A Clash of Media: Perspectives on Intrinsic Value

Dear readers, the blog will once again continue on the philosophical track; I got some good answers to my last post, so I'm hoping to hear some more on this note.

As my forewarning: as many of you probably know, I'm a pretty big reader. I always have been since I was young. I was that kid staying up late reading with a flashlight under covers, the one who took a book with him where ever he went, the one who belongs to the probably minority of our generation whose parents actually had to tell him to stop reading so much. I'm one of those people who rarely think a movie/tv adaptation is better than the source book, one of those who doesn't have "lol i h8 books" written on my "About me" section of Facebook. Thus I feel I have a pretty balanced perspective on the following discussion.

As all of you are sure I'm aware, The Hunger Games has been making a big splash as being the current hit book for children/young adults. This follows on the trail of the Twilight and Harry Potter series, the latter of which is often referred to as the series that "got a whole generation of children reading again."

I find this an interesting claim, because it highlights an underlying theme in modern American society. That is, specifically, that children aren't reading anymore, and this is a Bad Thing. Authors like Collins and Rowling are doing important work in getting children engaged in reading again.

This is a line of thought I sort of bought absentmindedly. Of course people should be reading, I thought, it's something I enjoy. It's always painted as a slightly more intellectual and satisfying past-time than, say, watching TV.

Battle Royale Done Right: A Review of the "Hunger Games" Trilogy

For whatever reason, when Suzanne Collins was gaining national renown for her series "The Hunger Games," I somehow managed to remain completely oblivious and avoid hearing anything about it. Skill, I guess? In fact, I don't think I consciously remembering hearing anything at all till a couple months ago where I heard it was a really good series. I put it out of mind for a while, but then I got  B&N gift card that I decided to spend on two books I knew I wanted (new Discworld and Gaunt's Ghosts :-D) and found myself with $5 unspent. After browsing for quite some time trying to find a cheap book that sounded interesting, I ended up grabbing "The Hunger Games," as in the first book, and decided to wait on picking up the others in the event it was at least half way decent.

The most impressive part of my ignorance, however, was that after reading both the online description and the back cover, it wasn't till months later when I actually started reading the book that it finally hit me what the novel was truly about: a group of teenagers killing each other in an arena. Sound familiar?