Thoughts on The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

The Hunger Games: Book 1 by Suzanne Collins

You maybe have heard of this one? I must have checked The Hunger Games: Book 1 out of the library 6 times before Trish threatened to disown me if I didn't read it already.  So I read it already.

I'm not planning to completely summarize this one, enough of you have read it or read about it and I'm sure you'd all scan that and move on, right?  The pitfall of being the last person on earth to read a book, you know. Even Mike read it and the sequels before me.

So what we've got are a handful of teenagers who are locked in an artificial environment and forced to kill each other. I am pretty sensitive to books where anyone dies, let alone kids, so I had a really hard time picking it up. So I gave it to Mike, who loved it, and to my friend Shawna, who loved it, and you already know that Trish loved it. With all that love, how could I not read it already?

And I loved it too. Big surprise. If you're putting off reading it because you're worried about all the teenager death, don't. It's handled really well and isn't horrifyingly off-putting. The circumstances are horrible, yes. It's a view into a world that none of us want to live in at all, but the deaths are handled well and shouldn't turn you away. I love that Katniss was both appalled at the game and managed to both play it well and still be believably surprised by some of the turns it took

I did not come away from it just dying to read the sequels (Catching Fire (The Second Book of the Hunger Games) and Mockingjay (The Final Book of The Hunger Games) ) like many people did.  I do have Catching Fire here from the library, and there's a decent chance it'll get read before the move, but I wasn't burning to get my hands on it.  I really think it could have easily stood alone with a slightly different ending.


Did you read The Hunger Games? Before or after everyone on earth read it?  I've heard that it's a commentary on where our country is headed, do you think so? Is something like this even remotely possible? How about without the death, just the reorganization of the country and the extreme poverty? Were you dying to read the next one?

The Hunger Games: Book 1
Suzanne Collins
Scholastic Press
2008
384 pages

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