A 12 year old I know is avid about reading the Hunger Games series, even though he's more a video game player than a reader.

Your comments just made me realize that the reason for the success of that series is that it's just like a video game written up as a book.

On the surface, kids killing other kids in a contest is almost unthinkably gruesome, but underneath, it's sort of a cartoon about the will to survive and the ingenuity to do it.

Which makes it a good metaphor for trying to grow up in today's economically botched society.

It makes me wonder, though, if it's also a metaphor for the idea that a few clever ones will achieve success if they are resourceful enough, while the rest will be economically 'killed' and become working poor or street people.

It's a medieval game for what is becoming a medieval world.