The Hunger Games Trilogy

by Suzanne Collins

The rules of the Hunger Games are simple. In punishment for the uprising, each of the twelve districts must provide one girl and one boy, called tributes, to participate. The twenty-four tributes will be imprisoned in a vast outdoor arena that could hold anything from a burning desert to a frozen wasteland. Over a period of several weeks, the competitors must fight to the death. The last tribute standing wins.

So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.

At first one, then another, then almost every member of the crowd touches the three middle fingers of their left hand to their lips and holds it out to me. It is an old and rarely used gesture of our district, occasionally seen at funerals. It means thanks, it means admiration, it means good-bye to someone you love.

“As long as you can find yourself, you’ll never starve.”

The dark red hair, the striking features, the porcelain white skin. But even as I utter the words, I feel my insides contracting with anxiety and guilt at the sight of her, and while I can’t pull it up, I know some bad memory is associated with her.

“She has no idea. The effect she can have.”

I am not pretty. I am not beautiful. I am as radiant as the sun.

“I don’t want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I’m not.”

The foreshadowing is crazyyy

Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow brings them true Here is the place where I love you.

Then he smiles as if he’d be happy to lie there gazing at me forever. He’s great at this stuff.

“It must be very fragile, if a handful of berries can bring it down.”

I know Haymitch will be up for hours. He doesn’t like to sleep when it’s dark out.

Plutarch has run his thumb across the crystal face of the watch and for just a moment an image appears, glowing as if lit by candlelight.

This might be reaching like by far but could this be possibly his trying to give a hint into the quarter quell??

At some point, you have to stop running and turn around and face whoever wants you dead. The hard thing is finding the courage to do it.

I wish that Peeta were here to hold me, until I remember I’m not supposed to wish that anymore. I have chosen Gale and the rebellion, and a future with Peeta is the Capitol’s design, not mine.

While I was wallowing around on the floor of that cellar, thinking only of myself, he was here, thinking only of me. Shame isn’t a strong enough word for what I feel. “You could live a hundred lifetimes and not deserve him, you know,”

Of my mockingjay pin and how it means something completely different now that I know that its former owner was Madge’s aunt, Maysilee Donner, a tribute who was murdered in the arena.

“I just want to spend every possible minute of the rest of my life with you,”

Ugh I just love him

Oh, right. I’m supposed to be pregnant, I think. While I’m trying to think what that means and how I should act — maybe throw up or something — Finnick has positioned himself at the edge of the water.

This is way too funny to me 😂

And maybe it’s because of that underlying goodness that he can move a crowd — no, a country — to his side with the turn of a simple sentence.

I drink in his wholeness, the soundness of his body and mind. It runs through me like the morphling they give me in the hospital, dulling the pain of the last weeks.

and conciliatory.

“Katniss . . . he’s still trying to keep you alive.”

In some ways, District 13 is even more controlling than the Capitol.

This is what I’m sayinnn

This must be the right decision. If Cinna wanted it.

I will forever love the bond her and Cinna had

“I think you’d be pretty in any color.”

“She’s still a girl and you made her look thirty-five. Feels wrong. Like something the Capitol would do.”

Power. I have a kind of power I never knew I possessed. Snow knew it, as soon as I held out those berries. Plutarch knew when he rescued me from the arena. And Coin knows now. So much so that she must publicly remind her people that I am not in control.

I assumed, as usual, it was my presence that brought on punishment.

You can torture us and bomb us and burn our districts to the ground, but do you see that?” One of the cameras follows as I point to the planes burning on the roof of the warehouse across from us. The Capitol seal on a wing glows clearly through the flames. “Fire is catching!” I am shouting now, determined that he will not miss a word. “And if we burn, you burn with us!”

Something about reading this makes it so much more intense than the movies

“Because I’m in pain,” he says. “That’s the only way I get your attention.”

The scream begins in my lower back and works its way up through my body only to jam in my throat.

I can’t count how many times I’ve felt this way. Beautifully written.

It takes ten times as long to put yourself back together as it does to fall apart.”

If a victor is considered desirable, the president gives them as a reward or allows people to buy them for an exorbitant amount of money. If you refuse, he kills someone you love. So you do it.”

“I’m not their slave,” the man mutters. “I am,” I say. “That’s why I killed Cato . . . and he killed Thresh . . . and he killed Clove . . . and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol. But I’m tired of being a piece in their Games.”

District Twelve and District Two have no fight except the one the Capitol gave us.”

“But that kind of thinking . . . you could turn it into an argument for killing anyone at any time. You could justify sending kids into the Hunger Games to prevent the districts from getting out of line,”

“Panem et Circenses translates into ‘Bread and Circuses.’ The writer was saying that in return for full bellies and entertainment, his people had given up their political responsibilities and therefore their power.”

All those months of taking it for granted that Peeta thought I was wonderful are over. Finally, he can see me for who I really am. Violent. Distrustful. Manipulative. Deadly. And I hate him for it.

I look at the layer of grime under her fingernails. Wonder if the people in 7 ever bathe.

She’s gotta be scared of being submerged in water or something

“This time Snow will be a player, too.”

But if Coin sent Peeta here, she’s decided something else as well. That I’m of more use to her dead than alive.

“But that’s not going to happen under my watch, Soldier Everdeen. I’m planning for you to have a long life.”

Ugh I just love Boggs

“Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancée. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Hunter. Tribute. Ally. I’ll add it to the list of words I use to try to figure you out.”

His eyes are still open, but dead.

Suzanne how could you do this to me? 😭

I take it, not knowing what to expect. The label reads LAMB STEW.

STOP IM GONNA CRY

“Because that’s what you and I do. Protect each other.”

“Stay with me.” His pupils contract to pinpoints, dilate again rapidly, and then return to something resembling normalcy. “Always,” he murmurs.

“That was the one thing I had going for me. Taking care of your family,” he says. “Shoot straight, okay?”

Dude it’s almost like he doesn’t care that he killed Prim. Only that it will be the reason Katie’s and him can never be anything more. That’s literally sick.

“What has been proposed is that in lieu of eliminating the entire Capitol population, we have a final, symbolic Hunger Games, using the children directly related to those who held the most power.”

Just switching one horrible president for an equally horrible one