a chance to wander with us, make sure to stay tuned here anyway, as we’ll have our own little give away! Yay, free things! :D They’ll be purdy things too, even we don’t own these yet, though we want to!
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Virtual Book Tour December 1 – December 15
December 1 - Reading Addiction Blog Tours – Meet and Greet
December 2 - Paulette’s Papers - Guest Post/PROMO
December 3 - My Cozie Corner- Review
December 4 - Little Book Star - PROMO
December 5 - Read Review Smile - Review
December 6 - Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews - Review/Interview
December 7 - Pure Textuality - Guest Post/PROMO
December 8 – Fuonlyknew - Review/PROMO (Thank you to Laura for having us and letting us do a giveaway! :) )
December 10 - A Dream Within a Dream - Review
December 11 - Magical Manuscripts - Review
December 15 – James T Kelly - Interview (Thank you to James for letting us gate-crash his blog for an interview!)
December 17- Magical Manuscript Interview - Interview (Return to Magical Manuscripts for a belated interview – thank you to Sandy for having us again! Hope we didn’t wreck the place :) )
______________________________________________________________________
If you’ve just tuned in and don’t know what the fudge we’re going on about; what is this ‘The Book’? Why must you warble on so?
Well here’s a quick introduction:
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Now go here to read the first few chapters! If you’re still interested! :D

Legend Unleashed Chapters 1 & 2

Latimer and Ridley: The clock is ticking down to our publishing date! Soon!!

Following on from the prologue in our last post, which if you haven’t read you can find it here, this week we’re posting chapters one and two of our book, Legend Unleashed!  We hope you like them! We’d love all and any feedback. Stay tuned, as more chapters will follow these in the next couple of weeks. We’ve also created another shorter teaser trailer, with new scenes in it, which will be released later in the week!

Legend Unleashed Chapter 1&2

For those of you who prefer our rambling posts on random things than our current ones (we know not everyone is interested in all things bookie!), we will get back to those!!

The Bram Stoker festival is coming up soon, which we will both be attending and we’ll report back! We’re also going to a small gig by the band, Bastille, this week (our excellent friend Orbie says they’re on the up and up, one to watch! It’s great to be ‘in the know’ about these things!! Haha :D )

So we’ll keep you posted!

MLR

Legend Unleashed Prologue

Latimer and Ridley have had a surprisingly busy weekend.

Latimer and Ridley: We got our book-proofs back on Saturday morning and have been working hard getting them ready to be sent back to our editor for ebook formatting!

It’s been a lot of work, but we’re getting there!

Slowly coming close to D-Day or MLR-Day!

We just want to share our prologue with everyone! A few chapters to follow soon :)

Please enjoy and let us know what you think :)

The clock is ticking….

Legend Unleashed Prologue

One Lovely Versatile Blogger Award

We’d like to thank Livvy @ Nerdy Book ReviewsChristina and Steven Leo Campbell for nominating us for the ‘Versatile Blogger Award’ and the ‘One Lovely Blog Award’. We’ve had so much fun blogging over the last year. It’s fantastic and humbling to have been nominated for these awards! It also gives us a chance to share, ‘random facts about MLR’. 

These are the rules:

Nominees must: Tell seven things about themselves, pass the award on to 15 other blogs and thank the person who nominated them for the award. Also no one is obligated to take the award, so don’t feel you have to accept it.

And so it begins……….

Caesar Flickerman stepped up to the stage, the lights blinding him. He straightened his tie. A stage-hand appeared at his shoulder, talking into a headset; “1mins to go!” he warned, ducking away in a hurry. Flickerman shuffled the papers in his hand, he took a deep breath. The intro music started to play.

5…4… 3… 2…1…

He ran a hand through his blue hair.

“Show time!”

He stepped out to greet the crowd, “Are you all ready?” They cheered.

“Let’s introduce our guests! Latimer and Ridley!”

Two girls dressed in red, fiery dresses appeared on the stage. The crowd rose to it’s feet screaming…

Caesar guided the girls to their seats. “Ladies, congratulations on not one, but three nominations! How do you feel?”

“Thank you Caesar.” Ridley slipped into her seat and fanned her tears away. “We’re so happy. We’d like to give a shout-out to Livvy, Christina and Steven! Without them none of this could have happened.”

“Shout out!” Latimer screamed randomly. Ridley shushed her. “Shout out…” she whispered out of the corner of her mouth.

Caesar waved towards them with a flourish. “So, Latimer, Ridley, how about you tell us all some interesting facts about yourselves!”

Ridley scratched her head with a confused frown. “Oh, well I love ketchup! I put it on everything!” She gave a rapid nod and swung her arm. “Mash potato, curries, I’ve even had ketchup flavoured Pringles, they were lovely-”

“They were disgusting,” Latimer interrupted, punching the air.

“To you!” Ridley crossed her arms with a pout, then pressed on, “I wear fluffy socks in bed.”  She wiggled her feet, her sparkly high-heels caught the light and flashed out at the audience. The people in the front row covered their eyes with a grimace. Ridley shot them an apologetic shrug. “I recently found out this is actually weird as supposedly very few other people do this.”

“Sweaty feet! Stinky,” Latimer tittered.

“Quiet you!” Ridley coughed, ”Don’t mind her. Another, semi-interesting thing about me is I have an obsession with stationary, I love pens, colouring pencils, highlighters, A4 pads, notebooks…” Her list petered off as a dreamy expression crossed her face. She shook herself from her stupor and frowned. “I hate to see pages torn out of a properly bound notebook (where the pages aren’t meant to be torn out, not like in a spiral one) Latimer knows of this particular OCD!”

“Don’t dog-ear my books; number one rule of borrowing from Ridley. I am always afraid when reading her paperbacks- must not break the spine, she’ll kill me,” Latimer added. Ridley nodded in agreement and slashed a finger across her neck with a wide grin.

Ridley pointed at Caesar. “I’m scared of clowns.”

He frowned at her. “I’m not a clown.”

“Hmmm…you’re very colourful.” Her pointing finger hovered in front of his face.

Latimer slapped her hand down. “Don’t mind her Caesar. She loves you really, she’s just a suspicious sort.”

“Of course! Of course…” Caesar gave a forgiving smile and smoothed back his blue hair.

Ridley rubbed her hand. “I find clowns quite creepy, with their wide smiles and abilities to squeeze into small spaces like mini cars. I also hate heights, which rules out all extreme sports to do with being up high and generally falling. Spiders make my skin crawl, this hatred of them started as a child. I read that in a year we all swallow six spiders in our sleep.” Everyone cringed. “As to mice, I have no problem with them, I think they’re cute and I often save them from my sadistic cat!”

“Imagine swallowing six mice a year…” Latimer added. Ridley shuddered.

Ridley scratched her head and then brightened. ”My last interesting point or not…I’ve tried in the past to become a morning person, force the dawn cheeriness into me. I can really appreciate the beauty of a rising sun, however not matter how many times I’ve tried, I wander around like a bleary-eyed bear for the first few hours after getting up. I prefer night time! I think I’ll just have to stick to sunsets!”

“When we used to live together during college years, I was afraid of Ridley in the morning. I would be up eating my breakfast watching kids cartoons, and she would walk out of her room, like she was furious with the world,” Latimer nodded.

“And Latimer, tell us some interesting facts about yourself,” Caeser smiled.

“Righty-oh. Ahem; I love red things; given the chance at any option I will always pick the red thing- food, item etc. I love red me.”

She held out her hand counting off the various points. “Ridley says I look like a rabbit when I cross the road- darting and scuttling. She yanks me back from cars when they are about to run me over! Also, if other people around me start running I will automatically also start running (I don’t need to know the reason, I’ll just do it!).

I get obsessed very quickly with random things (face cream and body lotion, namely Burt’s Bees), countries (Japan..) and stories (eg. comic book characters backstories). I will find out everything about said obsession- I will often tell people, I am a fountain of useless information.A sponge for the unimportant.

“It’s true. A giant sponge.” Ridley held her hands out wide.

Latimer tapped her chin with a long pale finger.“My obsessions often have no rhyme or reason; currently I love Sons of Anarchy and contrasting that, I’m crazy about girly anime (shoujo) and asian dramas. :) Most recently; I’m obsessed with San Diego Comic Con. We both really want to go!”

“If you win the games,” Caesar said with a grin. The crowd errupted with laughter and applause.

“Games?” Latimer glanced at Ridley. She shrugged.

“Err, okay… anyway, another random fact- I have a bamboo plant in my room… his name is Herbert.

If I lock a door, I will leave the door walk away then run back to check it’s locked, up to, but not limited to 3 times. No.. I don’t have OCD. No.. I don’t have OCD. No.. I don’t have OCD….

Once I did a tandem sky-dive and a canyon swing- I didn’t ever realise it, but I could be an adrenaline junkie if I lived in a place that had these things on the doorstep! Ridley will watch me fall from the sky with an expression on her face that says she’s going to be sick. I’ll scream ‘look at me!!!!!!’ as I plummet with a smile on my face.”

“Death wish…” Ridley muttered with a shiver.

“I often make up words; when I go to bed, I don’t say goodnight to people, I say good-noooot… and sometimes I say ‘good-noooot lemon spoot’ I don’t know why.”

“Cause you’re nuuuuts….” Ridley giggled with a hand over her mouth and then gasped as she got a sharp elbow in the stomach from Latimer. “Ooh, me intestines…”

“That’s pretty much all I can think of,” Latimer said with a thoughtful look. There was a small pause, Caesar smiled at them both. Ridley had started playing with her dress, spinning the cloth and making small fires dance up her leg.

“Pretty…”  she sighed. When she looked up and the crowd was staring, she patted the fires down with a dreamy smile, “Haha, yep, nothing more to add.”

Caesar clapped and the crowd joined in, bringing the interview to an end. Flickerman leaned forward in his chair, the leather creaked.

“One final question ladies… are you ready to play the Hunger Games?”

Ridley smiled, “Of course…” She looked confused for a moment, her expression unsure. Her eyes widened and she turned sharply. “Wait… what?”

Latimer jumped to her feet, a manic look on her face. Diving off the stage, she shoved all the strangely dressed people out of the way, screaming,  “I’m out of here! You’ll never take me alive!!”

Ridley scrambled away from Caesar. Her heels snagged on her dress and she fell face first off the stage. Leaping up, she stared round with wide eyes at the vibrant colours and weird outfits of the audience and shrieked. “Aah, clowns!”

She hitched up her dress and raced after Latimer.

“Wait for me rabbit girl!!”

The Book Soundtrack

Latimer: So I finished Mockingjay last Friday. The fire burned swift and fierce. I totally ate that book. I started reading at 8pm and finished by 1.30am (minus aimless wandering time and tea breaks, ‘can’t talk people, Katniss has a rebellion to finish, and I can only just spare enough time to make tea!’).

Orbie only started Mockingjay on Thursday this week; and she was hard pushed to even start. The fire died in her quickly; she was very, ‘neh’ about it after she had raced through Catching Fire. I thought about it as she asked, “Is it any good? Should I bother?”

Baffled I asked, “How can you not read it after you invested all the time? In fairness, don’t you want to know what happens in the relationship?”

She shrugged, “That’s probably all I care about now.” I nodded (it was pretty much all I cared about too).

Anyway, her reading it had me thinking back over it.

It was good, the series as a whole, of course I had enjoyed it. But wasn’t the ending very lacklustre? The relationship only really ended on, “we are both broken, let’s be broken together”. The big showdown never really happened. I feel like I wouldn’t be alone in thinking that as a reader I had been let down a bit.

There weren’t any significant relationship moments that left you clutching your chest, sobbing, “beautiful, perfect”.

The ending was very rushed in the sense that; they got together, in time they healed and then everything was as good as it could have been. But, did we not deserve more of an insight? It left me disappointed, not overly so but still, disappointed.

I wonder will the movies kindle more of a relationship-fire?

Moving from on from the books; I happened upon a soundtrack. Here enter-th my other great love, music (the stories with sounds!).

I just stumbled onto it (maybe you’ve heard it before) it’s called: The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond. It’s the official companion soundtrack to the movie with songs, from various bands, relating to the Hunger Games. Now I’m not 100% sure if they wrote them especially for the movie (but some of them must have done, because they talk about ‘daddy working in the mines’ and specifically ‘mockingjay’).

The thing that caught me was I really liked the people that sung/wrote for it: The Low Anthem, Arcade Fire, Birdy and The Civil Wars! Wow, I thought, I must give this a go! Sting also did a song “Deep in the Meadow”; that’s Katniss’ song right? Sting… my god. (I don’t like it, but hey, Sting, I am impressed!)

It got me thinking about how often I ascribe a song to a specific character (book, movie TV show etc). You know when you are listening away and you start thinking, ah that’s such and such singing about this, that and the other.

Did anyone come up with any songs for the Hunger Games? I had a go (I was listening to Lana Del Rey’s album a lot; so that’s why it’s two of her songs!)-

(Katniss singing about the Games and Peeta; it works, born to die)

(Katniss after the Games- I like the ‘sweet like cinnamon part, cos it’s like a baker, Haha…)

Back to the ‘actual’ soundtrack; Taylor Swift sings a song with The Civil Wars (Safe and Sound), which is beautiful. I have never heard a Taylor Swift song before (I know nothing about her, except the following: she’s young (-er than me!), American, blonde-?, Kanye West badmouthed her at an awards do once- I think).

Her voice works so well with the country tones of The Civil Wars. I feel like they add a lot of maturity to the song because the song she sings on her own is awful (Eyes Open), very teeny; it’s so false, it hasn’t got any sense of being ‘real’ or from the heart. It’s so over-produced. It’s actually grating; it has no place with the rest of the songs.  

The Civil Wars by the way are amazing; they are just a girl and guy with a guitar (if you ever have a chance to see them live, seriously go, they are excellent). They are so in sic with each other it’s amazing; they should be together (this is how it always goes, trying to pair people off), but they are actually happily to other people *sigh*! It’s like they are unromantic, musical soul-mates; perfect harmony. This song is very sweet and lovely; it does reflect Katniss and the Games very well. Also, the song The Civil Wars sing on their own is very beautiful too (Kingdom Come).

Glen Hansard also has a song on the album; he is an Irish singer/songwriter. Who won an Academy Award for his co-written song ‘Falling Slowly’ on the film Once (it’s beautiful): and he used to be in the Irish band The Frames. He’s actually really good, but my god, his song… Take the Heartland, which people think describes Cato; is terrible, it’s just terrible! It’s a sound so unlike his usual self.

‘Come away to the water’ by Maroon 5 (which in my head I just called Macaroon 5!); is another great song. It just conjures up the images of the grim, brutal districts and the oppressive Capitol.

Arcade Fire’s song ‘Abraham’s Daughter’ has an undertone, rift in it that sounds like it was in the movie. The initial rift sounds like the Hunger Games to me (like the theme for Harry Potter is Hedwig’s theme).

But my absolute FAVOURITE song on this lovely soundtrack is ‘Lover Is Childlike’ by The Low Anthem. Oh, I love them. It’s a heart wrenching song. The tone, his voice… it’s perfect.

Sometimes I think songs are like books; you find a great one and you think you’ll never see the like again. But time passes and new ones come.

Susanne Collins is very lucky; these bands actually did songs about her world! It’s amazing; it’s a brilliant idea. The book soundtrack; brilliant! Let me know what you think of the songs! Give them a go; well worth musing over who/what they might be singing about!

Sleep vs. Book: the cost of addiction

Latimer: Two nights in a row I’ve been up until 1.30am. And that’s not good when you have to get up at 7am!

I ended up watching episode 2 of Game of Thrones on Tuesday night. It was pretty crap actually- too much talking and gratuitous sex. My flatmate (Orbie) made a very good point about the sex, “why is it never the ones we want to see naked?”

“Fair point,” I said. “Like Robb Stark.”

Orbie nodded, “And Jon Snow- the hottest things in the show.”

Silently, I nodded, this is true, but then I chirped up, “And Jaime Lannister?”

She didn’t reply. Is it just me? I’m going to wait for Ridley to shoot me down on that (I don’t expect her to, but the heart of a woman is a fickle thing. We find beauty in strange places at times and expect others to loudly declare they are sisters in arms with us, when in actuality they look at us with scorn and reproach! But then in turn, we’ll do the same thing when they come forward and admit their guilty pleasure!).

Anyway, so we watched Game of Thrones.

Then, I headed to bed to finish reading Book 2 of the Hunger Games (it wasn’t my intention initially to finish it, but that’s what happened- like a crack addict I OD’d on reading). I stumbled, bleary-eyed to the bathroom at 1am (1 chapter left at this point). As I passed Orbie’s room, the light was on (this was weird). “Hmm,” I thought. Then shrugged, stumbling back to my room to finish gobbling down Book 2.

I woke up the next morning in a hazy half-dream state. I thought I was in the games for a minute, in some weird trippy after-effects of late-night reading. I shook my head and struggled off to make my breakfast. It was a while before Orbie materialised, clawing her way out of her room like a drunk, doped-up koala. She stood blinking in the kitchen, “I’m so tired!” she moaned. “My eyes are burning! I can’t keep them open!”

I nodded, munching my toast. “Hmm, I know what you mean I was up last night reading.” Pause. “What time did you go to bed at?”

“2am!” she cried, using her fingers to hold her eyes open.

“What were you doing?” I inquired. My mind connecting the dots… I wondered….

“Reading.”

“What?” I pressed.

“Hunger Games Book 2!” she said with a sheepish smile, as if I would shoot her down.

“I knew it! Me too,” I squealed.

I told her I’d been up the previous night too. She asked if I had the one’s with the crap, horrible, garish covers (yes).

She scowled, “Those covers make it look like you are reading a kids book about aliens.”

I told her about how Ridley and I had gone to the bookshop after the movie (I’ll set the scene: movie ends, Ridley turns, a knowing smile on her face; “bookshop” she asks, but it’s not really a question. I squeal like a child on too much sugar “YEEY!”- she knows me too well).

Orbie levelled a knowing look at me, “I told you, you would like it” (she had seen the film the previous week and told me, “you’d like it; it’s very good”).

I sigh, “Yeah, yeah, you and Ridley!”

Then, Orbie and I stumbled off our separate ways to work.

I’m saving Book 3 for the weekend. I have it under lock and key. I have to, I need sleep!

My name is Latimer and I’ve been Hunger Games free since 1.30am on Wednesday.