I had a three hour flight last night, so I borrowed the book from my GF and read it on the flight. First person and it moves pretty quickly. It has all the standard flaws you would expect from a book targeting a tween audience of angsty kids, but still delivers a fair amount of entertainment. I am sad because I'm told the series goes rapidly downhill in book two.


Also, it is evil in that the book jacket says nothing about a series and the last line in the book is a to be continued statement. I haven't seen that crap since they suckered me in with the Robert Jordan crap way back when.


I give it one thumb's up for a quickie evening read.

 

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My wife and kids loved the books. It was an annual read for my wife to her 6th grade class, now she says she won't read it any more cuz the movie kinda took the mystery out of it.

 

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The movie was meh....

 

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The movie creates a much different feel by taking the viewer many places the protagonist never goes in the book, such as the game's ops center. The movie was mediocre and some of the pointless dialogue makes sense when you've read the book. It is interesting what movie scripters decide is important and unimportant in stories they adapt, writing entire characters and plotlines out of a script while maintaining sections of dialogue that no longer have context.

 

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I just don't like the idea that they can have starving masses of people and yet have the technology to magically conjure animals to hunt and kill you.

 

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You heard correctly about book 2 and 3. Each was worse than the last.

While I don't like Quentin Tarantino movies, my one complaint about the movie was - It wasn't violent enough.

None of the deaths meant anything. In the book they were heart wrenching and you got a real feel for the horror these kids have to face in The Hunger Games. The movie was about as violent as a "My Little Pony" ad so it muted the whole point.

Do yourself a favor and watch the death of Rue fan made film on youtube. That five minute clip is better than the whole movie.

I actually enjoyed the movie. Much more so than any other young adult movie I've seen (Potter and Twilight come immediately to mind) which surprised me.

But then, I have not read the books so maybe that makes a difference.

 

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My understanding is this is some kind of post apoc US and '74 year ago' several states rebelled, the capital put the rebellion down and now maintains power largely by keeping the enslaved states in a constant state of deprivation with not enough food or materials much like modern NK.


So the 1% has plenty of everything and lives much like Mitt while the 99% that support them are so busy trying to survive they don't have time or energy to think about revolution, and any hint of rebellion or free thinking is crushed.


Hungry people get angry, starving people get weak.

 

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Agreed. I thought that was intentional. For punishment/control since the rebellion.

 

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i read the book on the way to italy last week. the book was written at a 3rd grade level, was ridiculously predictable, and was a pretty heavy rip-off of battle royale. i think it's funny that so many critics talked about how gruesome it was. it was like disney level violence.

it was a fast read and was somewhat entertaining. but it doesn't deserve really any of the hype it got. seems that fat 40 yr old women just need a teen romance book series to squawk about and they picked this one. i have no interest in reading the next two book. the end of the first one left me not wanting to know more.

 

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