The Hunger Games Discussion Question #1

Synopsis (from Barnes and Noble):

Sixteen year old Katniss is smart, athletic, and fast. She can take down a rabbit with a bow and arrow, hitting it straight through the eye. Will these skills be enough to survive the Hunger Games?

Suzanne Collins, the author of the middle-grade fantasy series The Underland Chronicles begins anew, exploring a future landscape that will be familiar to devotees of science fiction's dystopic strain. In a nation called Panem, which occupies the landmass that is the present United States, a parasitical facist Capital dominates 12 conquered districts. There was a thirteenth district but it was obliterated during a rebellion. The totalitarian governement keeps the subjected populations in line by threatened devestation, starvation, and brutality.


For those of us who have read The Hunger Games before what is it about the book that you decided to pick it back up and discuss it as part of a group? Those of us who haven't read The Hunger Games yet what are your pre-concieved notions about the book, what are your hopes for the book? Has anyone read other books by Ms. Collins outside of The Hunger Games trilogy? What are your thoughts on her other works?
 
I read The Hunger Games for the first time the end of July when a couple of my co-workers were talking about it at work and they decided to take away my "nerd cred" because I had not read this AWESOME SAUCE book.  Well, I can easily report that I went home that morning and dug The Hunger Games off my overstuffed bookcase and tore into it.  The further I read into it the more I started wondering why I waited so long to read this book!  I was mentally kicking myself.  After I finished it and posted the review (which you can read by clicking the words 'The Hunger Games' at the begininng of this answer) I saw that there were many people who really liked this book.  Which lead me to start this book club to re-read and discuss with others what I LOVED about this book.
 
Personally, I have not read any other works by Ms. Collins outside of this trilogy but I'm always open to new and exciting things.  So I'm going to go and look up her other works too.