I was going through some old books Emmy siblings and I owned, and I came across hunger games. I’m older now, so YA fiction mostly strikes me as a bit boring or cringy overall, but I remember liking it way back when I first read it so decided to give it another read. Im surprised that it’s such a well written book. Hunger Games is one of the most popular YA books, and it’s influenced so many others to have protagonists just like catniss, except just way worse. Catnis isn’t a special chosen snowflake, but an actual person with her own flaws, and struggles. She’s shown to be, empathetic and kind, but not unbelievably, and her relationships are actually interesting. Her not being madly in love with Pita but faking it makes their interactions feel so much more meaningful when they’re genuine and not played up for the camera. The society of Hunger Games is also interesting. The society is dystopian, and we’re able to see that even during the games with the need to play up emotions for sponsors, and them actively discouraging playing safe. The people fighting and dying in the arena are reality tv stars; they’re supposed to be interesting and memorable characters, not real people. A flaw with the story is catniss’ perspective kinda gets in the way of the story sometimes, and I felt the story would have been better in 3rd person. Overall, the hunger games is a good book, and I can see why it’s so influential to the YA genre. Way better than most wannabes I’ve read ( Divergent)
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My problem with the novel is the ending. It suggests to teens that a suicide pact can be a romantic and valid gesture to send a message against authority.
My favourite part of reading the Hunger Games was figuring out where each of the Districts were located.
Have you read Shade’s Children by Garth Nix? It was the first dystopian novel I ever read back in 1997.
So I’m not American so I never really did this, I appreciate the writing never really forces the setting in that way.
Like in my head Panem and all of it is a completely different planet
I can appreciate that. But the dystopian element of it being our world after a war/catastrophe is what truly made the book interesting to me.
Like A boy and his dog at the end of the world, it was amazing to read it and see all the real world places they go.
Oh? Where were they? (Not American)
Capitol: Colorado
District 1: Montana/Wyoming
District 2: Rocky Mountains
District 3: California/Oregon
District 4: Southern California/parts of Texas
District 5: Ohio-ish
District 6: Michigan/Illinois
District 7: Washington (state)
District 8: South Carolina
District 9: northern Midwest like the Dakotas
District 10: New Mexico/Arizona
District 11: Southeast like Louisiana/Mississippi/what’s left of Florida
District 12: Appalachians like Virginia/Pennsylvania
District 13: New England like Maine/New Hampshire/Vermont/Massachusetts
I did a post about it ages ago and since I’m at work I can’t really look for it.
Biggest ones for me are:
District two is Eastern Colorado, Colorado Springs specifically because the Nut is obviously NORAD, 2 miles deep in the mountain. First one I felt sure on.
I think the Capital is in Grand Junction, CO because it’s Western Colorado, has plenty of water, has a mild climate but all 4 seasons and LOTS of space. The Nut is in Eastern Colorado and you go through the Mountains to get to Grand Junction, just like in the book. And it wasn’t a long trip.
District 12 I think West Virginia/ big coal mining area in modern times, since they’re known for coal.
Others, all debatable. I don’t know how much land the districts actually cover because the habitable areas/towns in each district aren’t really discussed much. I think a lot of the maps around the net aren’t great and don’t actually utilise the hints in the books well or pay attention to what areas of the US were known for when the book was written.
Shade’s Children was so good as a kid. Does it hold up?
I haven’t ever tried to reread it, unlike Sabriel or The Golden Compass.
The Old Kingdom series and His Dark Materials definitely hold up!
They’re both great series and I’ve reread them a few times. I have them in hardback.
I honestly feel like I would’ve enjoyed The Hunger Games in high school more if at the time it came out I hadn’t already read so much of the “beautiful snarky badass female lead with boy trouble” in YA at that age. My first exposure to it was Max from Maximum Ride. Then Katsa from Graceling. And so on and so forth. I kinda grew disenchanted with that archetype and found myself liking them less and less as I got older. It’s part of the reason I never finished the Throne of Glass series.
It also seemed like the marketing for the first movie really played up the male actors and Gale vs. Peeta love triangle, and that trickled over into the discourse surrounding the books. The boys and romance seemed to be the first thing all of the girls I knew reading it talked about. Not so much Katniss herself.
I definitely want to give it a reread now that it’s been several years and I can approach it with a new perspective.
I would have liked it more if I wasn’t a big battle Royale fan
I actually like that everything was in Katniss’s POV. It makes it clear as the series goes on that she’s suffering from massive amounts of PTSD and disassociating hard by the time the end of the series rolls around.
IMO it made the epilogue stand out from HP’s “babies ever after” epilogue- because she’s so clearly suffering and struggling throughout the last book, seeing her years after, having eked out a little corner of joy in a cruel world felt more rewarding to me
I agree, and it’s my biggest complaint about the movies. It’s precisely what rocketed Jennifer Lawrence to fame, in that she did an incredible job of portraying the complex emotions of the character, but there’s only so much you can do with body language.
The fact is, Katniss is an incredibly stoic and guarded individual. It’s very important to the story that the reader sees both the turmoil going on inside her head and the emotionless (or acted emotional) facade she presents to the world.
Especially in her relationships with Peeta and Gale. You simply could not do it justice in third person. How do you show that turmoil of acting in love and cynically using them, but also trying to convince herself that she’s not actually in love, questioning her own motives, all while wrestling with guilt of using them for her own ends.
Katniss is a character that constantly has to convince herself that she only cares about herself and Prim (because that’s all she can afford to care about) while in reality she cares so much about everyone else and the injustices of the world. First person PoV is the way to go to sell that one.
The movies had so many questionable decisions. They insisted on trying to make the president coin betrayal a surprise when her being sketchy AF and using Katniss as a propaganda figurehead with little support was a large part of Katniss’s struggles.
The insistence on shoving in a love triangle into the movies because Twilight when the political situation of the world and how it actively was a detriment to her relationships, platonic and burgeoning romances. The slow drift away in Katniss’s mind from her initial closeness with Gale and more towards Peeta as the plot continued on was (imo) much better portrayed in the books as well.
As it is, movies will inherently have a disadvantage to books when it comes to character internalizations. If the books had been in 3rd person, it largely would have been similar to the movies in missing nuanced character struggles and mental shifts
I’ve never liked THG personally, but I’ll readily admit that they are extremely readable. Despite disliking them, I’ve reread them a handful of times because I just wanted a quick read and knew i could get through them in no time at all. Well, the first two anyway. Mockingjay is just so bad that I can’t get past the first few chapters again.
The books were alright. My main complaint was Katniss seemed to be written as a sociopath.
It’s a hallmark of YA that the perspective is centred around one character and their experiences.
It is a good book series. My son devoured them so that’s a plus. I’m always in favour of getting kids to read. I enjoy reading some good YA too it can be fun.
Have him check out the Pendragon series by D.J. Machale. I got everyone around me into the series – my aunt included. It was my Harry Potter. They’re so much fun
I used to love those books! I remember being vaguely disappointed with the “punch the bad guy in the face over and over until we win” fight at the end, but the rest of them were fun to read. I’ll have to check them out again sometime. Thanks for reminding me these exist!
I enjoyed this book when I first read it, but now I think you’ve inspired me to try reading again now that I’m older.
Peak YA. Really hope Collins releases another book in the franchise
I just reread them for the first time in 10+ years and I absolutely agree, even would go so far as to say the books are underrated because people remember more about the terrible dystopia YA novels after it and/or the movies which were fine, but not as thoughtful as the book, especially because the Marketing felt like they fully missed the point.
I read an interview that the author did saying that the book is in large part a treatise on Just-War philosophy (what makes a war/the actions taken during it justified?) and it’s chilling how relevant the books continue to be.
I want to know how you can read a book and then proceed to spell two of the main characters’ names wrong multiple times
I’m still trying to figure out what Emmy siblings are.
Talk to text?
Audiobooks?
I was upset she didnt go with Gale, but something I liked that my mom pointed out (to your point about Kat nissan having flaws) is that Katniss already has this anger and this violence in her, she probably doesn’t want to even MORE of that
I’m over 40, I read the series long after the movies came out. Personally I enjoy both for different reasons. But what surprised me and what I enjoy about the books is that the author didn’t go too heavy-handed in the books. There’s plenty of room for being maudlin, for going to a really dark place in the narrative. Katniss is very, very damaged by the events but in a kind of PTSD -esque way the author doesn’t make her, and us, dwell on the horrible things that happened to her and other characters.
This brought back so many wonderful memories of reading the Hunger Games back in 2012. I read the 1st book in merely 2 days. I couldn’t put the damn book down.
I’ve always liked how practical Katniss is. There is a scene in the first book with Katniss bringing meat back from her hunt in the woods, and heading to the government first. They are starved for meat just as much as the rest of the District is, so she can get them to turn a blind eye to her illegal hunting if she gives them the first cut of meat. She also knows where she can offload questionable meat (i.e. dog) to turn a small profit. Katniss is the breadwinner of the house, and though the world conspires to make her into a icon on a pedestal, she is proactive enough to make her own choices and deal with the consequences.