Hunger Pains (Harvard Lampoon) - Simon & Schuster Touchstone - 2012 - 157 pages

I confess that I have not read Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins but I did see half of the movie on HBO.  The subject of the parody is a future world in which young people are forced to fight to the death for a reality television show.  This novel and the other two-thirds of the trilogy were by far the best-selling works of the author who was previously known for writing young adult fiction and television stories for Clarissa Explains It All.  The editors of Harvard Lampoon wisely identified Hunger Games as the target of a parody but somehow failed to write anything much different than the original except with silly names.  The current writers at HL have a strange sense of humor if any at all.  This one does not belong on the same shelf with Bored of the Rings.  [JAM 3/18/2013]