Book Reviews

Hunger Games
by Suzanne Collins
Published in 2008 (I finished it on June 18, 2012)

A great series. She developed feisty, yet vulnerable characters which were enjoyable to follow throughout her somewhat post-apocalyptic world.

Her POV being present tense was a nice trick. It’s not always easy to do, and I didn’t even notice it until after getting ¾ of the way through the first novel.

As almost always, read the books first. The movie just spoils too much. Sure, it’s still worth reading anyways, but the experience will be deeper if one doesn’t know what lies ahead. You may think she survives to run and fight in the second and third books, but are you sure that’s the case? Also, the movie isn’t first-person POV, so the love stories are severely disabled. One simply must be inside the protagonist’s head to really know her thoughts.

Child Danger

I read an article a while back about child endangerment in the entertainment world. To sum it up, it was observant that it appears to be growing lately, from losing infants to teenagers. I’m not sure it’s true since I just read a book from 1946, where the bad guy was shooting at a boy. But still, it’s interesting to examine.

Fascination with Brawling

Another element illustrated is our fascination with human combat. Now, modern society isn’t at the level of Roman gladiators fighting graphically to the death (unless it’s on TV), but the current trends of “no holds barred” fighting does beckon the question of whether or not we are possibly progressing towards that era. Countering that is the recent trend of trying to project pro football players even better with more rules and safer equipment. There are even former NFL players who don’t want their children playing football in youth leagues.