16 hours ago
Last week I finished The Hunger Games.
Before I get too far into this review, let me just say that I think there are two types of stories, whether in movies or books – stories that have some sort of driving point (whether inspirational, educational, political, etc.), and then there are stories that are mainly for entertainment, with no clear point. And I think that’s just fine. I can really appreciate both types.
When I decided to go ahead and read The Hunger Games, I was under the impression that it was of the first variety – a story with a point behind it. I heard from multiple sources, people and articles, that The Hunger Games was meant as a “cautionary tale” of what could happen when government or the media get out of control, or of what may happen if we lose our sensitivity to violence as a society.
And I just have to say, having read the book now, I didn’t get any of that.
I see no real point against letting government or media get out of control in the book. Sure, the government and media are out of control in Panem, but I think they have to be to make the plot work. Though I obviously don’t know exactly what the author was trying to portray, as I was reading I didn’t get the feeling the author wrote this book trying to make a point about either media or governmental control. They just seemed like necessary plot elements.
As for the idea that she’s trying to send a message about not losing our sensitivity to violence, if that is so then I think the content of the book is rather counter-productive. Deaths are described in detail, and it’s one of the more violent books I’ve read. Generally speaking, the more violence we are exposed to in books and movies the more danger we are in of becoming insensitive to it, so I can’t say I think this book is all that helpful on that point.
If a book is going to have a message behind it, there has to be some dialogue or scenes in the book that really drive the point home – and I kept waiting for it, but it never came. There were vague stirrings of a point here and there, and I kept thinking that maybe this is where “cautionary” message I expected to read would be addressed, but nothing that I would consider solid was ever said.
If there was a point that the author was trying to make, it was weakly portrayed. Strictly judging from content, I wouldn’t see any particular intended message behind this book without also reading a commentary on it. All of those suggested points I mentioned before came from commentators, not from the actual book itself.
I have no problem if commentators or parents want to use the story to help make their own point about out-of-control government or media, or about being insensitive to violence. But the book itself is pretty neutral and doesn’t exactly say anything against either – the reader is left to draw their own conclusions, if any are to be drawn.
So if this isn’t a book with a particular point (and I just don’t think it is, in and of itself), then it’s main value would lie in entertainment. Which is absolutely fine. I’m not one of those people who thinks everything has to have a purpose, and I love a good, entertaining story.
If I’m looking at the book from a strict “entertainment-value” standpoint, then I do have to say that the book is very entertaining. It’s exciting and suspenseful. Every time I finished a chapter I had a hard time not starting the next one. There’s no doubt that it’s well-written.
However, I kept feeling like there was something that was just off. And I wish I could put my finger on it better.
Maybe it was the fact that I thought Katniss was almost disturbingly good at playing “the game”, and everything she did seemed to be for the camera - we are left to applaud her for her cleverness throughout the story, even though doing things only for the camera shouldn't necessarily be something to aspire to (I don’t think so, anyway).
Maybe it was the plain old reason that this entertaining story was, in fact, about children being forced to kill other children.
Maybe it was because I felt that even though the violence in the book wasn’t condoned, it almost seemed to be accepted because that’s “the way things are” in Panem.
Whatever it was, something just didn’t sit right.
I agree with the mom who petitioned to get The Hunger Games off her middle schooler’s reading list from her school - I don’t think this book is appropriate for younger preteens/teens. Kids that age are so impressionable, and they are still forming their worldviews. I don’t think it would be beneficial for a child that age to be reading about a world where kids do whatever it takes to survive. In my opinion, it would be wise to wait until they were a little older and had a bit more practice at thinking critically about this sort of thing before reading this book, if it is indeed a book the parent decides is okay.
I’m not trying to pick on the book or be overly-critical, and I can’t say I thought the book was “bad” . . . but I also can’t say I thought the book was good. It just was . . . and for a book that just is, I have my doubts. Though it was hard to put down, and I was dying to find out what happened between Katniss and Peeta, I can’t say I’m really a fan for that reason.
Thankfully there are lots of reviews with spoilers out there, so I know what happens with Peeta and Katniss without having to read the next books.
Okay, I’m prepared to be pelted with rotten tomatoes now, but that’s my opinion. Take it or leave it.
Laura – DO NOT READ THIS!
I’m posting about the gift I’m giving to Jack and I don’t want you to see this before I have a chance to give it to you!
Anyone else who is not Laura . . . read on.
Last week my friend Laura had her baby - a boy!
One of the projects I have been working on lately was a “happy birthday” gift for her baby – and I knew I wanted to make a tag toy, because that’s what I have made for friend’s babies in the past.
However, I wanted to try something different, instead of doing a regular square tag toy, and I saw an idea on Pinterest for a turtle-shaped tag toy, originally from this Etsy shop (in case you want to buy one). I thought it was so cute, so I thought I’d try to make my own!
Here is the result:
I love the way it turned out! It wasn’t too hard to make, and I think it’s pretty cute!
I’m giving it with a lullaby CD (have you seen these lullaby renditions CD’s? We have the Third Day one for Wyatt and he loves it), and a cute little romper. I can’t wait to meet the little guy! It’ll be fun to snuggle a little newborn again for a few minutes . . .
P.S. Check out my poll in the sidebar if you haven't already . . .
I wrote this post a couple months ago, and I just wasn’t ready to share it then – but I wanted to share it now. Hopefully someone out there finds it helpful.
I’m just going to say it.
The last couple of months I have not been where I need to be as far as my relationship with Jesus goes.
Part of it is due to busyness, part of it is due to just me being lazy. But there has been long gaps between prayers, hurried Bible readings at night . . . and I could feel it. I could feel that it was missing. And I knew what it was. But still I let the time pass on by.
Then a couple weeks ago I had one of those frustrating days – a day full of disappointment, and difficulty, and situations in my life not working out right.
These weren’t just little things (though I suppose they are little in the grand scheme of things) – they were important things to me. All the little stresses culminated into these bigger stresses, all on the same day. It got to the point where I was a little upset with the Lord for “putting me through all that” at once.
Then as I broke down and cried to my mom over the phone that night, she once again gave me a little nugget of wisdom when I needed to hear it (what would I do without my mom?). She set me straight on something that I had forgotten. She reminded me that it’s not God “putting me through” those things. Rather, sometimes He allows those things to happen so that we will turn to Him.
Turn to Him like I had not been doing for a couple months.
When will I learn that I just shouldn’t try to do things by myself?
I’m ashamed to say it still took me a couple weeks to get myself off of my spiritual “couch”. I think it was because I was almost embarrassed, and ashamed of myself for letting myself get upset at God over my difficulties. Because that’s just not me. I’m usually a little more level-headed than that.
That’s what happens when I let things go so long. I get out of practice, and all of a sudden one rough day is enough to make me waver in my trust.
But that should never happen. Because even when things aren’t going my way, even when rough days (or weeks, or months) strike and bad things happen, God is always good. And He always has my good in mind. And He always deserves my trust.
I’ve never stopped believing that. I know it too deeply, I have too many personal experiences of His faithfulness for me to ever truly doubt that.
But it’s easy to not feel it sometimes. It’s easy to let my heart forget. The heart is deceitful above all else, and mine is no exception.
Which is why it’s so important to guard my heart – against the world and what it says is important , against circumstances, because circumstances are fickle, against even my own plans.
I need to keep my heart focused on Him. And that only comes from spending actual time with Him, and putting energy into my relationship with God.
When I try to handle everything myself and let my relationship with Jesus fall to the wayside, it’s easy for my heart to be discouraged, because I’m placing my hope in the wrong things. When my heart is fully focused on His goodness, and fully relying on His power to get me through, nothing in this life can take away that joy.
Not dashed hopes or ruined plans. And definitely not bad days.
I’m just going to cover some remaining blog design details this week, but before I do, notice I tweaked my social media buttons a bit? I figured out through another social media button tutorial that the images will line up side-by-side as long as they are small enough to all fit in a row. So if you want to make the small round buttons, follow my social media button tutorial and just make them smaller. Go read my social media button tutorial to see which fonts to use for the Facebook and Twitter buttons, as well as a tip on how to do a Pinterest button since there is no Pinterest font.
Okay, on with some of the details!
Colors
If you want your blog design to look cohesive, it helps greatly to have all the colors exactly the same. In order to do this, you have to be able to find the color code for each color you want to use. Once you have the color code, you can insert them into your blog design to make them all match. It’s also important to make note of you color codes when actually designing your social media buttons, header, and background in your scrapbooking/photo program, so you can make sure the colors in all your page elements match exactly.
In any scrapbooking or photo editing program or website, when you adjust the color of the text a box like this shows up. When you get the color just how you like it, write down the color code. Make sure to do this for each color you use in your blog design.
(Once again, click on any picture in this post to see it larger.)
A lot of programs also have an “eyedropper” tool, so you can pull color off of any of your blog elements to make them match exactly. Open the color box and then drag your cursor anywhere else on the page and if the eyedropper icon appears, just click. Most programs and websites will allow you to pull a color from the image you are working on so you can match the colors.
Once you have all your color codes, you can use them for the text or highlights in your blog. Do this by opening the template designer and clicking on the “Advanced” tab.
With Blogger’s new interface you can open the template designer by going here:
From here you can insert the color codes for various areas of your blog.
You’ll just insert the appropriate color code into the white box. Notice the list of things you can adjust on the right side: Page Text, Backgrounds, Links, etc. If you didn’t know, you can also pick a font for each of the text elements too – I have my “Tabs Text” set to “Walter Turncoat” for example. It’s best to pick a basic font for the page text though, so that if your page has trouble loading at least the font for your posts shows up easily. Just fyi.
Note: If the main background for your blog is not plain white (#ffffff), then you’ll want to find the code for the background color that you are using before you even start making a header or social media tabs. This is important because you want the background of your header and social media buttons to be the same as your page background so they will blend with the rest of your page and look like they are embedded into your page. Find the color you are using for your background here:
Just for fun, here are the color codes for my current color selections:
Peach: FA8A74
Mint: 9ADDA7
Grey: 808080
Though I did use a darker grey for the page text so you could read it more easily, and it still fits with my color scheme.
Fonts
When designing your header and other buttons, you’ll want to have more font choices than just the basic fonts that come with your computer. There are a ton of free fonts out there. Two websites that I like to use are 1000 Free Fonts and Urban Fonts - they have a ton of fun fonts. Once you find one you like, download the file, and save it somewhere where you can find it.
Open the file, then double-click on the TrueType font file.
Click the “Install” button at the top of the page that comes up.
And voila! The font is installed on your computer. Once the font is installed any scrapbooking or photo program you use on your computer should have the new font listed (try closing the program and reopening it if you don’t see it right away).
The possibilities are endless when you have thousands of free font choices!
Sidebar Intros
This is going to sound redundant, but I really made the sidebar pictures introductions with the same methods that I made the social media buttons and header. Once you know how to make a header image, you really can make any page element you want. Once again, just make sure the background of your introduction image is the same as the rest of your page background.
To make my sidebar introduction images I opened the photo I wanted in Photoshop Elements, used the cookie cutter tool to cut the shape I wanted out of the image (in this case, a circle), then dragged it onto a new blank file. Then I just added text and played around with the fonts and sizes until I had it how I wanted it.
See my header design post for more tips on how to do this.
Once I had the image how I wanted it, I sized it so it would fit perfectly in my sidebar and inserted it into a gadget. I used the html gadget and photobucket html code that I discussed in this post, but you could also upload it as a “Picture” gadget – just make sure you uncheck the “Shrink to fit” box and have it sized exactly how you want it – otherwise Blogger might re-size it too small.
Pages
And finally, I had a question on pages, so I thought I’d cover that quickly as well – it’s the last thing I can think of that you might want to add to your blog, if you don’t already have it.
When people come to visit your blog, it’s really nice if you have an “About Me” tab. You can go a bit more in-depth about yourself when you have a separate “About Me” page, and this way your new visitors don’t have to search through tons of old posts to learn more about you. I highly suggest adding at least an “About Me” tab if you don’t already have one.
Blogger has made this nice and easy. All you have to do is go to your layout page and then click “Add A Gadget”.
Find the “Pages” gadget.
Once you add that gadget you can create some pages by clicking on the pages option in your blog dashboard sidebar, and then “New Page”.
Add as many pages as you want, and then go back and edit the pages gadget you created to change the order. If you want the pages to appear as horizontal tabs, as opposed to a list of links in your sidebar, drag the gadget under your header.
See? And that is all you need to do!
Okay, I think I’ve now covered almost every blog design question that I can think of, at least the ones that I know the answers to! Please let me know if you have any questions for me about anything I discussed, or any other questions about blog design and I’ll see what I can figure out for you.
This concludes my series on blog design! Thanks for hanging in there with me. Now you see why there was no possible way I could fit it all into one post!
It was brought to my attention (via my blog friend, Ashley) that this week is National Infertility Awareness week. Like her, I didn’t want to let the week go by without saying something on the subject. Check out Ashley’s blog post, because she had a lot of good things to say!
Though I’m not technically medically infertile (it took 11 months for us to get pregnant with Wyatt, not the full 12), I’ve had to deal with a lot of fertility problems. For me it hasn’t been “oh, we’ll try for 12 months and then see the doctor”, it’s been “there is something clearly wrong with me, and until we get this fixed I won’t be able to get pregnant”. I didn’t need 12 months to figure out I had fertility problems. I relate so much more to infertile couples than to those who don’t have any problems getting pregnant.
Since sharing my own problems I’ve met so many ladies who have struggled with infertility, both online and in real life. When a couple is having trouble, they don’t usually talk about it to just anyone, so a lot of times people aren’t aware that they even know anyone who is struggling with infertility. But 1 in 8 couples do struggle with infertility, so most likely there is someone in your life who is dealing with it.
There are a lot of articles out there about how to be sensitive to someone who is dealing with infertility (Ashley linked to one), but I wanted to give you my take on it.
First I wanted to say that there are two things that are never helpful to an infertile friend, no matter who you are or how you say it. One is complaining about your pregnancy symptoms and/or your children without showing any of your gratitude for the blessing of being pregnant and having children. The other is talking about how fertile you are (or how fertile someone you know is). I don’t really have to explain why, do I? If you are not sure if someone is struggling, just stay as far away from these two as possible.
However, through talking to other ladies who have dealt with infertility, and through my own experiences, I’ve come to the conclusion that almost anything you say about the subject could come across as hurtful. Some girls I know have been bothered by comments that didn’t bother me a bit when they were said to me. I’ve heard some even complain about comments that I would have found comforting. As far as words go, I really don’t think there is any safe ground.
Wait, before you throw up your hands in despair, hear me out!
I think whether what you say is comforting or not depends a lot on what’s in your heart. Some people just have no sympathy for people who are struggling, and that comes across in the comment. If you really can’t understand what the big deal is or think they just need to try such-and-such, it’s probably better for you not to say anything.
However, if you truly do care for your friend, and hate to see them hurting (even if they don’t show it, trust me, it hurts), make it come across in what you say. There is a big difference in hearing about “so-and-so’s” story from someone who is hurting with you and trying to encourage you than it is to hear it from someone who isn’t really trying to understand (at least in my opinion).
It’s okay if you haven’t dealt with infertility yourself – you can still be a comfort to your friend just by showing them you care. I still remember the sweet words of encouragement from my friends who had never had any trouble getting pregnant. They meant the world to me, because I knew they cared about my pain.
Tell them you are praying for them. Just listen. Be optimistic for them, but let them know your heart aches for them too. Send them a note in the mail to encourage them every now and then. Let them know you are thinking about them.
As a song I love says, “just love them like Jesus”. You can’t go wrong when you are doing that.
Scrapping Plans by Rebecca Seitz
This book follows the journey of one of four sisters, Joy, who struggles with infertility. Before I started this book I read a review from someone who said that she was disappointed because it didn’t seem as if the author knew much about infertility. I decided to give the book a chance, because sometimes reviewers get a little sensitive about little inconsistencies or mistakes, and I can mostly overlook little mistakes in books.
But the reviewer was right. If the author was going to write a book about a character struggling with infertility, she should have put a little more research into it and made sure she got her facts right. These weren’t little mistakes, they were big mistakes – about how infertility diagnoses and treatment works, about monitoring your basal body temperature. There were a lot of mistakes. It was pretty obvious that the author didn’t even do basic research on the treatments she wrote about.
I was also disappointed in the story. It had so much potential to really turn out well and address some deep issues associated with infertility, but it seemed to skim over the lessons that should have been learned. I was disappointed that though the main character took a trip to China, the thought of adopting wasn’t even considered.
On top of that, the first few chapters of the book completely turned me off on the main character. She comes across as a brat to me – demanding her own way, demanding a baby. And there was no real character development along the way. Seitz lost me when the main character smashed a plate in an argument with her husband and didn’t even apologize for it later, even though her husband acted like a saint.
The main character was also supposed to be Type A, but I think it’s safe to say that the author is not. The descriptions of the character’s personality were inconsistent. On the one had she’s supposed to be Type A, but on the other hand the character knows nothing about what to expect of trying to conceive, fertility treatment, or labor? A true Type A person would have researched each of those subjects thoroughly, and would have known everything already just through reading, before doctors or others had a chance to tell her – trust me, I know.
Overall, it was just disappointing, so much so that I felt the need to write a review. I had high hopes, but throughout the book I just kept finding myself annoyed at the mistakes, and thinking about how I would have written the book differently. This book might be alright to someone who hasn’t struggled with infertility and has no real desire to have a deeper understanding of infertility. But for those of use who have struggled with it, this book falls far short.
I recently read "The Scent of Cherry Blossoms" by Cindy Woodsmall. This book is about a Mennonite girl, Anna, who is kicked out of her house and goes to live with her grandfather. She is reunited with her childhood friend, Aden, and through secret meetings they discover they have feelings for each other. However, because Anna is Mennonite and Aden is Amish, one of them will be shunned by their family and church if they continue to see each other.
I enjoyed this book. It was just a light romance story with a happy ending, and Cindy Woodsmall writes alot of books like that. One thing I enjoyed as I read was that Woodsmall included characters from her other book, "The Christmas Singing". I really enjoy when authors tie in separate stories this way.
At one point Anna's grandfather makes a comment that makes it sound as though being together could lead Anna and Aden to, in essence, lose their salvation. In the end though, Anna decides that the Lord would forgive her or Aden for leaving their church to be together. I wish Woodsmall would have included more of the gospel in this - Anna could have realized that she and Aden believe the same way about Jesus, even though they belonged to different churches. But I understand that's not necessarily how the Mennonite's and Amish would look at the situation. I like a stronger Christian message in my Christian fiction, but I also don't know the perspective that Woodsmall is coming from.
If you aren't expecting anything too deep this is a sweet book though, and I'd recommend it to someone looking for a quick read.
Note: I received this book for free from Multonomah Publishing Group in exchange for this review, as part of their Blogging For Books program.
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