MOVIE, THE HUNGER GAMES. Suzanne Collins

Just read Entertainment Weekly's first look at the GAMES. Jennifer Lawrence plays Katniss Everdeen, and the readers initially protested her choice as being "too pretty, too pale, too blond, too curvy." Haven't any of these people ever heard of hair dye? The director chose her because of her work in Winter's Bone, and EW remarked "Lawrence's role there included taking care of younger siblings when her parents can't, hunting in a forest, and skinning and eating a squirrel--basically an audition tape for the GAMES." Look at the EW cover for her transformation--she's not too pretty or superficial there. The movie comes out in March 2012 and I'll be there.

THE HUNGER GAMES, BY SUZANNE COLLINS

My God. I just finished THE HUNGER GAMES, and I am completely in awe of this writer. I thought it was another youth phenomenon like the TWILIGHT series, but it's so much more complex. Katniss Everdeen would eat Bella for breakfast, if the rules of the GAMES didn't prevent cannibalism. She's a fantastic heroine, strong, so often frightened but fighting not to show it, hungry all the time, an Olympic-level archer whose battle skills are the only things which will keep her alive.

Astonishing book, amazing writing.
It's what SURVIVOR would be if contestants were really eliminated--and all of them were children. COLLINS understands our sick morbid fascination with reality TV, and writes it large in letters thirty feet tall and dripping with blood. The games...
I sneaked ahead to read a blurb on the second book CATCHING FIRE, and the reviewer said that it ratcheted up the tension from the first. And the first one was a tiny little rubber-band wrist-slap? It's a fight to the death! A mandatory nationwide TV spectacle fought by teens! I can't wait for the sequel and it scares me silly to imagine it.