The Hunger Games

[bluegoose]

Just stayed up obscenely late to finish Mockingjay. And interesting and somewhat enigmatic ending. I'm interested in knowing if anybody else has finished.

Wow. 3:20 is late.

My 9 year old would have done the same, had we let him. As it is, he has about 50 pages left and should be done by the time school is out. I'll try to get him to sign up here tonight and post some comments.

[Mrs. Funk]

Wow. 3:20 is late.

My 9 year old would have done the same, had we let him. As it is, he has about 50 pages left and should be done by the time school is out. I'll try to get him to sign up here tonight and post some comments.

Mostly, I couldn't sleep anyway and I was enjoyed the book, so I stayed up.

I'd love to actually talk about it with someone. Everybody I know hasn't started or finished it yet.

[Maximus]

I hated the book, to be honest.

IF I knew how to do spolier tags, I would. But lets leave it at that.

[Maximus]

Spoiler for Spoliers:

Okay I found it.
I just thought the book was boring, mostly. Most of the action was away from the main character. They tell her about a lot of the stuff that happens, instead of her being there. It just didn't hold my interest as much, no connection between her and other characters like previous books, no mystery, just a lovey dubby ending, etc.

[Mrs. Funk]

I hated the book, to be honest.

IF I knew how to do spolier tags, I would. But lets leave it at that.

I thought the book was all right. Katniss seems more of a passive character in this one, and that bugged me. But it was all right.

[Donuthole]

Plowed through the first book this past weekend. I thought it was pretty entertaining despite the total cop out of an ending.

[TripletDaddy]

My MIL and FIL are reading this book.

That should cause feelings of shame for some of you.

[Flystripper]

My MIL and FIL are reading this book.

That should cause feelings of shame for some of you.

I read the books and I tell myself it was only to know what my 10 year old was reading...

[USCoug]

I read the books. The first one was entertaining, but nothing fantastic. I don't like her writing style though which made the second and third books really unsatisfying. It seemed she dragged out some parts, and spent 1 or 2 paragraphs with major plot advances in others.

I'm looking forward to the movie next month though.

[Katy Lied]

Just finished the trilogy last week. The first book is decent, but they get progressively worse.

Just my opinion, and I'm sure others loved everything, but

Spoiler for spoiler:

The heroine gets less and less noble and likeable, and more and more shrewish and shrill. She gets more ambivalent about doing what is "good" and becomes a creature controlled by her own selfish emotions. I can understand her fear motivating her actions, but she is selfish and lazy and sort of dumb. And utterly self absorbed. The only thing she predictably delivers is an indictment of the establishment on cue, like that is hard to do.

The death of her little sister is wasted on a preposterous coincidence. After working so hard to establish Peeta (and I'm on Team Peeta too) as the moral voice of the book, the author then takes his character and his actions and turns it upside down. Same for Coin. Still not sure why Katniss killed Coin. Sure it was shocking, but it didn't make sense. I can still accept this individual turn of events, but you get enough of these wtf moments and then all you're doing is drunkenly stumbling from shocking moment to shocking moment. No advancement to the plot, or character development, just confusion.

And no explication before or after the fact. What actually did happen when she blew up the arena in Catching Fire? How did events unfold? Did the cameras catch it? Did anyone die when it was destroyed? After making her readers read through plot development action (some described at a snail's pace), she then wraps everything up in a single sentance, leaving her readers to fill in the blanks.

Compare this to Stephen King's (Richard Bachman) The Long Walk, a similar setup, where young boys compete in a marathan walk until they drop, to the death, and the single winner gets riches and wealth for life. King takes an utterly average boy, and makes you believe it when he wins, but at a terrible cost.

Also compare to Holes, another YA book that is utterly consistent, and all of the loose ends tie up and make sense, and coincidence is logical if a bit fanciful. He also wraps up quickly, but leaves enough clues that his readers can puzzle out the fact that Zero is the great grandson of Madame Zeroney, and Stanley's epic hike up the Thumb in the dark is fulfilling a decades-long debt held by the Yelnats family.

[Mormon Red Death]

Just finished the trilogy last week. The first book is decent, but they get progressively worse.

Just my opinion, and I'm sure others loved everything, but

Spoiler for spoiler:

The heroine gets less and less noble and likeable, and more and more shrewish and shrill. She gets more ambivalent about doing what is "good" and becomes a creature controlled by her own selfish emotions. I can understand her fear motivating her actions, but she is selfish and lazy and sort of dumb. And utterly self absorbed. The only thing she predictably delivers is an indictment of the establishment on cue, like that is hard to do.

The death of her little sister is wasted on a preposterous coincidence. After working so hard to establish Peeta (and I'm on Team Peeta too) as the moral voice of the book, the author then takes his character and his actions and turns it upside down. Same for Coin. Still not sure why Katniss killed Coin. Sure it was shocking, but it didn't make sense. I can still accept this individual turn of events, but you get enough of these wtf moments and then all you're doing is drunkenly stumbling from shocking moment to shocking moment. No advancement to the plot, or character development, just confusion.

And no explication before or after the fact. What actually did happen when she blew up the arena in Catching Fire? How did events unfold? Did the cameras catch it? Did anyone die when it was destroyed? After making her readers read through plot development action (some described at a snail's pace), she then wraps everything up in a single sentance, leaving her readers to fill in the blanks.

Compare this to Stephen King's (Richard Bachman) The Long Walk, a similar setup, where young boys compete in a marathan walk until they drop, to the death, and the single winner gets riches and wealth for life. King takes an utterly average boy, and makes you believe it when he wins, but at a terrible cost.

Also compare to Holes, another YA book that is utterly consistent, and all of the loose ends tie up and make sense, and coincidence is logical if a bit fanciful. He also wraps up quickly, but leaves enough clues that his readers can puzzle out the fact that Zero is the great grandson of Madame Zeroney, and Stanley's epic hike up the Thumb in the dark is fulfilling a decades-long debt held by the Yelnats family.

the thing I liked about the trilogy was that Suzanne Collins didn't copout like the twilight author did. The love triangle wasn't conveniently bailed out by the out guy "imprinting" on the heroine's daughter. The book was cold and you see Katniss get colder and colder.

[marsupial]

I enjoyed the first book. Second book, not as much. Third book I struggled to finish. I no longer cared about Katniss or her story and was not motivated to pick it up.

[CardiacCoug]

I read the first one.

Trying to get around to reading the next two but you guys aren't helping.

[Katy Lied]

I read the first one.

Trying to get around to reading the next two but you guys aren't helping.

You should definately read #2 and #3. The author is good at plotting. Especially in Book #2, how she gets Kat back into the arena was phenomenally creative. She should have foreshadowed the quarter quell a bit more in the first book.

If someone is a good plotter, I forgive them for shortcomings in dialogue, and inconsistencies in structure. It's well known how much I love Phillip K. Dick, and he's a most imaginative plotter and a sucky dialogueist.

I'm betting the movie is really good, because the screenplay can make up for Collins' book deficiencies, while taking advantage of all the elements she is good at. Look how many of Phillip Dick's stories got turned into movies:

Bladerunner, Screamers, Total Recall, Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau, Paycheck, etc.

[UtahDan]

I enjoyed them all as pulp fiction, not as literature. So I brought lower expectations than it sounds like some of you did and quiet enjoyed them. Spoilers coming: my only real objection was inserting a second hunger games in the story line seemed a little cheap to me. Sort of like the author had run out of ideas and decided, hey I can can do this whole thing again.

But the truth is I want to see a fit Jennifer Lawrence on the big screen so I'm seeing the movies for sure. Shallow, I know.