Hunger Games Book Club Event

  My Saturday Style

(Spoiler Alert!! If you have not read all the books, do not read the last paragraph.)   This week I had a chance to attend my daughter's book club event featuring the Hunger Games.  All of the guests were around her age, except me, so I was lucky to  be invited ... well it was at my house, so I guess that helped me score an invitation.

She set my dining room table with a buffet.  Half was 'Capitol' style, while the other half was 'District 12' style.

I really appreciated the visual impact of the difference in the life style in the two separate areas of the 'world' inhabited by Katniss, Peeta, Gale and President Snow.

The strawberries in these two pictures graphically show the difference.

As did the dishes that she chose.  The ones on the top right are my favorite antique 'Rosepoint' dishes, while the others she chose are the wooden plates I have collected over the years that we use for our Bethlehem Dinner on Christmas Eve.

She also used my fine antique Quaker Lace table cloth to represent the Capitol, while using my rough woven brown wool cloth (again from our Bethlehem Dinner props) to represent the rustic life style of those from the coal mining district.

You may recall from my trip to Idaho to see Hunger Games with my girls, that I was not enthralled with the book initially, and didn't, at the time, read the two sequels.  I did however, love the movie, and have since finished the others.

I can only say, that besides finding the books compelling, by the time I read books 2 and 3 I guess I had  ingested the  horrors of the'world' of the Hunger Games to the degree, that I could l look at that world in a cautionary manner and could see what we, in the real world, have in common with this imaginary futuristic society. 

I did end up liking the other two books, though of course,  I was still jarred by the violence necessitated by the premise of the books. And, like everyone else who has read the books that I have talked to, I see so much of the death as senseless, but then, that is really the point of the books.

When greed trumps the importance of the rights of all individuals to the pursuit of happiness, we end up in a world like the one shown in these books.  Hopefully this cautionary tale will help to keep this from becoming a reality, and may prompt individuals to root out elements in our society that may already be leading in this direction.

Last of all, I have to say that I was fairly satisfied with how the books ended.  I really liked Peeta, and in all honesty, the good guys (in romantic contexts) rarely win.