Friday, May 4, 2012

This Week's Book: The Hunger Games

I have a tradition of choosing tougher books for less crazy weeks and easier book for crazier weeks. This week is pretty crazy...

April 29-May 5: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Young Adult (2008 - 374 pp.) 

I had never heard of this book until the movie came out, which I suppose is the greatest endorsement I can give a movie I have not seen. There has been so much hype I had to figure out why, and this book did not have that Twilight feeling even if there seemed to be considerable overlap in the readership. 

Anything I could say about this book plot-wise would be a spoiler, and Book a Week is not about spoiling books. If anything, I would hope people want to read these books more after I get done with my pedantic analyses. 

I can leave you with a few things. The book flows well and reads very quickly. The concept of pitting people against each other in a fatal game show has not really been done since The Running Man, which came out well before most of this book's fans were born, so that was fun. In less of a flattering light, The Hunger Games has its share of dangling modifiers, sentence fragment, and general grammatical issues ("try and", etc.). On a more content-based note, is not completely clear why the Hunger Games are occurring, how the cameras are propelled through the arena, or the circumstances surrounding some of the deaths. The ratio of deus ex machinae to chapters is also kind of startling. Well... I was entertained. 

As for the naming conventions, I am not Cinna the conspirator, I am Cinna the poet! 

Ease of Reading: 10 
Educational Content: 1

No comments:

Post a Comment