hunger games

            About a month back my friend asked me to go see The Hunger Games with her at midnight and I am always up for a good midnight premiere so naturally I said yes. I was stoked but I knew that everyone at the premiere would be hunger game fanatics. At the Harry Potter premieres people deck out in luna, beletrix, harry or even Hedwig costumes and Twilight premieres  (yes, unfortunately I got roped into going to the first Twilight premiere it was comical really) people sported “team Edward” or “team Jacob shirts” so I knew people would dress similarly for Hunger Games. I didn’t want the series to be spoiled by these people so I decided I had to read all three books before the movie which was less than a week away. I read them and surprisingly got hooked. I read all three in a total of two days.

            I looked up the reviews on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. I expected to see several reviews from like 16 year old girls like omg I totally love this. I want to marry Peeta blah blah blah. Girls usually fall in love with the characters of books and forget about the awesome story line. On Barnes and Noble the reviews were definitely mostly from teenagers saying things such as

“i mean WOW ... the best book i ever read soo far!!!! u have to read it!!!!!!” and

“I absolutely and completely love this book! It's exciting and thought-provoking and all-over amazing. It is a bit brutal at times, but overall it's simply fantastic! A must-read!!!!!”

These two reviews have way too many exclamation marks for it not be a teenager. I assume the more exclamation marks and extra letters the younger the writer. Also, whenever someone shortens ‘you’ to ‘u’  I automatically think less of them, I mean really is ‘yo’ too difficult to write? Are you that pressed for time that you cannot type too extra letters but you can add an extra o in so and add about seven too many exclamation marks? These two reviews do not go very deep into the book which is what I expected. It is a good read but is it remarkable?

The reviews on Amazon surprised me the first three reviews were made by people that were older. Not kids even though The Hunger games is a young adult novel.  One of these said :

“It took me a while to get to this book because I never saw it out of my two daughters' hands. They devoured it! Once I read it, I understood. This is the second book I have reviewed this month that had a powerful female protagonist (other being 'Graceling').
I found the book to be well written with a fantastic pacing. Their is violence in there, but not so over the top as to be distracting. Intimate scenes are sparingly written so as not to be too embarassing (something I greatly appreciated as a dad!!) The rage against the system theme is prevalent enough to notice, but not as overbearing as say.... Ayn Rand or Terry Pratchett.

All in all, I highly recommend this book for kids from 12 up. The ending leads me to believe that this will be a series. I imagine I will be pre-ordering as soon as it's available. Congratulation Ms. Collins!!
All the best,
Jay”

Not only was the author of this response an adult but it was also a man. So not only does the novel appeal to kids but also adults and not only females but also males. All three reviews I read on Amazon were much more intelligent sounding than those found on Barnes and Noble. Do you think more adults go to Amazon whereas more children go to Amazon for reviews? I have now come to the conclusion that The Hunger Games is a good read for any reader and you can get as much out of it as you wish.