When I read The Hunger Games, I knew it was the first book in a trilogy. In a way, that upset me because the book was so fresh, so different from almost any other book I'd read that a sequel (or two sequels) seemed to buck the odds against matching the "magic".

If you're a friend of mine and we've talked about HG, you know my predictions for the sequels. Without seriously spoiling anything for readers waiting for Catching Fire to arrive in September, I can tell you that I was right... and wrong. Collins' "middle" book doesn't suffer from Middle Book Syndrome (as Inkspell did), and I got some of the plot right, but that's like saying that a 66 is a passing grade.

So don't worry about this trilogy losing its steam, and if we've talked, there's no way you'll figure out what I got right and what I totally missed.