The Hunger Games

Set in the future, this is a dark tale of survival. In what used to be North America exists Panem, where each year there is a lottery that plucks everyday citizens to fight to the death in the Hunger Games. Everything is filmed, every moment watched by all (the ultimate Big Brother).

Katniss, a skilled, tough 16-year-old chooses to take her sister's place in the Games, and she begins a journey of calculated moves, multiple motives, possible love, and murder.

Appeals: page-turning plot, tale of survival, futuristic setting, strong characters.

If you enjoy the futuristic tale of survival, you might also enjoy Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, 1984 by George Orwell and How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff.

If you enjoy The Hunger Games, be sure to catch part 2 of the trilogy: Catching Fire.

Collins, Suzanne. The Hunger Games. 2008. 374 pages.

The Road: Movie Trailer

Update on The Road: the release date for this movie adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's harrowing post-apocalyptic novel is set for October 2009.

Here is a three minute trailer, which I promise will give you even more chills after you have read the book.

The Road

A nameless father and his son walk through an empty, chaotic, burned America. In this post-apocalyptic tale, the boy and his father must learn to survive in a world without rules, must fend for their lives in a place where acts of unthinkable horror happen every day.

Appeals: Harrowing, post-apocalyptic setting, sparse language, survival tale.

If you enjoy tales of journey and survival, you may also like What is the What by Dave Eggers, How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff, and Blindness by Jose Saramago.

No trailer yet, but the movie adaptation of The Road is set to come out some time in 2009.

McCarthy, Cormac. The Road. 2006. 256 pages.

What is the What

Based on true life experience, Valentino Achak Deng recounts his life as a refugee from the Sudanese civil war. Starting with his life in America, What is the What traces Achak's story back to his native village of Marial Bai and his exodus through Ethiopia and Kenya. Told with clarity, humor, and unflinchingly, this tale defines the strength and resilience of the human spirit.

Appeals: Framed with a robbery experience while living in the States, readers unfamiliar with the subject and with Sudan are given a gateway to another part of the world. Amazing sense of closeness to the narrator. While enduring unthinkable hardship, any reader can relate to Achak's universal feelings of confusion, hope, love, crushes, friendship, loss and survival.

Want to read more about the effects of war and the lives of refugees? Try reading A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah or The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini.

Eggers, Dave. What is the What. 2006. 538 pages.