A Hunger for Reading

For quite some time now, I'd been hearing how good The Hunger Games series is. The books are filed in the young adult section, but often likened to Harry Potter in the sense that there's plenty within for adult readers too. A film adaptation of the first book is coming next spring, and I resolved that I wanted to read the book before it arrived.

I was pleased to find that the book is all that people brag about and more. It's a very engaging story with vivid characters, clever plotting, and deft writing. And how it got classified as a young adult book completely escapes me. Okay, there's no sex or cursing, and the main character is a teenager. Is that alone enough to qualify for the genre despite an avalanche of rather graphic violence?

The Hunger Games is the first-person narrative of Katniss, a teenage girl in a dystopian future where 24 children are drafted annually to participate in a televised battle to the death for the entertainment of the masses. The book works because this character works. Katniss is a credible teenager with moments of self-involvement and definite blinds spots... but she's not annoying or too self-involved. And she's whip smart. She thinks her way out of many situations over the course of the book, and rarely if ever does something stupid without damn good reason.

It's going to be a challenging film adaptation, if you ask me. On the one hand, the gladiatorial setting is a natural for the screen. But that first-person element of the book is going to be a challenge. It seems like far too much material to convert to narration, and yet so much of what Katniss does has ulterior motives that the book is able to clearly articulate to the reader. What she does in the movie may not make sense without that insight into her thought process.

But that's a matter for later discussion. For now, I'll just celebrate the triumph of the novel itself. I grade it an A, and plan to continue on with the other two books in the series in the near future.