I just read straight through The Hunger Games last night, without stopping. That's the first time I've done that since I first read Ender's Game. I think the book is very well constructed--the characters are varied, engaging, and 3-dimensional. The pacing is just right as well; it's written in the first-person present tense, and there's just the right mix of narration and action. Anyone else here read it?

Also, they're making a movie of it already, but that preview makes it look like they're going to botch it pretty badly. The impact of the book was all about the physical and psychological horror of violence. In the preview, when the girl rises up in the tube to enter the arena, she's shown running up to grab a pack and then sprint away. In the book, she's covered in blood by the time she leaves that area, and about a dozen corpses are on the ground behind her. And there's no way they can even attempt to show the horror of the final confrontation between Cato and the mutts in a PG-13 film. And as for the psychological horror--the seriously heart-wrenching plot would never fly as a big summer blockbuster as-is; I'm a bit nervous to see how they handle it.

Thoughts?

The books were easy reads and somewhat interesting, but they definitely got progressively worse as the series went on. Like most YA books, I think the series is highly overrated but at least it's not as bad as twilight or harry potter, and it saddens me that these get so much more attention than the truly great fantasy novels out there like the Game of Thrones series. If you want to talk seriously about books with character development, The Hunger Games series has nothing on A Song of Ice and Fire.

What does it say about our country that the most popular novels for adults are targeted for kids with a middle school reading and comprehension level?

What does it say about our country that the most popular novels for adults are targeted for kids with a middle school reading and comprehension level?

I think it says that highly talented writers have realized that they can reach a broader audience if they don't measure the quality of their own books by the average number of syllables per word, but rather focus on compelling plot, characters, and imagery. That a book doesn't have to be a 1000-page tome to contain an engaging and entertaining story. That a novel is probably better without lengthy appendices that readers need to refer to in order to remember one of a hundred minor characters now being reintroduced.

All that said, I have loved a good number of real epics. Just don't discount a more approachable story simply because so many others can enjoy it.