Hungry Hungry Games

A very quick, engaging read. Unfortunately, it wasn't a very substantial piece of work. I flew through the novel in one day - a page turner. I'm starting to see what's wrong with page turners - it's not that the author posits interesting ideas and you want to keep hearing more, but that the author won't give you really anything but well placed plot hooks, so you have to keep reading to find that resolution. Once you know the ending, there's no point in reading it again b/c you can never "unsee" it. It's no more satisfying than a mindless soap opera full of "twists" and "turns" to "wow" the audience. My housemate Sarah noticed how in Hunger Games, an entirely new world is created, but each innovation serves a direct purpose making everything. There isn't any exploration of the world for the sake of exploration. Furthermore, there aren't inventions whose purpose is unknown. I'm not sure I entirely agree with this, but I did find it somewhat a contradiction. How can there be tons of cameras in this fighting dome yet there be so many impoverished that support the rich? The one taciturn idea this book touches on is how love is portrayed by the media. The audience is attached to Peeta and Katniss so they want them to be together. No one ever thinks that there might be another guy back home for Katniss. My final thoughts are on what someone said in class: unnatractive girl becomes hot b/c she has some kind of relationship with a dark, emotionally distant man. She becomes even more hot because now she has a big, muscly puppy dog guy after her... Twilight anyone? I read The Alchemist and was very moved by the book. It wrestled with very complex ideas, but expressed them in a simple way much like a fable or parable would. After reading this book, I've come to realize that it doesn't matter what age group the book is intended. Just b/c Hunger Games is for teenagers isn't an excuse for it not to wrestle with difficult deeper ideas.