The Hunger Games series

Cafe Society
21

Are you in the US? I’ve seen the trade paperbacks of all 3 at Wal Mart for cheap. All 3 were in paperback even earlier in the UK, I believe.

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Also Amazon Kindle has them for free loan at the Kindle Lending Library (free to Prime members 1/month).

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I read the first one and found it compelling enough to finish, but not enough to want to read the others. The friend who’d recommended them told me she was disappointed in the third, so I’m just as happy with the first one being a standalone. There were a few too many dei ex machinae for my tastes.

I’m sure I’d have loved them at the age of 10-14 or so, and I’ll probably see the movie(s?) that are in progress.

24

You might want to read the second, which I actually preferred to the first, but skipping the third’s no biggy, as it’s the weakest.

Agreed @ the deus ex machinas though, which IIRC, are less frequent in the sequels.

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“People read YA fiction because they’re starved for good narrative.”
–Patrick Neff*

*Author of the series to read next: ***The Knife of Never Letting Go ***is the first book.

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I am a 29 year old guy, and I loved the books. I also like Harry Potter too so, I guess I enjoy young adult books.

27

Read them all and loved them all.

I will agree that the second one is better than the first too; also the third one is very much the weakest of the bunch.

Personally I was not a fan of her choice of guy at the end of the third book, but I’m also gonna re read them and see if my mind changes.

28

I would actually say that **Catching Fire **has about the worst case of deus ex machina that I’ve ever seen.

29

Trying to remember; which part are you talking about?

Edit:

Oh wait, being broken out of the second games, right?

I suppose. I think it bothered me less because it seemed like they were fewer in numbers overall, and I could buy the explanation. After all, I’m not sure how else they could have shown the event without ruining the surprise, since it’s from Katniss’s perspective.

30

I thought the first book was brilliant as a parable about class and media culture.

However, once the second and third books started getting into the mechanics of the revolution, I thought the story fell apart. The various factions didn’t have believable agendas or coherent strategies – the whole war was just a 2-D cardboard backdrop for Katniss to run around in front of.

31

I just read them. My daughter has them. I thought they were pretty good. The entire time I was reading them I had a strong John Christopher vibe. In fact, he passed away right before I read the “Hunger Games”.

32

I read the three books in three days while I on vacation hanging out in coffee shops. I was looking for some mindless entertainment and that was exactly what I got from the first book.

I thought it was a good story even though I didn’t like Katniss and being in her mind really made me hate her. I also hate the whole first person thing. The second book wasn’t very good for the first half and I didn’t particularly like the ending but I liked the twist with the rereaping. The third book sucked. Her mental breakdown was absolutly painful from inside her mind and just made we want to slap her silly, effective writing but I never wanted to experience what it was like to be a teen aged girl. I also didn’t like the third book, except for the twist at the ending, it was too dark for a light vacation read. Over all I wouldn’t recommend reading the series after the first book and I’d warn guys that you spend the whole book in the mind of a crazy teenaged girl.

33

Yup, really enjoyed the Hunger Games series. And I’m a grown-ass man, so I think the books are good beyond the “Young Adult” demo they’re written for.

That said -

I loved The Hunger Games and Catching Fire. Mockingjay I only liked. It kinda dragged near the middle and end. The assault on the Capitol seemed to go on, and on, and on, and on.

I was fine with the ending, but for me the first two books were great; book three was ok but more forgettable.

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My 11yo loved the books, is the movie safe for a kid?

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Yes, you’ve got it. When I read that I felt like the author must have been in my jr. high English class way back when because it was the exact example given to explain deus ex machina.

36

I agree with this analysis in every respect.

I have my doubts about the movie because so much of what is going on is inside Katniss’ head. There will be either extensive use of voice-over, endless scenes of her talking to herself, or else her actions will seem chaotic.

As far as the movie being suitable for kids, sisu it hasn’t been released to reviews so it’s a bit hard to say. I assume it is going to be very violent and disturbing. That is because the books are ultraviolent with some particularly distressing deaths described in detail. You say your child has read the books so they must be quite aware of the type of action that drives the plot. Now some people can read something horrible and it doesn’t affect them as much as seeing the same horrible thing. So I guess that depends on the kid. Will it bother them to see young teens ruthlessly murdering each other in various bloody, grotesque ways? Will it bother them to see adults watching this spectacle for pleasure and entertainment?

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Also, from remembering from when I read them a few years back, the violence in Hunger Games is pretty straightforward compared to the matter-of-fact discussions of and representations of torture and psychological warfare against some of the characters in Catching Fire and in Mockingjay. That stuff got pretty damn brutal. If she sees the first movie, she’ll want to see the next, and the next, but that’s about a year, maybe a year-and-a-half of growing time between each installment.

Honestly, I think that the movie of Hunger Games will bother *me *less than the book did, but I would be highly tempted to say the exact reverse about the upcoming two. Torture just squicks me out. I can skim when reading, but you’re stuck in a movie theatre until the director chooses to move on. Everybody’s different, tho!

38

I went to The Hunger Games midnight premier and I was a little disappointed by the film. The begining of the movie followed pretty closely to the book until she acquires the mockingjay pin, they alter how she gets it. The first half of the movie is very drawn out, they spend alot of time on the not so important events leading up to them entering the arena then they rush through them being in the arena. They skipped over or severely cut down several scenes that are key to the storyline so if you did not read the book there are a few places where you will be very confused. Once they entered the arena almost all of the dialogue was changed or shortened. The editors butchered alot of the emotional and the romantic scenes and the events after the arena were altered slightly. The Tributes are all very well cast except for Clove, she is younger than I thought she would be. Jennifer Lawrence embodied Katniss pretty accurately. Josh Hutcherson was a good choice for Peeta, he brought a certain masculinity to a very immasculine character but him not having blue eyes dented the symbolism, since it was a largely important factor in the book. Lenny Kravitz was a great choice to play Cinna because he wasn’t flamboyant, and was easier to take seriously with a stern, calm personality. Effie was spot on, as was Haymitch. Over-all, I think it was a good movie crippled by poor editing and the shackles of a pg-13 rating.

39

My wife brought home The Hunger Games from the library last week, and I knocked it off in a couple of evenings. Thought I’d dump my thoughts in an existing thread of recent vintage, rather than start a new one:

  1. It’s definitely a good read, moves fast, hard to put down.

  2. It’s a lot of action and little depth; I could see from the get-go that it was practically written to be a movie. That’s not a complaint; the original Star Wars movie was no deeper than this, but was a classic. Just saying that on reading the book, it’s not surprising that it seems to have had even more impact as a movie.

  3. Panem doesn’t bear close scrutiny at all, and that’s fine as long as Panem acts just as a backdrop for the story. But I dread picking up the remaining two books, which are clearly going to be a good bit more about Panem. It’s all gonna break down then, I can tell.

  4. The Games themselves worked for me until they were down to the last six players, and even then I was OK with the rules change. But:

[spoiler]Besides the deus ex machina aspect, Thresh killing Clove reminded me too much of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. If he’d started going on about rabbits, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye.

Then Cato killing Thresh offstage, so to speak, was just a little too convenient.

Foxface’ death was believable, but she was the wildcard in the plot: killing her off took away most of the potential unpredictability in the ending. To some extent, Thresh had also been a wildcard; they both seem to have been thrown away because the author simply wasn’t up to concocting a more complex ending that would have included one or both of them.

Finally, I was interested enough in how Katniss would resolve her romantic feelings, such as they were, to finish the book, but not interested enough to pick up a whole 'nother book. And I’m really not interested in a whole 'nother book about how she tries to find a way to take on a Capitol whose existence and nature are totally unbelievable to me in the first place.[/spoiler]
So it was one hell of a bullet-train ride, but I’m getting off here, I think.

40

Good call. I’ve only read the books so far, but I suspect the Hunger Games is a case where the movies are better.