Review: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
I’ve been resisting the urge to read The Hunger games by Suzanne Collins for a long time, mostly because of the hype. I’ve been burned too many times by overhyped books that did nothing for me at all, and I can be a picky reader.
However, last year, Maree, Memory and I decided that we should get it over with and read the book together. That way, if it sucked, we could console each other by, I don’t know, maybe pasting horrible lines of the book into Twitter. (OK, maybe I’m the only person of the three of us who would do that.)
Anyway, we all emailed each other questions that we answered about the book. So go over to Memory’s blog and read what we thought of it.
For the record, I’m not sure this was quite an A book for me, but it really was quite good and I hope to read the second book soon.
Haven’t read the book but have read your group review. My thoughts:
1) It strikes me that exacting a tribute of kids to be killed from each district is not a great way to keep subjugated territories in line. Sure, it inspires fear, but what then? How long can you keep subjugated lands under control by means of an event that is largely symbolic (they’re not decimating the population, they’re forcing a token human sacrifice of a few kids per district per year)? Premise feels too forced. Author should read up on the Roman Empire for empire-building, and on the Aztecs for keeping people subordinate via fear.
2) She really named her dystopia “Panem”? She named it the Latin word for bread*? In a book called The Hunger Games? Okay then. Subtlety, not so much.
So I will probably not read this one.
*accusative case = direct object. That’s where the -em comes from, for folks playing at home. The pan- root will be familiar to any speakers of Spanish, French, etc — i.e., you don’t have to be a classics scholar to groan at this one.