Good to know, thank you!!! :)

I think I will get both series.. I think I will like them.
Let's see about "The Maze Runner". I loved the movies... Hm.
With Vampire Diaries the books were also very different than the series, in the end I still liked the books better.

Oh wow you make it sound super interesting!!!

I reaaally want to buy them now!! But I have SO many other books I need to finish first, dammit

I found the Hunger Games to fit perfectly into the category that I label as "mind candy".

It's delicious while you're eating it, but when you finish you don't feel very full.
It pulls you along while you're reading it, and you enjoy yourself, but when you finish you don't feel like it gave you anything new to think about or surprised you into a new viewpoint, or changed your perspective or taught you anything.

(YMMV, of course! I suspect that if I had been younger when I found the books, and hadn't already spent a long time thinking about economic and power disparities and what it does to societies & individuals, as well as the trap that life-or-death thinking can set up in people, or how trivial things can become elevated to disproportionate importance by mob thinking, it might have been more interesting in that sense. But the messages were very surface; they weren't hidden at all, so again anything you would get from it would be picked up on the first reading)

Which makes it perfect for those times you just don't want to think, you just want to be entertained and sort of relax.

But does mean that there's not as much there for a reread (Well. I always make a point of keeping a few "mind candy" books on hand to reread for those times that it's exactly what you need. So if you don't have any already, then it'd be nice for that purpose. If you already have your favorite mind candy books, though, then they are more fun for a one-time read you can use to talk to other people about but not bother going back to)



Can't speak to Maze Runner.



But that's my more in-depth opinion on the Hunger Games; worth checking out from your library, not worth buying unless you do find more in them than I did, in which case come tell me about it so I can benefit too.

Sorry, I'm blank on that... mostly.

I have a relative associated with this site: https://mythcreants.com/
and they do book reviews occasionally, so I read those, but that's about as close as I get.
(In fact, they had a podcast on literary criticism just two-three days ago, but I still don't have sound so I don't actually know what all they covered or how good it was. I read the stuff they post but don't listen to the audio bits)


And I'm not even really sure where you end up making the distinction between literary criticism and reviews. Clearly the latter is usually about one specific thing, but I've seen people talk about literary critique and you look at the details and they're not generalizing at all, they're... well.... it looks like they wrote a review and called it literary critique.
So it's confusing.


Reading about reading is interesting, but I usually prefer to be slightly less recursive in my entertainment.
>.<

I am definitely in need of some new mind candy, I will get the books either way, if I am going to think deeper about them or not in the end. There is tons of literature on the Hunger Games (literary critique), but I had no time to read it and I was afraid of spoilers (even though I know the movies).

Actually I've read literary critique on one subject only: Harry Potter. Because I wrote my thesis about it. But when I was reading that I came across critique about other books and writers like C.S. Lewis or Tolkien or the Twilight Saga. I read a bit about these (when they were compared to HP/Rowling).

I read The Hunger Games years ago but I remember not expecting an amAZing book, because that's just not what I expect from Young Adult books, and I was very happily surprised by how much I enjoyed it. It was definitely a very gripping book that I found easy to keep reading until the end. In saying that though, I never ended up reading the last book of the series.


I had a similar feeling going into reading The Maze Runner (which I read in January) of not expecting too much more from it than just a good time. The difference was that I had already seen an enjoyed the first two movies, so I already knew that I liked the story, characters etc. and would, therefore, probably enjoy the books. And as Jacob said, there is more explored in the book that was not put in the movie. The relationship between Thomas and Teresa, I guess it just makes more sense.. In the movie it was made to seem like they only recognised each other but the book adds more of a connection rather than just:

'I know you from somewhere..'
'I know you from somewhere too!'
'Let's be friends.'
'Yeah'

You'll know what I mean once you read the books but their connection adds more to their relationship and the story, which I think is a big reason people like the books more, because it is just.. more. I don't know if that makes much sense without spoiling anything but if you loved the movies (I did too ) then you'll definitely enjoy the books.