Yes, I Carry a Book in My Purse

This Mary Engelbreit poster was produced in the mid-1990s, which were some of my most impressionable years and a time when books were honestly my very best friends.

I was notorious for reading at the dinner table, in the car, in the bathtub for hours til my fingers were pruny-er than anyone thought possible. I would read in my bed way past bedtime, under the covers with a flashlight. I would read walking down the halls at school and even walked headfirst into a pole once because I wasn't paying attention to where I was going.

Yes, I was that girl. The living definition of NERD.

My mom pokes fun of me because I still, to this day, carry a book in my purse everywhere I go.

She also frequently brings up the time my chemistry teacher called me at home because he forgot his teacher's edition at school and knew I'd be the *one* student that brought my chemistry book home - despite the fact that we didn't have any homework in his class that night.

NERD.

Right now I am reading a book that I would totally walk into a pole reading. It's called The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins. Everyone has been buzzing about it at school and I don't know what the heck took me so long to pick it up!



It is a cross between The Giver, by Lois Lowry (one of my ALL TIME favs) and a Clive Cussler novel, if only for the incredible action and adventure that is packed on every page.

I started it yesterday at about 2 in the afternoon, and by 5:30 I was on page 247. I simply couldn't tear myself away. I didn't eat lunch. I had to make myself put it down to get in the shower. And then I sat on my bed with sopping wet hair reading it until my hair was dry.

I'm a little ashamed to admit this, but I actually let out a squeal of delight and anticipation ("EEEEE!!!") when I finished the cliffhanger second section.

Not to be lazy, but I can't write a synopsis better than they did at Scholastic publishing. Here's the back cover blurb:

Twenty-four are forced to enter. Only the winner survives.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. Each year, the districts are forced by the Capitol to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the Hunger Games, a brutal and terrifying fight to the death – televised for all of Panem to see.

Survival is second nature for sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who struggles to feed her mother and younger sister by secretly hunting and gathering beyond the fences of District 12. When Katniss steps in to take the place of her sister in the Hunger Games, she knows it may be her death sentence. If she is to survive, she must weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

Amazing, right? Put it at the top of your reading list.

Even if you're not a nerd, you'll love it so much I bet you'll even carry it around in your purse.

UPDATE: JUST FINISHED IT AT 11:29 PM. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT START BOOK 1 UNLESS YOU HAVE BOOK 2 ON HAND! I AM GOING NUTS WONDERING WHAT HAPPENS NEXT!!! DO YOU THINK 24 HOUR WAL-MART SELLS THE SEQUEL?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Now I know:
If you have never said "Excuse me" to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time. ~Sherri Chasin Calvo