Frankly, my hopes are not high.

Well, dear readers, today is August 23rd, and tomorrow is the release date for Suzanne Collins' Mockingjay. If you're desperate to celebrate this event, you can nip down to your local Hot Topic and pick up one of their not-very-creatively-designed Hunger Games merchandising tie-ins, which range from t-shirts to bookmarks to those ugly rubber bracelets.

I, on the other hand, still haven't read Catching Fire, the second book in this series. I'd like to say this is a testament to my dazzling self-control, but the fact is that while I liked The Hunger Games well enough, I still haven't gotten over the crushing disappointment of the final book in the Gregor the Overlander series. I'm planning to read Catching Fire today (I might even post a short review later on), but I'm fully bracing myself for a knife to the back when I pick up Mockingjay tomorrow.