The Hunger Games (The Hunger Games, #1) in Reading with Style

Aug 02, 2010 Foxy Grandma rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, zz-src-challange, series, scifi-fantasy, young-adult

First, let me say I am just now starting to read YA books. I was not thrilled by Twilight so that turned me off most YA books. However, like I tell my grandchildren about trying foods they don’t like again and again, I have to remember to keep trying different genres of books I think I don’t like. I have read several books lately that were classified as Young Adult that I enjoyed very much. So once again I learn not to limit myself. Hunger Games is a good book, regardless of the category you put ...more

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Dec 03, 2011 Jama rated it really liked it

Shelves: post-apocalyptic, read-alouds-for-m-e

The rating reflects how this book was received as a read aloud with my 9 y.o. son. He would rate it a 5, but I also enjoyed the book and we both had a hard time putting it down when our reading time was over. I was nervous that the book would be too violent or mature for him to read on his own, but we really didn't encounter any graphic violence that would rate higher than watching something like Star Wars. Collins also makes a point of humanizing the lives and deaths of the teenagers playing in ...more

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Jan 07, 2011 Isabell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: listened, unabridged, series, audiobook, owned, young-adult, 21st-century, ed-english, read-2011, dystopian

I had heard a lot of good things about this book, but before I read (heard) it I had my reservations. From the description it just didn't seem like my sort of story. However, I changed my mind once I began listening the the audiobook.

The books begins interesting, stays interesting and ends interesting. Katniss is a likable heroine and the background story is very intriguing. The actual plot is simply gripping. There were surprises at every turn; I would rate the Hunger Games certainly among thos ...more

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Jan 11, 2011 Wendy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: banned-books, ya-mg, dystopian, liked-the-movie, girls-rock-the-boys

I picked this up hoping for a page-turning adventure novel--the kind I fondly remember checking out of my middle-school library and reading in one night. In this respect, the book delivers. The author builds tension and maintains a page-flipping pace with ease. 16 year-old Katniss is also refreshingly bad-ass for a young female heroine; her flaws of aloofness and tendency for being self-centered balance well with her role as provider/protector of her sister and helplessly ill mother. I can absol I picked this up hoping for a page-turning adventure novel--the kind I fondly remember checking out of my middle-school library and reading in one night. In this respect, the book delivers. The author builds tension and maintains a page-flipping pace with ease. 16 year-old Katniss is also refreshingly bad-ass for a young female heroine; her flaws of aloofness and tendency for being self-centered balance well with her role as provider/protector of her sister and helplessly ill mother. I can absolutely see how this book earned its hype--it almost feels calculated to be one: the dystopian world that celebrates adolescents fighting to the death as a snide commentary on reality TV, the fetishized fashion (Katniss' makeover seems specifically placed to appeal to one demographic, the brutal violence to another), all this is brilliantly executed...if perhaps not new (Battle Royale!) I also liked the (mostly) complex relationships between characters which is so often missing in YA books, as it's often assumed that young people should learn about the world through the safe (and unrealistic) depictions of obvious black-white situations. Instead, Katniss is trying to survive in a harsh world where she can trust no one, and is afraid to make friends for fear she--or they--will have to kill the other later. The first 2/3 of the book were 5 star material for me, but the unnecessary and arbitrary rule change to the game dropped most of the dramatic tension, forcing an unnatural alliance between two characters that didn't work for me at all. This lessened the gravity of the "death game"--Katniss had secretly witnessed the one character kill a girl early on to prove his loyalty to the more powerful group and I thought this would HAVE to be dealt with...but it's never even mentioned again.

One last thing I had an issue with--and I haven't weighted it too much in my overall review of this book as I'm hoping the sequels will cover it--is the way the protagonist's killing of other kids is brushed over without giving her a chance to reflect emotionally. Partly, she doesn't have much time for reflection in the Game. Most of the other kids are portrayed as "evil", and perhaps this is the author filtering through Katniss, and the only way she can be OK with her actions is if she convinces herself that they ARE "evil". I'm not buying it. These are ALL kids, and they ALL just want to survive, and what Katniss does is no better or worse than the rest of them. Had the story been told at a different angle with slightly more omniscience, the reader probably wouldn't have even been able take sides. Of course, here we have a beautiful opportunity for psychological depth and Katniss's inner emotional turmoil, and I'm terrified this will all be jettisoned in the sequels for a shallow love-triangle story instead. But I'm going to read on anyway... ...more

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Apr 14, 2011 Natasha rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: reviews-to-be-done

WOW> I can't believe how deep I fell into the stream of this book. Suzanne Collins amazed me with her setup of the Hunger Games series. Once I finished up the last page on my Kindle of the first book, I immediately opened up the next one in the series, Catching Fire. The cliff hangers in both of these books has such a compelling way of driving one to the next book. I'm on the last one now and just read page 1. I kind of don't want the series to end.....Once you read this first book Hunger Games ...more

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Apr 29, 2011 Isabell rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, listened, series, ed-german, read-2012, cover-green, library-books, abridged, read-2011, double-editions

This review specifically relates to the German audiobook edition, which is an abridged reading.
Diese Rezension bezieht sich speziell auf die deutsche - gekürzte - Hörbuchausgabe.

DE: Das Buch an sich mochte ich sehr und habe ihm in meiner Rezension der ungekürzten englischen Hörbuchversion auch fünf Sterne gegeben. Als ich die gezürzte deutsche Fassung in der Bibliothek entdeckte, habe ich beschlossen es einmal damit zu versuchen, obwohl ich eigentlich nicht sonderlich angetan bin von gekürzten L This review specifically relates to the German audiobook edition, which is an abridged reading.
Diese Rezension bezieht sich speziell auf die deutsche - gekürzte - Hörbuchausgabe.

DE: Das Buch an sich mochte ich sehr und habe ihm in meiner Rezension der ungekürzten englischen Hörbuchversion auch fünf Sterne gegeben. Als ich die gezürzte deutsche Fassung in der Bibliothek entdeckte, habe ich beschlossen es einmal damit zu versuchen, obwohl ich eigentlich nicht sonderlich angetan bin von gekürzten Lesungen. Trotzdem wollte ich sehen, ob diese besser war als sonst, da ich durchaus der Ansicht bin, dass das Buch auch an ein paar Kürzungen nicht allzu leiden würde. Allerdings fand ich heraus, dass diese Produktion keine wirkliche Ausnahme zu meiner allgemeinen Meinung bildete. Ich vermisste insbesondere zwei Szenen: Einmal die Stunden im Trainingszentrum, ohne die einige der späteren Szenen aus dem Kontext gerissen schienen; die andere Szene ist das Lied, das Katniss für Rue singt. Davon abgesehen habe ich allerdings nichts wirklich im Hörbuch vermisst, insofern war meine ursprüngliche Einschätzung also korrekt und diese Produktion ist gar nicht mal so schlecht.

Die Sprecherin hatte ich vorher noch nie gehört, sodass ich mich erst an sie gewöhnen musste, aber nach einigen Titeln habe ich sie nicht mehr als störend wahrgenommen.

Alles in allem kriegt also selbst das gekürzte Hörbuch noch eine solide vier-Sterne Wertung. Es hätten sogar noch fünf Sterne werden können, wenn zumindest noch ein bisschen der Trainingsstunden dabei gewesen wären (zumindest die Trainingspunkte und Katniss' Pfeil in Richtung der Spielemacher).

EN: I enjoyed the book as a whole very much and gave it five stars in my review of the unabridged edition. When I found the German audiobook at my local library I gave it a try. Usually I'm opposed to any abridged readings. Still I was interested to see if this fared better, as I actually think that the book wouldn't be too bad being a bit shorter. However, I found that this is no exception to my general opinion. I especially missed to passages: one being the training sessions before the arena, without which some of the later scenes are quite out of context; the other is Katniss' song for Rue. Apart from that I didn't actually miss anything in this audiobook, so my original assessment was right that this production isn't too bad.

The narrator was new to me, so I needed some minutes to get accustomed to her, but after the first few tracks I didn't mind her much.

So all things considered I still give this a solid four-star rating. It might even still have been five stars, had at least some of the training session (like the training score and Katniss' arrow at the gamemakers) been included. ...more

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