CATCHING FIRE * MAN FROM ELYSIAN FIELDS

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins - This is the second book in a teen/young adult trilogy that began with The Hunger Games. Once again, I couldn't put it down. Katniss and Peeta are back in District 12, living more comfortable lives as Victors of the previous year's Hunger Games. Things are changing in the District, though, and there is an even greater air of unhappiness and dissatisfaction among the citizens. The Capitol will stop at nothing to keep its power intact, and Katniss becomes a pawn in their plans, while the Mockingjay gains power as a symbol.

The Man From Elysian Fields - I'd wanted to see this movie forever, and finally saw that it was on the Encore Love station, so I dvr'd it and watched it the other night. Although I fell asleep in my chair near the end of the movie, I kept replaying it until I'd seen the whole thing in waking moments. It is a sleeper though. Not the kind of sleeper that's so good, but you miss it, but the kind of sleeper that makes you fall asleep in front of it. Andy Garcia plays a broke writer, and Mick Jagger his "savior". I really enjoyed watching Mick, in a suit, dapper, older, smooth and maybe vulnerable. Something about Angelica Huston's more-than-a-cameo was good too.

I think Scrabble might be scrabbling my brain. Although it's good to exercise with letters and words, there becomes this mindless component to it. It's almost like it's robbing me of original thought on some level. How can something that exercises your mind so much also rob your mind? This might be about mindful yet mindless gaming and screens. I have some Scrabble goals to attend to, though, so for now I'm not going to give it up. The screen makes it so easy to play, and there's just enough help (because you have trial and error for making words - and when you make a new word that you didn't know was a word, you learn from it - like a little cheat or lifeline) to keep you in the game. The Bingos also keep me going, beacuse on any day, in any game, I might get just the perfect set up and letters with which to create a Bingo. Bingos are the words that have the potential to be one's highest scoring word. Maybe on some level I need Scrabble now. So much else is going on in my life that it's good to have this game that is shared with others, in addition to my other escape, reading, which is so solitary. And of course, this escape, blogging, which can be done in between Scrabble turns, but which is difficult to do during Scrabble which started this whole chain of thought. OK, I'm off to fb to see if I have any turns awaiting my attention.