The Hunger Games - film and books

I recently watched The Hunger Games on the big screen. It inspired me to read the final two books in the series, which I did over the course of the last three days. They ended up being pretty decent, quick reads.

I liked the first book of the trilogy, but not enough to rush into reading its follow-up book, Catching Fire. I've seen and heard criticism of the series regarding the fact that kids are fighting and killing other kids in the series, and that is an issue, but then again, that's sort of the point of the story. They were written for young adults, so it sorta follows that they'd be about young adults doing things.

I see the point though. It's sort of disconcerting to watch children fight, as it was in the movie. It's sort of disconcerting, though less so, to read about it, at least for me, because of the context that the reader gets that the moviegoer might miss. In the end, though, after all three books (I finished Mockingjay today, a few hours ago), I found them to be pretty decent dystopian fiction.

I want to digest the material a bit more before commenting further, but I'm going to try to say more about these works. Maybe I'll separate them into movie and books. I'll also be interested to see what they do with the next book in the series, which doesn't seem as film-ready.

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