Hungry for the Hunger Games?

Wendy made me read The Hunger Games AGES ago (my Goodreads account says November 30, 2008). I enjoyed it and gave it four stars, but never sought out the sequels and read them (I think Catching Fire was never available at the library, and I never cared enough to put it on hold).

And so, I am not one of those who has tickets to see the movie at midnight. I probably won't even go to see it in a theater, unless my 12-year-old daughter insists.

She did insist that I read Catching Fire, though, which she just checked out from the middle school library and read. And so I did, staying up well after I was ready for bed last night to finish it. I liked it quite as well as the first one (which is to say, liked it a whole lot, but don't think it's the best thing ever), and we're moving on to Mockingjay over spring break.

I do see why people become obsessed with the world of The Hunger Games. It is a well-developed and well-described world, and one does become immersed in it, as well as the story, while reading. That's why I found this map of Panem, and the description of how it was made, intriguing. V. Arrow is also the author of the upcoming unofficial book, The Panem Companion. Arrow (and collaborator "badguys") combined what we know about the districts of Panem from the books with possible geological and climate-change catastrophes to come up with a spiral-based map of Panem (formerly North America). No, it isn't entirely plausible -- but it's fiction anyway, right?