Hungry Games.

Last week, while at the beach,  I finished reading the Hunger Games trilogy. 

After finishing the series, I have decided that I hate reading books that are first-person narratives 

Finishing the series did do one good thing for me.  It made me realize how much I detest reading fires-person narratives told from a teenage girl's point of view. I'm not sexist, but seriously, nothing makes sense in how they reason all of the crazy things they do. More on this later.


I'd read the first Hunger Games book last year, but did not feel the need to read the 2nd and 3rd ones. In an attempt to cure a very serious case of pre-college-summer-boredom-itis, I decided I might as well finish up the series last week. Here is what I think about them.

Book 1: Exhibition- Book one, ever so subtly titled The Hunger Games tells the story of Katniss Everdeen, a girl in a "not so far in the future" dystopian society. In this dark future, 24 children from 12 districts in the country of Panem are forced  to fight to the death on live television in an annual event called the Hunger Games. Katniss, (hereafter Cat-lisp because that's what I wanted to say every time I read her name), through a turn of events is selected to compete in this years Hunger Games. This in itself is very crucial to the plot, because if she hadn't been picked, the story would probably focused more around the atrocities of centralized government and the civilly disobedient Cat-lisp who poached to feed her starving family. It probably would not have sold as well, even though the genre would've been transferred from teenage drama/romance to a satiric vision of the future. All in all, I felt that book 1 of the series was pretty good. Cat-lisp ends up winning the Hunger Games with a dude she faked a romance with to stay alive, Peeta, who is a bread baker and wears pants with lots of pockets. 

 Book 2: ? - 300 pages later, I ask myself "why did I read that?" In book 2, Catching Fire, Cat-lisp and Peeta are thrown back into the gladiatorial Hunger Games as competitors again. In most trilogies, nothing important happens for the majority of the second part of the story, but there is a major plot twist at the end that is supposed to make you feel like all your suffering through the novel/movie was worth it. Empire Strikes Back, The Two Towers, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban are all like this. Catching Fire is no exception. If you ever decide to read this series, just read the last 30 some odd pages and you'll get the gist of everything that you need to know to continue onto book 3.

 Book 3: The Mascot. In book 3, Mockingjay, Cat-lisp finds herself being used as the rebels' mascot in the civil war that consumes the land after her 2nd Hunger Games. That's about it.

Cat-lisp is an interesting character, but that just may be because you're trapped inside her head for about 900 pages. 1st person narratives are, in my opinion, always biased in favor of the person narrating, for who can portray themselves in a completely objective sense? She tries to make it seem as if she's a cold-hearted teenage girl who can do what she needs to to survive without any regrets or regard for anything else. What she turns out to be is pretty much a Bella Swan who can shoot a bow and arrow pretty well. From about halfway through the first book to the end of the third we are treated to the conflict of interest between the two men in her life, Peeta and Gale, her hunting buddy from back home. agony. pure agony. Being trapped in a teenage girl's mind when she's thinking about guys. Visible shudders. Gale turns out to be the Eddie Cullen of this story (silent, athletic, likes staring at Cat-lisp and not saying anything) and Peeta is the sort of Jacob Black (guy who cries a lot, walks around without a shirt on, drooling over Cat-lisp all the time). Granted Cat-lisp is not as whiny as Bella Swan, but she does have a particular knack for creating drama that I don't really think exists. For instance, there are long internal monologues from her in books 2 and 3 especially exploring how she thinks Gale and Peeta feel about her. She spins these huge, complex webs of emotion between her and the two guys that, quite frankly, no self-respecting guy would find himself in. Am I really going into this? Did I really just compare this series to Twilight? What have I become? I should just stop right now.

If anything, the Series was like ripping a band aid off. Painful, yet it had to be done. It hurt while it was happening, but it was quick. Deep and Wide.