Thursday, January 19, 2012

#47 - Hunger Games. For all ages?

I just finished the first Hunger Games book last night. If I had to give somebody a BRIEF breakdown of what the book is about I would say...

It is Gory like Gladiator.
Invasive like Truman Show.
The spectators come from Running Man.
It has tragedy like Romeo and Juliet.
It must have some Emo Music somewhere in there.
It has a part that reminds you of Tremors 3.
The ending is like an episode of I saw Star Trek once.
You wont have a clue why people are doing the things they are doing.

...and by the way...

The writer likes to make you read about children getting stabbed with spears and you wont be able to sleep cause you hear them screaming in your head.

Before I get started, let me just state that I DID read the whole thing quickly and it was very engaging. There were things I liked and things I didn't like.

The things I didn't like...

1. As soon as I saw that the writer was going to throw some kind of "love angle" (not a triangle, because that would suggest that Peeta and that Gale, or Greg guy have a thing together too. The 2 boys like the Girl. That is an angle.) I reached deep down for my teenaged love-sick version of girl Dan, but he/she didn't want to show up, and thus didn't care about all the stuff in the cave and the issues the main character had. I guess that is part of the allure of Twilight? But it is not my thing. If there really is a love TRIANGLE in the next book and the 2 boys like each other, that would make things pretty strange, but I still probably wouldn't care much.

2. When it comes to % of time spent watching gory and violent movies compared to other genres, I will submit that that percentage is very very high. I like war and military movies. I don't like teen slice and dice movies. The book reminded me of the latter. I felt very gross after reading the end of the book. I do not want to ever read a book of children stabbing each other with spears and bashing a girls head in with a rock ever again. It is a horrible image to have in your head if you have a vivid imagination. I do not know how people do not have the same images in their head of young teenagers doing that to each other.

3. Did I read about werewolves at the end?

The things that I liked...

1. I was very intrigued by the audience and the people of the Capitol. They are a carbon copy, in a way, to the people in Running Man. They are sick disgusting people with nothing more to do then to satisfy their twisted need to see something disgusting and violent once a year. I was hoping that there would be more of a slap in their face in the book. I think there was meant to be, but it just turned into a Romeo and Juliet moment. I digress. I was reading the book and got excited anytime I got to hear about those people. I had no interest in the actual games itself and tried my best to read quickly through the actual reluctant fighting.

2. I wanted to hear more about what was happening in Districts, namely 11 and 12. But of course, the 1st person style of the book didn't allow much for that. Regardless, I liked the idea of the Districts.

In the end, the book WAS an exciting read but was NOT a read that left me wanting to ever touch the book again, let alone read another one. The book had an engaging story to tell, although it was hard to get past the story-telling style of the writer. Young people wont mind the style so much. I felt confused as to what I was supposed to be feeling. Was I supposed to be hoping for the main character to kill everyone else? No thanks. I was hoping that at the very start of the games they would get together and start some type of uprising, but that never happened. Instead I had to imagine my nieces and nephews 1 by 1 getting dragged away from their parents and families. Then sitting in the cold, crying, screaming in agony and depressed in the dirt as somebody tries to take their life. Do we remember how old 12 to 17 year olds really are? I don't mind the violence. But the writer samurai sliced at my heart strings by making them all that age. I would not recommend this book to anyone who has an extremely vivid imagination and has no problem living out every detail of a story in their imagination.

Not the book for me.