Hunger Games trilogy (Spoilers!)

[scarymonster]

I'd like to talk about Hunger Games in detail here, with spoilers! So if you haven't read all three books and you don't want anything to be spoiled, don't read!










Can we talk about how great Hunger Games is, y'all? I am obsessed. I haven't found anything I've loved this much since Harry Potter. I know books-to-movie usually leave something to be desired, but I'm really excited to see the movie.

I was disappointed that it ended in just 3 books because I felt like it went way too fast, and I thought the ending was kind of a let down. I had trouble the whole way through the book with who I wished Katniss would end up with.

[gemma]

Well, one, I totally love the name Katniss, and I don't know why, but, there it is. Love it.


I read the first book in a day. Just couldn't put it down. It was so good! Haven't read the others yet. I don't mind spoilers (I am known to wikipedia a DVD while in the first half of it to see if I'd like to continue watching...), so I'll keep watching this thread. :)

[rawrlie]

i went into hunger games a little skeptical but i consumed these books, y'all. and i am not the reader i used to be, so that's saying something. it has been a while since i read them, but i am planning to do a re-read soon so i can be prepared for the movie [which looks so good]. oh man, how awesome is elizabeth banks for effie? and lenny kravitz for cinna? i was really hoping they'd get kiernan shipka [aka sally draper] for prim, but i feel like they got a lot right. i know this is kind of hotly contested, though, especially with katniss.

also, did anyone else see this fan-made scene from the first book? it's stunning, honestly, though watch our for spoilers and violence. oh, and since i'm linking to everything today, mark of mark reads did an awesome chapter-by-chapter read-through that works really well as a companion to reading the books. it's kind of like you have a friend to squee with while you read, except...not as forever alone as that sounded. his reviews are pretty funny and he deconstructs a lot of the themes of the books as he goes, too. but yes. in short. hunger games! eee!
_________________
yeah it's overwhelming, but what else can we do?
get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?

[Lassi]

I loved The Hunger Games! I read them as they came out and had to endure waiting painfully long periods between books! One of my favorite things about The Hunger Games is that, no matter who I lend them to (friends or pretty much any of the kids or their parents at my school), the readers almost always come back happy and ready for the next one.

I actually really liked the ending, but I'm dark like that.

I think the movie looks rad too.

[BlueJedi]

I do like them, and I'm on the 3rd book right now. I read the first and second in 2 days.

But I kind of feel like I've read the story before in some ways. The Uglies stories are sort of similar to me. I dunno. I mean, I do like them, and they're totally trashy YA fiction, but I don't really think the hype is warranted to some extent.
Like they're GOOD books, but I don't think they're super original or groundbreaking or anything like that.

I am pretty stoked that the movie comes out soon though. It looks really awesome.

[tinyrock]

I inhaled the first two books, a few months apart. I bought the third book to read over Christmas and it just plodded. I hated it. Like, it pretty much sums up why I'm not as involved in politics / activist communities as I used to be - the interminable meetings and strategy discussions, the jerky behavior, the secrecy. Katniss is unconscious or disoriented for most of the book and doesn't actually get to do very much, and a lot more of the action is psychological. Being in the woods with a couple dozen people trying to kill you is good for creating a fast-paced book, I guess.

I really like how Collins handled the execution scene, but hated the ending/postscript back in District 12. I guess Katniss still gets to hunt, at least. It's better than her committing suicide. And she quits hanging out with Gale, who was a jerk. But I didn't really like Peeta either, so...

[BlueJedi]

That was the other problem. I found the whole "love triangle" portion to be REALLY clunkily written and unrealistic.
I'm sorry, but if Gale supposedly knew Katriss SO WELL imho, he would have been able to tell that the whole Peeta thing was a set up ploy. She could have just told him "Oh btw, I have feelings for you, but this is what the gov't wants."

I was pretty surprised they didn't just go Dune style and have her marry Peetra for political reasons and then actually be married to Gale socially.

Is it because she's a girl that they didn't go the Paul/Chani/Irulan route with the story? Because it was pretty much the same kind of deal if you think about it.

[scarymonster]

[BlueJedi]

[WorkAndPlay]

One of the students I am supervising is writing a final thesis on narrative effects of the american dream in postapocalyptic literature, and he's writing about The Hunger Games. So I downloaded the audiobook, and I'm loving it so far. I don't mind spoilers, since I already know the plot from reading the thesis.
_________________
The plural of anecdote is not data.

Check out what I'm cooking at Chomp!

[Lassi]

[cake]

I am REALLY excited for the movie- like way more excited than I thought I'd be. The cast looks GREAT- at first I was meh on Katniss but I liked that actress as Mystique in X-Men: First Class so now I feel better about it. Elizabeth Banks will be so good as Effie.

I plowed through the books too- I was let down by the third book a little, but I agree that a big part of that was the change in tone from the first two, the shift to more psychological/political intrigue.
_________________
What can't that centaur woman do?

[Crumb]

I read all of them over the course of 3 days when I was on vacation this summer, and I think I've read them all about 6 times each since then.

I don't have a problem with Gale not getting that Katniss' relationship with Peeta was manufactured, because Gale is, after all, a kid himself who's in love - no one really sees straight when you're 18 and in love for the first time, after all. That being said, I HATED every minute of the love triangle and I thought it was completely unnecessary and distracting from the serious tone of the books. It felt completely manufactured for the simple sake of appealing to tweens, a clumsy grab at Twilight-levels of fan devotion. Yuck. The love triangle is my biggest complaint about the whole series. I don't mind Katniss' confusion and ambivelance over Peeta, but throwing Gale in there is just...ugh.

I also hated that Prim died at the end of Mockingjay, because that just felt like total emotional manipulation. Enough horrible things happened to Katniss over the course of the war to justify her PTSD; killing off Prim was just...torture porn-y, to me. I didn't mind how disconnected Katniss was throughout Mockingjay, because I think that's a pretty realistic outcome for someone who's been through everything she experienced in the first two books. And I actually like the ending, because I think it's a very hopeful ending.

[cake]

I totally agree with you re: the love triangle- it felt totally superfluous to me and maybe even like it was tacked on because her editors felt like Katniss needed love interests for the book to appeal to the post-Twilight YA market.

Also totally agree with killing Prim. Ugh!
_________________
What can't that centaur woman do?

[cloverilla]

I really enjoyed the books, but as others are saying, I wasn't super thrilled with Gale or Peeta. That said, I'm really looking forward to the movie. I've seen previews the other day and it looks really well done.

Other books, someone mentioned Uglies, and those were entertaining, but I really disliked the third book in that series. I read a YA dystopic book recently called Matched which I didn't really like at all.

I love Dune. Never read any of the sequels though.

If you really like the dystopia fiction, I'd suggest going into some of the classics/more adult books: 1984, Fahrenheit 451, The Handmade's Tale, Brave New World, and The Road (more post-apocalyptic than dystopic). I also love the book Jennifer Government, but it's not very literary. A fun read.

Also, movies: Brazil (please watch the original cut version), 12 Monkeys, Children of Men, Logan's Run, Gattaca, Minority Report, Never Let Me Go, Idiocracy, A Clockwork Orange. (A lot of these were based on books, but I haven't read the books.)

As you can see, I'm kind of obsessed with this genre.
_________________
Love my fade, but Glitter is forever. LOOKY, UPDATED BLOG!