So I listened to the entirety of Hunger Games on my drive down to North Carolina last weekend. I’m trying to read more popular and current bestsellers so that I can be more in the know, especially now that I’m not taking 4 English classes (see: last semester).

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about it for the last couple of days and thought I’d share some things I liked and didn’t about it.

Liked:

• The setting. I love me some futuristic world building. But what I especially liked about Panam is that it’s believable—even though it’s the future, there are a lot of primitive elements to Katniss’ world, like the fact that she has to hunt and that oil is precious. I only wish the history and world had been fleshed out a little more (though I’m wondering if it’s done in the second and third books?).
• The food descriptions. You just can’t have a book titled “The Hunger Games” that doesn’t focus on food a lot.
• The names. While they’re unique names, they’re not absurd, and they compliment the mood of the story well: Prim, Haymidge, Kato, Thresh, Synna. And she doesn’t overdo it, using more traditional/”our world” names like Gayle, Effie, Portia, “The Capital”, the districts, and so on. Not everything had an over the top originality/weirdness.
• Katniss in general. She’s a badass character, and someone to be respected. She stands up for what is right, she’s independent and self-sufficient, and she’ll do anything for the people she loves. These types of people should be our literary heroes. And she has believable flaws, too: she’s mad at her mother, confused about her feelings, makes some mistakes in the arena. When I think about her in comparison to, ahem, some other popular female heroines in other popular YA scifi/fantasy books, it makes me feel better.
• While I wasn’t convinced about most of the love story (I’ll get to that), one thing did make a lot of sense to me: that maybe the reason Katniss didn’t realize her feelings for Gayle (or Peeta) is because she’s only 16. Not only is she in the early stages of coming into her sexuality, but she’s been to busy to sit around and dwell about why she feels certain ways about boys (the way that many of us have, haha!). I’m not sure if Collins intended that, but that’s what I read it as.

Didn’t like:

• Too many cliches. If one more character’s dialogue contained a switch from present to past tense when talking about someone dead (“Roo is a great girl. I mean, she was”), I was going to scream. And I don’t know what everyone is talking about, but I’ve sucked blood off of cuts I’ve had and had nosebleeds that have gone into my mouth and so on, and blood does NOT taste metallic.
• Adverb usage. I HATE ADVERBS. “I drank thirstily.” REALLY? When does someone NOT drink thirstily?? We KNOW she’s thirsty, she’s been talking about it for like 8 million pages! And “thirstily” is such a ridiculous sounding word that it takes away from the severity of the situation in that scene. Rrrrr. There were others but I can’t remember them.
• Katniss’ blindess about Peeta. Sorry, but I’m just not convinced. Maybe it’s because I seem to have a 6th sense about people liking other people, but how could a girl so smart as Katniss seems to be NOT see that Peeta liked her? Not just in the arena, but before? I just feel like she would know.
• The characters. I mean, they were likable. But they could have been developed a LOT more, and I felt they were a little stereotypical. Haymidge reminded me too much of Madeye Moody and Peeta was the archetypical blonde cutie pie sweetheart boy. Kato would have been far more interesting if he had a weakness or any compassion for anything. I also think the game makers should have been actual characters instead of just a nebulous blob of people, so that the reader has someone specific to hate when all of the terrible things happen in the area.
• The narrative structure. How do books that start with someone waking up even get publishing deals anymore? Literally everything Katniss experiences is described chronologically back to back. I don’t need to hear about her falling asleep. I don’t need to hear about the process of putting her makeup on. There’s a liiiittle bit of flashing back in the beginning, but how much more thrilling would it have been to start the book when she gets up into the arena?? Then, when there’s all that down time—when she’s wounded in the pond, when she’s lying around in the cave, and so on—we could have had flashbacks to the outside world. I would have been SO much more intrigued and read so much faster (well, I was listening so I couldn’t really control that, but still) if I’d been wanting to know more about just what the hell this chick was doing and where she was. There’s a little bit of this in the beginning when she’s up in the woods talking about the Reaping—I was like, wtf is the Reaping??—but more would’ve really upped the pacing. And then we could have had flashbacks to fill in the back story. She sees Roo? Flashback to Prim. Talks to Peeta? Flashback to Gayle. Shoots something with her bow? Flashback to her dad. I’m biased toward nonlinear narrative structures, and they can be done very seamlessly.

Disclaimers: I’ve only read the first one, so things I was left wondering about might be left to be explained. I listened to it on audio, and I feel like the people who read it always make it sort of corny, especially the dialogue. Sometimes they read it with inflections that I wouldn’t imagine were I reading those same words. (And so also excuse me if I spell names wrong!) And finally, I’m REALLY critical. As an English major, I’ve read classic after classic after classic, great after great after great. And then, as a Creative Writing minor, I pick apart not only the stuff my classmates write, but fantastic pieces of writing that have been published. So what I have to say about The Hunger Games shouldn’t be taken as what the majority of people might think.