It’s been eighteen years since Suzanne Collins wrote “The Hunger Games”, the smash hit literary sensation that continues to feel relevant and capture the attention of readers. This ongoing series will be a review series of both the Suzanne Collins books, as well as the film adaptations of the novels. I will post my review on the last Thursday of the month as we revisit the totalitarian world of Panem and the hope of the Mockingjay.
I first read Suzanne Collins’s novel “The Hunger Games” back in 2012, a few years after it had first come out. I hadn’t really been reading much YA fiction at that time, as my main associations to that age group were “Twilight” and “Harry Potter”, both series that didn’t interest me too much. But after hearing all the hype about “The Hunger Games” from friends and family alike (my mother was the one who said I needed to check it out, interestingly enough), I decided to give it a shot. And I ended up really liking it! I liked it so much that when the film came out later that year I told my husband that we needed to go and see it. He was skeptical, but once we came home from the movie he said ‘so…. do we own all of these books?’ And we did. Now, almost fifteen years later, I have decided that I wanted to revisit Panem, and Katniss Everdeen, and all of the victors and villains of “The Hunger Games” series.
Or, in the case of the books “Catching Fire” and “Mockingjay”, read for the first time! Yes, I never actually read beyond “The Hunger Games”, having heard that the other two books in the series weren’t as good as the first book. I just told myself I’d see the movies since I really liked the first one, and I was, for the first time in my life, the one in the dark when it came to the books and the lore while my husband was the expert (this would happen again with the “Grishaverse” by Leigh Bardugo, but that’s another story for another time). So I’m going to take 2026, a year that has started with a lot of fear and uncertainty in the Twin Cities with ICE coming in and bringing violence, and instability to our immigrant communities, to revisit the entire “Hunger Games” series. It just feels like the right time to come back to it. I will first read all of the books and review them in publication order, and then I will revisit the movies, finishing off with “Sunrise on the Reaping” when it comes out this November. I’ll review, I’ll compare an contrast, and no doubt I will be feeling a certain kind of way while doing so.
So for the most part I will be doing this on the last Thursday of each month (though I will use next Thursday as my first review post just to keep the momentum going). Feel free to follow along! And may the odds be ever in your favor!!
The Library Ladies 