BU students hungry for book-based movie

Call me a nerd, but I just thoroughly enjoy reading a good book. I always have a leisurely book stashed among my textbooks and notebooks in my backpack. And one of the best books I have read as of late has to be the new social sensation, “The Hunger Games.”

If you have yet to give in to the social hype of the stories, I won’t spoil the plot for you. Essentially there is love, cute boys and violence, three of my favorite things, all wrapped up in a gripping trilogy that I compare faintly to the best series of all time, “Harry Potter.”

So, naturally, when I heard that author Suzanne Collins sold the rights to make a movie, I instantly dropped a measly nine dollars out of the $19.7 million total sold for the 12:01 a.m. showing March 23.

Now I’ve been to my fair share of midnight premieres, the Harry Potter’s five, six, seven part one and seven part two just to name a few, and I knew exactly what I was getting myself into when I arrived at the theater: the ridiculously unrestrained audience reactions and the outrageous amount of applause.

After the movie ended, I was surprised that people’s hands weren’t broken merely because they spent three-fourths of their time clapping at completely irrelevant, sometimes even inappropriate, parts. Oh Peeta was just chosen to die? Cue applause.

But there’s just something about knowing that literally thousands of people are sitting in theaters across America, watching the same movie you are.

And maybe that’s why I attend midnight showings: the experience of being surrounded by 150 other diehard fans. We all sit in our a-little-too-uncomfortable seats while we uninhibitedly laugh, gasp and sob together as one. And then as they raise the lights, there is a palpable sense of satisfaction in the theater as everyone packs up their Snuggies, Hunger Games book (brought just in case) and snuck-in snacks to go home.

The idea of staying out until the wee hours of the morning might be daunting for some people, trust me I had College Algebra at 9:30 a.m. the next morning, but I think the experience in itself is one that everyone should try at some point in his or her life.

Did I mention that the buttery and salty popcorn just tastes better at 1:30 a.m.?

So if you haven’t read the books, and you like a bit of love and a lot of gore, I happily suggest them to you and hope to see one of you at the midnight premiere for the sequel, “Catching Fire.”

As the book says, “Happy Hunger Games, and may the odds be ever in your favor.”