It took me something like five hours (with breaks for internet and other things) to finish the thing and it... wasn't bad?
The trailer I saw for the movie actually made me excited to read the book, and I know a lot of you have sang its praises high and low, but I'll be honest here -- the first paragraph made my heart sink in my chest. It's not even that it's first person present, because I've read several good books in first person POV, it's just that the writing just isn't very good. It's simplistic, the sentence structure makes me want to tear my hair out (STOP STARTING SENTENCES WITH "BUT", WOMAN! What are you, too good for commas?) and Katniss' narration is decent at best. Several times I ended up beating my head against the book because she was just. so. stupid. Especially about this whole Peeta thing. I mean, come on, Katniss, just because you don't have the emotional depth of a teaspoon doesn't mean that that applies to everyone else.
That being said, there were good things about it. The worldbuilding in itself is pretty fascinating, and so is most of the plot. The Districts and the Capitol and the how and why of the Hunger Games... that, I enjoyed reading about. The Hunger Games themselves were great, because I love survival stories. Peeta and Haymitch were both awesome as hell, I even liked Effie Trinket just because she was so awful and privileged. The story was exciting, and I did manage to finish the book in a few hours, so it wasn't all bad. I mean, I was entertained, at the very least, and there were some pretty damn exciting and/or horrific moments that made me speedread through the pages, but...
But halfway through the Games I was sitting there wishing I had my own copies of John Marsden's Tomorrow When The War Began series, because if you want to read about badass ladies blowing shit up, that is the series for you. Halfway through the novel I was sitting there considering all the ways this writing is only marginally better than Twilight (better heroine, but the sentence structure still gives me hives). Halfway through the novel I wanted to put it aside and read A Storm of Swords to get me some complexity.
I've heard that Collins used to be a tv-writer before she sat down to write these novels, and it kind of shows. I think these novels would make for much better movies than books -- Katniss' lack of emotional depth would be less obvious, the action would look awesome, and maybe the whole romance deal would be less obnoxious. Maybe in-movie we can actually get some urgency and shit about that last part, because Katniss' meebling made me want to hit her over the head with a tracker jacker nest and be done with it.
I still have Catching Fire and Mockingjay to read, and what little I've read of Catching Fire (which is sloooooow and mostly boring, because... bleh. Love triangles, man) does make me hope a little for the future. I'm just worried that it's going to take a lot of meebling and forced romance and emotional teaspoons before I actually get to the interesting bits... and I still want to read Tomorrow When the War Began, because it just does this whole thing BETTER, romance included.
I guess I just had higher hopes on this thing. It's not bad, but it could be so much better, and there are so many missed opportunities.