I love this series and I'm so happy it took off. I kind of look at this as the cross between To Kill a Mockingbird and Shirley Jackson's The Lottery, maybe a bit of The Giver thrown in. It is about societies accepting the norms and not questioning things. I love the way the third book ended even though it made so many people angry. I hope this becomes commonplace reading for middle grade literature teachers.

On the other hand, I'm kind of annoyed at the dystopian YA trend that this book has started. The book was great because it was original, can we dispense with the copying now?

When I first heard of these books I kept thinking about how stupid they sounded. How horrible and terrifying for young children to be pitted against each other to their deaths. I spent months telling my best friend that I wouldn't read them because they were sick and twisted. Then she made a deal with me that if I read them, she would read the Inheritance series by Christopher Paolini, and that sealed my fate since I've been trying to get her to read that particular series for years. I borrowed the first book from a co-worker and found that I had trouble putting it down.

It's a sadistic book, the first one, but it's telling a gripping tale of a girl who is just trying to survive her twisted government and save her family along with it. It actually showed her hatred for Panem and everything they stood for.

I actually hurried to the store and bought 2 and 3 and I was finished in a whopping 4 days with all 3 books. It's a good cautionary tale, to me, about how things could change and become so twisted when one person or area has so much control everyone else.

Read book 1 and it was a good read. Saw the first movie and of course, movies are always different from the book. Waiting to read the second.

Yes I enjoyed these books recently. The subject is horrible, but much is left to the imagination. In contrast, I still cant read any Stephen King. I have tried, but have nightmares from even reading the book description

Of course, the true category for the books is young adult rather than children. That might explain why they are popular with adults, too. Rather than "dark," what distinguishes the books, as some have said, is the explicit violence. The Giver was plenty dark, too, but it didn't have in my recollection any blood and guts.

I've always been drawn to dystopian fantasies with a central hero who asserts human dignity and freedom. I've read only the first in the series, after having seen the two movies, but intend to read the trilogy. The HG is a good, fast read.

The Giver is an awesome book. I can't really remember it very well right now, I read it a long time ago... but I remember the contrast between the highly limiting black and white world and the full color liberating, human experiences the Giver.. gives the main character.
How that extended and "full color" understanding of human experience make the boy feel constrained and chaffed by his surroundings.. how he starts to see his family as small and ignorant as he realizes how little they appreciate the beauty of it all.

Didn't any of you have to read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson in high school? These books reminded me very much of that short story and it is quite dark and brutal. I read it as a freshman or sophomore.

In case you haven't read it, here is a link.

I read these books because a friend lent me a stack of books (yay for having friends who work in bookstores!) and the first one was in the stack. They are easy reads and I was curious about where it would go from there so I picked up the other 2 at the library. I wouldn't have bothered otherwise. I also love me a good dystopia and I have definitely read much darker books that didn't necessarily have more violence. I have also played video games with teens that have a lot more violence and darkness in them but without as much of a message. In these book at least most people feel sorry for the good people that die and see that good can fight against evil. I'm glad I don't have kids so I don't have to make decisions about what would or would not be appropriate for a teen to read.

I well remember "The Lottery." We read it in my high school English class. I have later wondered how such a story got into the highly censored and sanitized textbooks we had for Literature. Still gives me a chill sometimes when I think about it.

Another short story with the same feel as "The Lottery" is "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas", Ursula K. le Guin. We read it here on BT. Check out short story forum and you will find a link to the story.

The similarities aren't as close as some of the books mentioned, but I remember thinking of The Running Man by Stephen King. A totalitarian dystopia is behind both plots.