The Hunger Games
The Hunger Games is a 2008 dystopian novel by the American writer Suzanne Collins. It is written in the perspective of 16-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives in the future, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem in North America. The Capitol, a highly advanced metropolis, exercises political control over the rest of the nation. The Hunger Games is an annual event in which one boy and one girl aged 12–18 from each of the twelve districts surrounding the Capitol are selected by lottery to compete in a televised battle royale to the death. The book received critical acclaim from major reviewers and authors. It was praised for its plot and character development. In writing The Hunger Games, Collins drew upon Greek mythology, Roman gladiatorial games, and contemporary reality television for thematic content. The novel won many awards, including the California Young Reader Medal, and was named one of Publishers Weekly's "Best Books of the Year" in 2008. The Hunger Games was first published in hardcover on September 14, 2008, by Scholastic, featuring a cover designed by Tim O'Brien.
Stats for nerds
16recommend
107mentions
98people
2010–2026years
15% recommend77% neutral8% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I'd argue that the novels the TFA author reads are boring to the TFA author -- until they're not. If you are reading a novel that works for you, it's often not boring from the opening line.
Example: Anna Karenina. Gripping from the opening line (if you like the type of novel that it is; and it's fine if you don't, of course).
Or alternatively, Pride and Prejudice. Again, that opener just sucks you in (if this is a book for you, that is; and again, if it's not -- totally fine).
Example of a modern page-turner: The Hunger Games. If you are bored with this novel after three pages, you shouldn't read any further, because it's absolutely, certainly, not for you.
Or, Jeebus, Harry-Freaking-Potter. There is a reason that an entire generation grew up reading those books.
Or: "The Time Traveller's Wife", "The Poisonwood Bible", "The Road", "Interview with the Vampire", "A Room with a View", "Replay", "Of Mice and Men", "Brave New World". The list of books that are gripping from the start, should they appeal to you, can be almost endless.
Basically, if you and your book align (ugh, sorry), then there generally shouldn't be any form of "volta" (really, ugh).
There are many novels that are boring to me. I've never finished those; I discard and move on to the next one, where the author knew how to write something that isn't boring to me. Someone else might love them, and many people clearly do, but they're not for me.
Why do so many people assume that everyone will love the exact same books, and that if you're bored by a book you just have to work at it some more? Life is too short for that nonsense.
- > Surely you want the leader that most Americans voted for?
I prefer not to live in the Hunger Games world, personally.
Those books are a brilliant exploration of the tyranny of urban clusters.
The electoral college is an effective foil to that.
- Books are like wine. Given a selection of wine, connoisseurs will select wines that the average drinker won't. But their experience and expectations are very different. Adventurous/curioust/openminded folks will cross the aisle and change their expectations. The rest will stay with their easy-to-drink wines or their complex.
I tried reading "The Da Vinci Code" and it felt like a was a bad version of Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum". But that's me. Most of my friends would choose "The Da Vinci Code". And I imagine Eco and Brown had very different goals for their books.
I did love Harry Potter and Hunger Games though! Not great works of literature, but they're super fun!
- Hunger Games Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes
you don't have to have read the other Hunger Games because it is set about 60 years before the others
- They removed inaccurate books.
I don't know about you, but Harry Potter and The Hunger Games are the most accurate books I've read in 20 years.
- Definitely! There's a fun YA trilogy by Kenneth Oppel called Airborne that takes place in an alternate-history midcentury where heavier-than-air flight has never been invented and people cross the ocean in giant airships.
He also invents some other stuff like the gas "hydrium" (non-flammable, much more bouyant than hydrogen) as a plot element, and that also helps sell the overall practicality of airship travel. But yeah, it's a good read-aloud to kids or even just a quick one for yourself, similar to something like the Hunger Games.
