Kevin is rather proficient in German, so when I was in Germany I wanted to get him a book, but I didn’t just want to pick one off the top 10 list at random, not knowing what it was about.  I wanted to get something that had a good chance of him enjoying.  While at KaDeWe I perused their book department.  I quickly ruled out the Harry Potters and Twilight books, was considering Hunger Games, when I stumbled upon Ender’s Game.  The movie was coming out soon, so the book was being heavily promoted.  In the past I had given him some of my favorite SciFi books, with mixed reactions.  But it was getting late and I needed to find the bathroom in KaDeWe, so I bought Ender’s Speil.

Kevin loved that I got him a book in German, and read it over the next month.  He found parts of it a little monotonous, but loved practicing his german.  He says reading the german was a bit slow in the beginning, but by the end he was zooming through it.  He finished the book this afternoon, so tonight we went to see the movie at the Grauman’s, I mean Mann’s, I mean TLC Chinese Theater.

Kevin had never been in the Chinese Theater, and I hadn’t since they put in stadium seating. Prior it was a very gentle slope with a huge number of seats.  Now they’ve lowered the floor in front by a good 15-20 feet, so it is a much steeper slope, and probably fewer seats.  And the screen is now IMAX, 70 feet high.  The ceiling and walls are the same, as beautiful as always.  But being IMAX, ticket price was $18 each. And that wasn’t even 3-D IMAX.

We both enjoyed the movie, Kevin was grateful that they left out all Val’s blogging, Peter’s taking over the world, and limit the number of bullies Ender puts down. I asked Kevin if he enjoyed the battle scenes more knowing the twist at the end, and he said yes, having read the book made the movie more enjoyable.

So I guess I need to go back to Germany to buy another book.  What other novels are coming to the big screen?  other than Hunger Games, Part Zwei.