The Hunger Games (2008)

I finished The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins, a few miles south of St. Louis, Michigan on the way to our Holt Family Christmas in Mt. Pleasant on December 26th. I don't like to read in the car but I had to know how this first part of the trilogy would end.

Science Fiction is not generally a genre to which I am attracted; but if the category is instead Speculative Fiction, "that extrapolates from some phenomenon or theory and postulates 'What if?' ", I am often intrigued. 

Although this is considered a Young Adult novel, the ideas are compelling ranging  from the huge gap between the ruling class living in obscene wealth while the rest of the population is near starvation to the emphasis on cruel mass entertainment. At some point Katniss remarks that everyone has broken some law or other to survive. You'd have to be blind to not see parallels in our own world.