The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Wow!  I finished the trilogy Sunday morning around 3 am.  Yes, 3 am!  I absolutely loved the books even though at times they were disturbing.  Not really disturbing in an appalling way but more a disturbing that gets you to think about our reality.  Honestly I could see something like this actually happening.  As a country, we seem to love our reality shows, so is it really that much of a stretch to think that we would watch children fighting to death in a large arena?  The Romans watched gladiators fight to the death in arenas... I'm just saying.
At times while reading the books, I had to stop and ask myself what makes these books YA?  You got me. Nothing about the subject matter screams YA at me.
In a way that's one of the things that I love about the YA category...adults read those books too.  There are so many adult sci fi / fantasy books that it's almost easy for a book to get lost on the shelf and collect dust but it seems that YA books are the new "it" and adults are looking in that section at the bookstore too.  You know who we have to thank for that right?  You got it.  Thank you, Stephenie Meyer, for getting us adults to peruse the YA section at the bookstore.  I personally need to thank her for inspiring me to sit down and write.  She's the same age as me and has one more kid than me.  It was after reading two or three of her books that I decided that I have stories in me that I wanted to try and write.  So here I am 2 years later, with one book looking for an agent, and several more stories just trying to claw their way out of me.
One of my biggest wishes is that I had more time to read and write but you know how it is these days.  Bills don't pay themselves and kids don't get themselves to school.