Ah, Steph, that does make sense. I figured there had to be some purpose to her ploy, but hadn't put that together with Coin's perception of Katniss as a threat. Thank you!

Well, after Katniss "voted," Haymitch was next to vote, and her narration says "This is the moment, then. When we find out exactly just how alike we are, and how much he truly understands me." To me that says (1) that there was something to her vote that Haymitch had to understand (versus it being a plain old "yes" vote), and (2) that her vote was calculated in order to pull something off, because she wanted Haymitch to understand it -- remember, he was a fairly big stealthy planner of sneaky shit (i.e., working with the rebels during the Quarter Quell to get the tributes out of the arena, but not telling Katniss). If you want someone sneaky to understand what you're doing, that implies that you're doing something sneaky, too.

There's just so much darkness in Mockingjay. Finding out what the victors had to face after they won broke my heart (especially for Haymitch and Finnick). I kept looking for the tiniest bit of happiness somewhere in the book and that just didn't happen. They just kept piling on the heartbreak - Cinna, Madge, Darius, the redheaded Avox girl, the two escapees from Catching Fire, all dead. Finnick and Prim destroyed me.

what everyone else said--it really upset me when Katniss voted "yes" to future Hunger Games at the end, even if later I figured it was a ploy to keep in the good graces of Coin so that she could keep the "get to kill Snow" (or, not) card.

At the same time, in a twisty dark way, I loved that it had come to that, them voting on it, etc. It was so fucked up and awesomely bad. And I liked THAT, depressing as it was, better than some of the other depressing stuff that happened which just seemed gratuitous.

But I definitely liked Hunger Games best, of the trilogy, yes.

Slate is discussing the Hunger Games trilogy: [link]

My copy of Blameless just arrived! My motivation to focus on my day job? Very very low.

Why is it coming out on Wednesday instead of Tuesday? That's weird. I will try to pick it up then, which will be good timing since I'm about to finish my Discworld Watch reading.

My copy is estimated to arrive tomorrow but for some reason there is no tracking information.

My copy of Blameless just arrived!

I didn't pick mine up from the library until today, so I hope that assuages your jealousy somewhat.

I am, however, about to start reading it. In about 5 minutes.

(Mwah ha ha ha ha!!!)

Um. Did I mention work is slow right now, and I'm working from home today?

Now I just need to not succumb to the temptation to turn to the back of the book and see how it ends. No matter how much I want to know if Certain Issues have been resolved.