The Hunger GamesFollow

A friend of mine pressed a book into my hands about a year ago and said it was great, she knew I'd love it, and I needed to read it. I kept glancing at it on my bookshelf and deciding to read other things. It just didn't seem that interesting.

Finally, I felt guilty enough about still holding on to the book that I picked it up.

The Hunger games, the first in a trilogy, is about a young girl named Kantiss Everdeen. Kantiss lives in our world in the future. North America is now known as Panem, and it is divided into 13 districts, all controled by The Capital. Each district produces it's own product (coal, bread, jewels, etc.). Years before this story takes place, the districts revolted against The Capital, who easily smacked them back down and firebombed District 13 as a lesson to the other districts of just what they can do. As a further punishment, from the age of 12 until 18, children begin putting their names into a lottery and every year, the name of a boy and the name of a girl are drawn, and they are sent to the Capital to participate in the Hunger Games, where the kids proceed to kill one another until only one, the victor, remains. Kantiss goes to the games in the first book and, well, the story progesses from there.

The book is geared towards "young adult" readers, but it holds your attention. Once I picked it up, I finished in in a weekend, and a week later, I read it again.

Since then, the second book came out ("Catching Fire"), and today, the last book ("Mockingjay") went on sale. I started it at lunch today, and I'm already itching to go home and curl up on my couch and open it back up.

I thought Hunger Games was ok, but it wasn't interesting enough for me to read the others. I should probably read them one of these days anyway though, just because.

It's incredible popularity means it's pretty much a lock for the 2011 Caudill award too. (though personally I think Savvy should win it)

My girlfriend got the series a couple weeks ago, and has since passed them on to me. I'm about 1/3 of the way through the last book now.

They're easy reads...the pacing is pretty good and their structured in a way that makes it difficult to stop yourself from going "Just one more chapter." They seem like they're very solid for their intended age group; a little less so for older readers (it bothered me that most of the book's themes were literally spelled out over-and-over).

I could not, for the life of me, stand the gratuitous descriptions of every single solitary item of clothing that Katniss wears. I gather that the author has a side interest in fashion, and it comes through way too much for my tastes (my girlfriend loved that, however).

Other than that though, they're pretty good books. Nice character development and great descriptors. I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic stuff, too.

I gather that a movie has already been penned for them, and I'd be shocked if we didn't see it soon.