Everybody's Doing It . . .

Students and adults alike were recommending Suzanne Collins's novel The Hunger Games, and I figured: if everybody's doing it, then it's got to be cool, right? and I didn't want to feel left out-- that's not good for my self-esteem-- I never got over the year I wasn't allowed to play in The Reindeer Games, that really hurt, and what if everyone was going to play The Hunger Game and I didn't know how? so I bullied a student into giving me her copy and I whipped through it in two days, and certainly enjoyed it, the cliffhangers kept me reading at a furious pace, but the experience was more like playing a video game than reading a novel . . . all the knowledge about the dystopian world of Panem is conveyed through high-octane action, and there is some cheesiness, especially at the end, but the book was intended for young adults, so I really can't be critical . . . I'll give it eight cornucopias out ten (but I should subtract another cornucopia because the idea is a bit of a rip-off of Battle Royale, a Japanese novel made into a fantastic and disturbing film by renowned filmmaker Kinji Fukasaku).