Dystopiathon: Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins

**To view spoilers, drag your mouse over the empty space between"<SPOILER>...<SPOILER>"
In case you haven't seen it, I did a book review of The Hunger Games: http://bookahooligans.blogspot.com/2014/05/dystopiathon-hunger-games-by-suzanne.html

So, I want you to go read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. Then you can read my review. Then go out and read Catching Fire. Then you can read this. Got it? Okay.

<SPOILERS>
To recap, for the first few hundred pages of the book, Katniss is just chillin' out in the woods. Then President Snow comes into her house and basically says "Love Peeta or I'll kill you." Then he throws Katniss back into The Hunger Games. What fun . . .

This is my favorite book in the trilogy. The Hunger Games had me hooked, and Catching Fire was even better. I did not expect for Katniss to have to go back into the games. From that point on, I devoured the book.
I loved all of the characters, minus the fact that so many of them died.
When Peeta ran into the force field, I was so scared. Peeta isn't my favorite character, but it's still like Wait . . . he's dying? The author also made it sound like Finnick was trying to kill him, and I was screaming at my book "I KNEW IT! I KNEW IT! Wait . . . oh."
When the hovercraft broke through the force field, I thought that the Capitol was interfering in the games, and when Johanna cut out Katniss's tracker, I thought she was trying to kill Katniss.
I love when I predict something in a book and it doesn't happen. You know you're a good author when you trick your readers into thinking something that doesn't happen.

The cliffhanger in this book was awesome. It wasn't just like "Katniss had no idea where she was. The end." It was "Katniss, there is no District 12." HOW DID THAT HAPPEN? WHAT'S GOING ON?

Overall, awesome book. I love how much thought the author put into the arena and the characters and the book was beautiful and kick butt awesome. <SPOILERS>

Dystopiathon: The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

**To view spoilers, drag your mouse over the empty space between"<SPOILER>...<SPOILER>"

Welcome to dystopiathon! A week-long event honoring dystopian novels!
To kick off this fun little event, I will be giving a book talk about The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.
For the five of you who haven't read the series yet, it's about a girl named Katniss who lives in a very screwed up and futuristic society. Most of its citizens live in poverty, but the wealthy ones live in The Capitol, which is the main city in Panem where the president lives and all that fun stuff. The rest of Panem is divided into 12 districts, and Katniss lives in District 12. Every year, a boy and one girl from the ages 12 to 18 from each district are taken to an arena in The Capitol to fight to the death. And their gruesome deaths are broadcasted on television for the rest of Panem to see. And the people in The Capitol treat it like it's a game show. You can probably fill in these blanks, but Katniss has to play in the games.
It's a really good and exciting book, and it's the first in The Hunger Games trilogy. I highly recommend it, but some parts of it are kind of graphic, so I'd say that anyone 10 and up who thinks they can stomach it should read it. Overall, it was a fantastic book and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This section of the review will be a book talk, so <MASSIVE SPOILERS> Like most of the people reading this, I've read the whole series and enjoyed it. This was such an amazing book. It was partially because it was my first dystopian book, which made it even better. So, you might have noticed that I left out in the summary that Katniss (sorry, I need to cut in here and just say that "Katniss" was just auto-corrected to "Fatness") volunteered for her sister, Prim. I want that to be a surprise for the people who haven't read it yet, so don't mention it in the comments. I thought that was such an awesome sister moment. Nothing says I love you like "I'll fight to the death against 23 other kids to protect you."
Now, let's talk about the love triangle. Please, I implore you, don't even talk about Team Gale and Team Peeta. This isn't freaking Twilight. The book isn't supposed to be centered around love. Katniss is feigning her love for Peeta to stay alive, and honestly, she's fighting to the death. Her love life isn't really a big part of this book. It's supposed to be exciting and thrilling. DON'T TURN IT INTO TWILIGHT.
Rue's death was so sad. The author just shoved the knife in on that one. She died helping Katniss, then Katniss killed the person who killed Rue, buried Rue in flowers and sang her to death, caused a riot in District 11, and basically gave the Capitol the middle finger. It was so sad and awesome at the same time. But mainly sad.
Well, Katniss and Peeta both won the games. Yay! And it's a happily ever after!
Until Catching Fire. <SPOILERS>