I read The Hunger Games trilogy from two perspectives: that of senior citizen… and also a 1960s hippie. I was impressed on both counts.
I may be a senior citizen now, but I’m also a counterculture hippie-type person from the 60s. So I read and then reviewed The Hunger Games trilogy from two perspectives. Old fogey me and rebel hippie me. Quite a head trip, I can tell you. In other words, these aren’t your ordinary cookie cutter-type book reviews.
One viewpoint says, “Why rock the boat? I’m on social security, for heaven’s sake!” The other side of me doesn’t like what I see happening in society today… any more than I did in the sixties.
Did The Hunger Games books awaken that? Or did I choose to read the trilogy because of that?
The Hunger Games Trilogy books were published between 2008 and 2010. I read and reviewed them initially in 2012, after my son kept telling me how good they were. If you have not read the books yet… or held off, like I did, thinking they were about violence without reason, I hope my reviews will encourage you to view the books in a new light. And, if you have read the series, maybe also think about whether the theme of the novels feels too close to real life in 2025.
For me, reading the new 2025 Hunger Games “prequel” book Sunrise on the Reaping plus the rumors of a potential government-sponsored “Deportation Games” television show are what booted me in the rear to put this series review front and center again. Enough is enough.
Reading The Hunger Games
My Review of The Hunger Games – Book 1 of the Trilogy by Suzanne Collins
Why this book got me thinking…
The Hunger Games begins a little slowly, actually. So slowly, that I had to ask my son if it picked up some once I got into it. “It’s a good book, Mom,” he assured me so I kept reading. And found my head twisting round and round with the bizarre turns of events that kept showing up.
The books could be classified as Science Fiction or Fantasy, and I wonder if author Suzanne Collins is a bit of a mystic herself. Like J. K. Rowling, whose Harry Potter books books hit a chord with kids and adults alike… Collins portrays circumstances and characters that we all recognize… or that we live within. The controlling, centralized institutions, the hard-scrabbling general population, the very young who recognize injustice when they see it and, thankfully, haven’t yet made themselves “put a lid on it” as their elders have done.
The Game of Thrones series was also heading in the same direction, where the youngsters are the courageous ones who are willing to risk, well… anything… to make things right again, while the adults are hanging on for dear life to whatever they have left.
Okay, three series that have made me think – Potter, Thrones and Hunger Games. The fact that all three of these book series have been made into popular films says something. The fact that all three series were best-sellers for months on end says more. People were resonating with the stories in them.
And maybe taking hope.
A prophetic view of our future?
I wondered if the books were written as reminders not to cave in to lemming mentality… even though it’s easier. When we go along with things – even though they don’t feel right to us – a piece of our integrity gets chewed off. Do young adults have enough experience yet to know this? They are the intended audience for The Hunger Games, after all.
The books also drive home a couple of other points: when we ignore the suffering of others and hide behind our shutters, we lose a bit of our humanity. And when we let ourselves be walked all over by our governments and public institutions, there goes our freedom out the door… in fiction and in real life.
Katniss Everdeen, the young heroine of The Hunger Games hasn’t yet had the training to stifle her sense of what’s right. Luckily, she’s a plucky thing and paid attention when her dad taught her to use a bow and arrow. She’s responsible for feeding her family most of the time, even as a young teenager. She has learned a few survival tricks that serve her well at the Hunger Games, where it’s every person for himself or herself until you’re the last one standing… literally.
The Hunger Games are just that – annual events with untrained, unwilling “gladiators”… who are forced to participate in a cruel tradition meant to keep the general population under control. At the same time the games provide bloodthirsty entertainment for the privileged classes of the Capitol… the seat of power of Panem, a geographic area previously known as North America. Each of the twelve districts of Panem is required to send one male and one female “tribute” to the Games, where they will need to fight tooth, nail, claw and hammer to stay alive. Their ordeals are unimaginable. Their courage unbelievable.
The Hunger Games got me thinking… and remembering. The marches for peace and civil rights. The non-violent methods of Martin Luther King, Jr. The counterculture thinking of the 1960s. And I wondered what happened that so much of it has slipped away in the name of… what? Security? Or maybe lack of energy from the aging process?
Where did our – MY – rebellious spirit go?
Reading The Hunger Games brought some of that back to me.
This old fogey is starting to remember. And so, it seems are a few others. “Occupying” is not a new idea at all. Many of us remember taking part in “Sit-ins” way back when.
On the other hand, maybe the fascination with “young adult rebellion” books is just a cyclical thing, where younger generations have to push against the status quo regardless of the reasons why.
I don’t know… but it seems that the books are hitting home with the older generations, too. Or perhaps Suzanne Collins is just a great adventure writer and once the story’s over, we go on to other things.
We’ll see.
Catching Fire – Book 2 of The Hunger Games Trilogy
Catching Fire starts up where Book 1 left off. Katniss and her Hunger Games partner, Peeta Mellark, are back in their District – Number 12 – thinking to live the good life… for the rest of their lives.
Well, whatever’s left of their lives, at any rate.
Katniss is well aware that she is in disfavor with the powers-that-be in the Capitol and that they will stop at nothing to destroy her. But even she couldn’t have imagined what they had in store for her.
If you have not read the books yet, I ain’t givin’ away the plot, sorry. But your jaw will drop and your heart might flutter some when you see the lengths to which the status quo will go to when threatened.
Catching Fire – even more than The Hunger Games – stirred the rebellious spirit within me, as I witnessed (in my mind) the courage of people with nothing left to lose. There’s always a straw that breaks the camel’s back, whether it’s a tax on tea or making people face the severest horrors imaginable – twice.
So rebellion spreads in the districts, fueled largely by the intransigence of young Katniss, whose actions in Book 1’s Hunger Games have triggered an uprising she hadn’t intended.
The ending of Catching Fire caught me by surprise.
When I reflected back a bit, I remembered little snippets that gave tiny clues as to what was going on beneath the surface, but, because the books are written from Katniss’ perspective and understanding of events, I didn’t figure things out any better than she did.
And Katniss, having been left out of the secret loop on purpose, is ticked, royally.
And on that note, the second book ends. Our young rebel is rebelling against the rebels.
And now it’s on to Book 3 Mockingjay to see where it all leads.
You must read Mockingjay to complete the series… but it hurts
At the time I wrote this review, the book Mockingjay had much lower ratings on Amazon than the first two books in the series. There are a couple of reasons for this. After the long build-up in The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, the climax in Mockingjay winds the series downward with outcomes that most of us wish hadn’t happened.
The agonies suffered by Peeta and Kinnick, for example… two stalwarts we’d grown to respect and maybe love. The loss of so much life in the name of revenge. Katniss knew her rebellious actions might cause trouble for a lot of people, including her family, but even she wasn’t prepared for what happened in the final assaults on the Capitol.
The second reason I think the reviews were less enthusiastic for Mockingjay is the many pages devoted to Katniss’ inner anguish and introspection. In the first two books, she is larger than life – the type of heroine you’d see in an action movie. In the third book, Katniss turns inward much more. She second-guesses her motives, loses hope and becomes depressed to the point of stupor.
Spunk gone, guilt rampant
Katniss’s final act of rebellion is one that should have ended her life. It didn’t, but the Katniss we got to know is gone forever. And readers didn’t seem to like that one bit.
The epilogue seemed like a throwaway to most readers, myself included. Those two pages more or less stripped the life out of the story at the end. On the other hand, we didn’t have to live through two sets of Hunger Games and, from Katniss’ perspective, perhaps safe and normal felt more like “life” than facing death minute-to-minute as the girl who kept “catching fire.”
For me, Mockingjay was the most gut-wrenching of the three books in the Hunger Games trilogy. It asserts Suzanne Collins’ anti-tyranny message the strongest. So I’d give Mockingjay higher marks than most readers, because the author reflects my thinking so well in this.
There’s another book that was published after the trilogy… The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes to round out your Hunger Games experience.
A new Hunger Games book – in 2025
In March of 2025, Suzanne Collins released a “prequel” to The Hunger Games. It’s called Sunrise on the Reaping and is worth a look. I recommend NOT reading it before you read the Trilogy. This book fleshed out some of the key familiar characters in Book1 but since it took place before the Katniss Games, it also gives away some of the info that would change how you looked at things in the first book. So read it last.
Thom Hartmann reviews the “cycles of crisis” in the U.S. since the American Revolution
The Crash of 2016
In The Crash of 2016, Thom Hartmann documents why it is no longer wise to put faith in most elected politicians, or in our once-trusted institutions, especially the public media, banks, universities and the Supreme Court.
Maybe I’m more naive than most people, seeing a half-full glass, but the documentation in Hartmann’s book looks real, sounds scary, and makes me want to find a bolt-hole where I can make my own electricity and provide my own food. Soon.
Published in 2013, The Crash of 2016 outlines very clearly how the rich get richer and the poor get poorer… in fairly predictable cycles since the United States of America was founded.
Thom Hartmann claims that the U.S. is teetering on the edge of the “fourth great crash and war” in its history and that 2016 is the approximate timing for this to occur.
Hartmann presents a convincing case for this, citing eighty-year cycles between the three previous major crises faced by United States: the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Great Depression. Each event involved “horror and bloodshed,” but also subsequently brought about changes to the status quo that allowed America to grow and flourish.
The cycles all involved periods of oppression, followed by rebellion, resulting in reformation. When enough generations had gone by for citizens to have forgotten what happened during the previous crisis, the process repeated itself. Three times, so far, in this country.
Events of the 80 years since the last depression show all the indications that the fourth big crash will come around the year 2016.
The Plan to Destroy the Middle Class
Hartmann names names, too, from the economists who steered the politicians onto a slippery slope to the banksters who engineered multiple government collapses around the globe. He cites the U.S. presidents who pushed corporate agendas over the public good… including those who started with good intentions until threatened by the financial writing on the wall.
What horrified me was the idea that much of this destruction was planned ahead of time, including the obliteration of the middle class. Meetings were held, memos were written, laws were changed. “Economic royalists” effectively rule this country, says Hartmann, who gives examples of all of this.
Instead of a strong middle class with enough money to purchase goods and services, we now have a small wealthy oligarchy on one side and a growing class of people getting poorer by the year on the other.
Hartmann includes an interesting chart from the Economic Policy Institute that compares, graphically, the rates of productivity and wage growth between 1947 and 2010. The two indicators separated dramatically during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Since then worker productivity has increased significantly while wages have stayed essentially flat. When the Reagan tax cuts were implemented, corporate profits now went to CEOs who paid less in taxes than previously, rather than to the workers on the line.
Where to Point the Blame?
Clinton gets the blame for the upside-down balance of trade by removing protections for America’s domestic manufacturing industries. George W. Bush oversaw, not just the entry into two bankrupting wars, but also the deregulations leading to banking panics and bailouts and the housing meltdowns that lost people their homes and jobs.
President Obama, who began his term with such high aspirations, has been the object of a detailed opposition plan to derail any reforms he might put forward to help the middle class in America.
Hartmann says, “With the help of prominent media outlets, the Royalists, now a political minority, would engage in a scorched-earth strategy to defeat a coming Progressive Revolution, even if it meant crashing the United States as we know it.”
Enter the Tea Party, Fox News, the Koch brothers, the Mercatus Center, the American Legislative Exchange Council’s “shadow government,” Citizens United, and the Supreme Court’s decision to call corporations “people,” thus permitting them to finance election advertising (as free speech). Until this time, corporations were seen as legal entities requiring oversight by government.
As Hartmann points out, any foreign company, organization or government could, theoretically, form a U.S. corporation and, thus, influence elections through massive amounts of advertising. He points to Justice Stevens’ 99-page dissent of the Citizens United corporate personhood ruling, where the judge suggests that “the majority of the court had just handed our country over to any foreign interest willing to incorporate here and spend money on political TV ads.”
Thom Hartmann sees the reversal of this decision as one of highest importance (after the crash, when people come to their senses).
Hartmann’s main point is that we no longer have a democracy, as we once knew it. The strings are being pulled by concerns for self-interest, rather than the public good. The pocketbooks of the puppeteers hold more wealth than most countries’ GDPs. And it may be too late to reverse the situation before it all comes crashing down.
After the Crash
The good news? According to the previous 80-year cycles, the crash will wake people up. Some of the awakening is already taking place. In December 2011, for example, the city of Los Angeles called for a constitutional amendment to end corporate personhood, saying that money was not the same as free speech. Hartmann recommends returning the Supreme Court to its “original” constitutional authority, which it has overstepped.
Fundamentals necessary for a strong middle class need to be addressed as well, including health care, investing in bridges rather than bombs, strengthening the job situation, reducing debt, adjusting the tax codes, decentralizing the power systems, and reclaiming the “commons” of the country, which are currently being sold to corporations at less than their worth.
One suggestion that resonated with me was the concept of co-operatives. Hartmann’s examples of this trend were encouraging and I’ll be researching that topic in some detail.
Thom Hartmann doesn’t portray what life will be like during and immediately after “the crash of 2016,” though he gives clues with his observations of the previous three cyclical crashes. It won’t be pretty, at any rate.
Will we be fighting in the streets over food? Who of us will be living in tent cities? Or garbage dumps? When our money is worthless, what do we have to barter for the necessities of life?
Or do you think everything can carry on as it has been? Has the tipping point been reached? Or will we pull ourselves together to make/demand the necessary changes in the nick of time.
Do commas, periods, colons, semi-colons, exclamation points and question marks go before or after quotation marks?
There are many different ways to use quotation marks and, in this tutorial, we’ll look at sentence punctuation in relationship to quotations. In other words, does the comma, period, question mark or exclamation point come before or after the quotation marks?
Rule for commas and periods
With commas and periods, the quotation marks go after the comma or period:
“I love you,” said Mary.
John replied, “I would follow you to the moon.”
Rule for semi-colons and colons
If you’re using a semicolon or colon, you place the quotation marks before the semicolon or colon:
I asked you the “question of the year”: do you love me?
Malcolm was “fit to be tied”; he had just missed the last bus home.
Where to put question marks and exclamation points
With a question or exclamatory sentence, place the quotation marks after the the question mark or exclamation point:
“Do you love me?” asked Mary.
“You do love me!” Mary gushed.
Exception
However… if you’re using a question mark or an exclamation point around a specific word, rather than enclosing a sentence, the quotation marks go before.
A common word usage question is when to use “lie” versus “lay.” Here’s a quick tutorial with the meanings and rules for lie and lay.
Lie:
One usage of the verb “lie” means “to recline”
I am going to lie down on the sofa for awhile.
Watch the lion lie down on the grass.
However… the past tense of “lie” is “lay”
I only lay in bed for half an hour.
The lion lay there until he got hungry.
And… the past participle is “lain”
I have lain in bed longer than I should have.
Had the lion lain there all day, he would have missed supper.
Lay:
A common usage of the verb “lay” means “to put or set down”
I am planning to lay my purse on that table.
Past tense is “laid”
I laid my purse on that table just ten minutes ago.
Past participle is also “laid”
I have laid my purse on that table every day for a month.
Of course “lie” also means to fib, but that’s not the one we confuse with “lay.” And we could “lay a bet” or “lay a plan” or “lay the table for dinner,” but these are not confused with “lie.”
Bottom line:
You don’t “lay down” in bed, nor would you have “laid in bed for a nap.”
You LIE down but you LAY something else down, when speaking in the present tense, which is where most of the mistakes come from with the lie-lay situation.
When to Use “Loan” versus “Lend”
Loan and lend are misused so frequently – even in print and TV advertising – that it’s no wonder so many of us get the word usages mixed up. Loan is a noun; lend is a verb. That’s the bottom line.
Loan is a noun:
I asked the bank for a loan.
Lend is a verb:
Will you lend me some money?
Incorrect: The bank will loan me $100,000 to buy a house.
Correct: The bank will lend me $100,000 – or – The loan from the bank is for $100,000.
Incorrect: I loaned her my best sweater.
Correct: I lent her my best sweater.
When I’m in doubt about a correct word usage, I look in my The Chicago Manual of Style. It’s got everything.
When to Use “Affect” versus “Effect”
When to use affect vs. effect is confusing – for good reason. Since the 1400s, these words have been more or less interchangeable, with meanings passing back and forth between them. Here’s today’s accepted word usage.
Affect
“Affect” is mostly used a verb that means “to influence” or “to change.”
The state of the economy can affect a person’s buying habits.
In many circles, your clothing affects how you are perceived.
However… “affect” as a noun describes a feeling or emotion and is a term used most often in psychology.
Effect
“Effect” is most often used a noun meaning “result.”
The effect of his naval training was a well-run ship.
Every cause has an effect.
However… “effect” is sometimes used as a verb meaning “to accomplish” or “to bring about.”
They hope to effect a settlement of the dispute before the weekend.
He effected a studious demeanor, thinking it would impress his teachers.
Here’s a quickie tutorial for one of the most common spelling mistakes: knowing the spelling rule for “your” versus “you’re.”
Your is the second person singular adjective that relates to something “you” possess:
Your clothes. Your car. Your outlook on life.
You’re is a contraction for “you are.”
You’re going to be impressed. You’re on the right road. You’re going to love this post.
The apostrophe essentially takes the place of the letter “a” here.
Spelling Rule for “Its” versus “It’s”
Are you unsure when to use an apostrophe for the word “it’s?” Here’s the spelling rule for its versus it’s. This spelling mistake is so common now, it has everyone second-guessing which one is correct.
“Its” without an apostrophe – is a possessive, third person, singular adjective that typically relates to something other than a person. The noun it refers to was probably mentioned just previously (in this sentence, “it” refers to the noun “noun”), so you know what “it” is.
“Its” refers to something “it” possesses:
The dog was so agitated, its barks were deafening.
I picked a daffodil and its color reminded me of sunshine.
“It’s” with an apostrophe – is an abbreviation for (1) it is or (2) it has:
It’s a foregone conclusion. It’s raining.
It’s been proven long ago. Look at the daffodil; it’s gone to seed.
The main rule to remember here is – the apostrophe takes the place of missing letters and represents a shortened version of a pronoun and a verb: “it is” or “it has.”
No apostrophe means ownership of some kind -– and no missing letters.
Spelling Rule for “Their”, “There”, and “They’re”
Many people get confused by the three different spellings for these three words that sound exactly the same: their, there, and they’re. Here are the rules.
“Their” is a possessive, third person, plural adjective relating to “something belonging to them” – as in: their house, their political party, their stupid rules of grammar – and the entities involved have been named earlier, so it’s implied that you know who or what “they” are. What is being pointed out now is the house, party or rules “owned” by “them.” You can just as easily be talking about daffodils, with “their” flowers shimmering in the sun.
“There” has a few meanings. It can mean a physical place: over there, go there – or it can mean a virtual place: stop right there before you say something you’ll regret.
Sometimes “there” is used to express satisfaction, sympathy or even defiance:
There, it’s finished!
There, there, you’ll soon feel better.
There! You do it!
And “there” is frequently used to introduce a sentence or clause: “There comes a time…”
“Hi there” and “you, there” are sometimes used when we don’t remember someone’s name right away.
And let’s not forget They’re:
To confuse the issue even more, there’s a third usage that sounds the same but is spelled differently – “they’re.” Here the apostrophe indicates a missing letter. “They’re” is an abbreviation for “they are” – as in “they’re coming” or “they’re not so big.”
Spelling Rule for “Whose” and “Who’s”
Do you sometimes choose the wrong spelling for these two words that sound the same: “whose” and “who’s?” Here are the spelling rules to remember:
“Whose” is an adjective that essentially asks a question about the ownership of something:
> Whose shoes are they? > Whose science project won? > I don’t know whose idea that was.
Who’s is simply an abbreviation for “who is” or “who has.” The apostrophe indicates missing letters.
For example, “Who’s coming with me?” or “Who’s the man?”
“Who’s” – as in “Who’s got the tickets” is a contraction for “who has.” We could have said, “Who has the tickets,” but we just as often say, “Who’s got…” (which is short for “who has got”).
As an Amazon associate and Clarke Courses affiliate, I earn a fee from qualifying purchases. My Senior Side Hustle is designing for a print on demand site called Zazzle. I receive a royalty on my designs when you click a link to purchase on Zazzle.com. Thanks for visiting… I hope you found the info on my website helpful. –Barbara
