Book 3 Review: The Hunger Games and 13 Reasons Why

                 Even though most won’t admit it, people pry and meddle into each other’s personal lives to find out juicy information. Knowing the unknown is something everyone cherishes.  Media these days encourages the public to dig around into anyone and everyone’s secluded details. People have become so fascinated with each other’s dilemmas that they even like to read about it.

In the book Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, a teenage girl named Hannah Baker commits suicide, but before, sends thirteen tapes out to the thirteen people that caused her depression. Clay Jensen, a boy who had eyes for Hannah, receives the box of tapes. He becomes engrossed with them and spends the entire night listening to all Thirteen Reasons why Hannah kills herself. Although it appears that Clay is listening out of lust for Hannah, he never had the guts to talk to her but for one night. And even that night, he didn’t reach out to help her although he saw that she was in distress after she had a mental break down. However, when he doesn’t have to face her in person he has no problem with listening to every single one of Hannah’s deep dark secrets. She was alive her classmates were mesmerized with gossiping about Hannah behind her back. Why is it that Clay and the rest of the school couldn’t ask Hannah about her own life to her face? Because, that wouldn’t be the socially accepted thing to do; it is more favored to stay out of people’s lives and do the snooping in private.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, however, is more public about imposing on the lives of young people from all over the nation. Each year the Capitol holds an event called The Hunger Games, which is where kids, a boy and a girl from all twelve districts, compete to the death.  While that happens every family and person who live in Panem is required to watch the Games, and some even get excited to view the killings. A girl names Katniss and her teammate, Peeta, is forced into the death match after Peeta confesses his love for Katniss; this twist seems to excite the crowd even more. So why is it that both book characters and readers are so engrossed with spying on other people’s personal lives?

Each of these books tell vivid details of the gory and disturbing scenes of Katniss and Hannah’s uphill battles from physically unsettling details from The Hunger Games, “The deep inflamed gash oozing both blood and pus. The swelling of the leg. And worse of all, the smell of festering flesh.” to words that take a toll on the emotion in Thirteen Reasons Why, “You started a chain of events that ruined my life. Now, you were working on ruining hers.” These details are what make these books fascinating, even if it is a little disconcerting to get ones heart pounding over the words pus and festering flesh.

It is not only the topic, of death, pain, and suffering that is so intriguing; there must be a good writer behind that plot. The words mean something to readers, and that is what goes unnoticed. Both of these novels have something that all books work towards, loveable characters with a voice so deep that it enters your brain and festers in your heart until your hands become glued to the book itself. Both Collins and Asher have mastered this skill, and have created characters that force the reader into developing a relationship with. This is the foundation of the pure enjoyment and fascination that comes with chipping away the façade that comes with each character and diving into the true personality. Once the reader find out secrets and stories from the past about Hannah and Katniss, that is what hooks them in.

So is it just human nature to be curious about a stranger’s personal life, or is it the writer who makes the reader and the character become more of best friends, and the reader wants to support them though problems? It is a little bit of both. To make a good book, there must obviously be loveable and hated characters to advance plot. However, the writer must also meet the desires of the reader, and that means getting down and dirty with the plot and details. Both Collins and Asher mastered this skill, there making The Hunger Games and Thirteen Reasons Why must reads on my book shelf.

The Hunger Games

Suzanne Collins

Thirteen Reasons Why