Hello, book nerds!

For all of my teen years, a movie for a popular book series would come out on my birthday weekend. From 2008-2012, it was the Twilight movies. From then until 2015, it was The Hunger Games. So basically from ages 13-20, my birthday weekend activities were spoken for.

I was happy for the throwback for birthday number 28 with the release of Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Me, my husband, and our friend marathoned the existing movies first in preparation.

Overall, I thought it was well done. It stayed true to the plot of the book, even if that meant making a longer movie (and it was definitely long). The only thing is that it can be hard to portray a main character’s inner thoughts on screen, and so much of Ballad relies on that, so I felt we didn’t get as much of Snow’s true internal deviousness in the movie. But the acting was solid and the sets were perfect. It was exactly how I imagined it.

Besides that, we spent the rest of the weekend reading on the couch under cozy blankets and eating junk food — my favorite things.

And let’s not forget the best birthday gift a bookworm can ask for: MORE BOOKS.