Kyle Kellams: There is something special about finding somebody else who has read that favorite book of yours and wants to talk about it. Darinda Sharp and Halee Israel want to talk to you about The Hunger Games. They’re co-hosts of the Chapter by Chapter podcast, Real or Not Real, a Hunger Games Podcast, that recently completed a first season.
It’s recorded at the Fayetteville Public Library and produced locally by Trevor Williamson of Sley House Publishing and is garnering a national following. Hallee and Darinda, who both work at Pearl’s Books in Fayetteville, developed this podcast after talking about Suzanne Collins’ series of books for a while and while waiting for the prequel novel Sunrise on the Reaping to be released.
Darinda Sharp: And so I walked into the bookstore one day and I said, all right, Hallee, I’ve got a question. You can say no. And that’s where that’s where it went.
Hallee Israel: And I did not say no. I said yes immediately and without reservation, which was what was really wild. As I say, it’s basically just putting mics in front of us, but with stuff that we already talk about at work. So it was kind of a no-brainer.
Kellams: But for this podcast, you go chapter by chapter chronologically.
Israel: Yes.
Kellams: So how does it work?
Israel: We usually record three episodes at a time. So we’ll read the three chapters that we’re going to talk about just prior to it whenever and make notes. And then one of us will take turns leading the episode. And so we go through just like kind of beat by beat what happens in the chapter and things that we thought about, connections to other books, character things that we maybe never — there are things — this is probably my fourth or fifth time at least rereading the whole series — and there are still things that I am noticing for the first time, and things that I don’t notice until Darinda points them out, which is really fun, and same same way in reverse.
Sharp: We decided early on, we talked about are we going to be spoiler-free or spoiler-filled. We decided early we are spoiler-filled because we couldn’t help ourselves.
Kellams: And you’re talking about the books analytically, so I would think that you would, if you were doing no spoilers, that would be tough.
Sharp: It’d be way shorter episodes, too. I’d be like, and then this, just keep it in mind for later.
Israel: Yeah. Especially with the latest prequel, because the thing — I’ll speak for myself, I won’t put this on you — but we’ve talked about how much we both love it.
Sharp: Yes.
Israel: The great thing about the prequels is how they recontextualize all the books before. So what you think you know already is still true, but you also know all this other stuff that you know. It changes everything about a scene and nothing about the scene.
Kellams: What is it about the books you love so much?
Sharp: That’s part of it. The other thing I love about it is the theme of hope, the theme of kindness. One of the things we said in an episode was kindness is rebellion. And it’s one of those things that we were just talking about it, and neither of us really thought about it.
And our friend Justin, who we also work with at Pearl’s, who was a guest on one of the episodes, brought it up. In the story, he’s like, kindness is rebellion. Y’all need stickers. This is great.
And so that whole, especially right now, that kindness is rebellion, that empathy, the importance of hope and empathy, and remember who the enemy is, I feel like is really critical right now.
Israel: I talked about it, I think in our first episode, or at least I’ve talked about it in an episode. But one of the things that I loved about it is I read it when I was in high school and thought I understood it, but I loved it for very surface-level reasons. I loved the story, I loved the characters.
And then revisiting it as an adult, I was able to dive deeper and really understand what she’s saying and the context and historical and political — everything that Darinda said. And I think that that is really good storytelling, where you can read it at different points in your life and take different things away from it.
So yes, everything that you said, and then also the story and the characters are just so well thought out and well developed, and you care so much about them and what happens and feel inspired by them. And I love that.
Kellams: You know who my favorite character is? I’ve told you this in conversations when I’ve been at Pearl’s. It’s Rue. This is spoiler-filled. Rue doesn’t make it through the first book.
Sharp: No.
Israel: I mean, spoiler-filled, most people don’t make it through any of the books.
Kellams: That’s a very good point. I’m asking extemporaneously, why do you think I liked Rue so much?
Sharp: I think you liked Rue for the same reason why her presence is ever-present in the entire series and the entire narrative is for what she represents. As far as I always say in our podcast, the rebellion starts with Rue.
It kind of starts with Prim, kind of starts with Katniss, but it really starts with Rue. That’s when people really start to open their eyes to what’s happening and start to feel inspired by Katniss’ response to it. And I think Katniss’ response to it, her death is a huge reason why it’s so resonant for the characters in the book and for readers.
And also, she’s just like this beacon of innocence. You can’t help but love her. But she’s such a — again, Suzanne Collins does a great job at creating well-rounded characters. You just feel like she’s a real person, and then that just makes her death all the more impactful. She sticks with you. Rue sticks with you.
Israel: And I think you like Rue because she’s unexpected. You expect the winner of the games to be strong and like all the overtly masculine characteristics of our society. And Rue subverts all of those. Her greatest strength is evasion. And she’s such a good observer.
Kellams: You’ve picked up listeners along this journey. A lot of listeners.
Sharp: Yeah.
Kellams: What’s that like?
Sharp: Crazy.
Israel: It is wild. We got a new total this morning, 20,200 downloads. I don’t know what that means exactly. That’s kind of an arbitrary number.
Sharp: It’s a big number.
Israel: It’s a big number. Our producer and editor, Trevor — shout-out Trevor, he’s wonderful — tells us that is huge. That’s a big deal in podcast land.
Kellams: What about the movies? What roles do they play in your appreciation of the books? Because the movies took the franchise to a different level. Many people who never read the books then went and saw the movies. Are we OK with the films?
Sharp: I think they’re good. They’re very, very good. I always tell people, if you’ve only seen the movies, you absolutely have to read the books, because I think that while the movies are good adaptations, they can’t adapt everything.
So I think some of it takes the bite out of the books a little bit, because the books have so much to say. But as far as adaptations, I think it’s one of the best book-to-movie adaptations that I’ve seen, as far as like a comprehensive series.
But whenever we’re talking about the book, the movies don’t come up a whole, whole lot until we get to the episode where we explicitly talk about the movie.
Israel: And this is something we actually disagree on about the movies, because I also love the movies. I think they are fantastic movies. I think they are barely adequate adaptations. They are mediocre adaptations of the book. They’re fine. They’re great movies.
Kellams: Right. I know what you’re saying.
Israel: They’re fine adaptations. The book is so much better.
By all means, see the movie. If you love the book, see the movie. If you haven’t gotten into the book, see the movie first. Let that be your appetizer, so to speak, and then get into the books and get what it’s really about.
Kellams: When you tell people that you’re doing this, do you ever get the pushback, “Oh, that kid’s book”?
Sharp: No, thankfully. Thankfully, there are so many people that are that love this series so much that are adults that found it in their adulthood, and I think that it does speak to adults in a lot of ways because it like from my personal experience reading it as a teenager versus an adult, you appreciate it in a different way.
Israel: I haven’t heard that either.
One of the funny things we get at the bookstore is parents asking how old their kids need to be to read the books.
And I guess where we’ve mostly come down is, one, how old is the kid? If they’re around 12, we ask, are they are a 12-12, a 9-12 or a 14-12? And if they’re a 14-12 or older, they’re old enough to read the book.
And our philosophy is if you’re old enough to be reaped, you’re old enough to read the book.
Kellams: Reaped, of course, for those who are uninitiated, means?
Sharp: The premise is that there was basically a civil war. There were 13 districts that rose up against the Capitol. One district was nuked off the face of the earth. The other 12, to keep them in line, every year there is a reaping ceremony where a boy and a girl from each district, someone between the ages of 12 and 18, there’s a drawing just like Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery.
There’s a drawing. There’s a boy and a girl from each district. They are taken to the Capitol to fight to the death. There is one victor who goes back to their district and lives, is told they will live a life of leisure and plenty and abundance.
Kellams: But 23 participants who don’t make it. What’s the value, whether it’s The Hunger Games or any other novel or novels, what’s the value of a group being able to talk about the same book?
Israel: You get perspectives that you would not have otherwise had, or ideas that you would not have otherwise had. As I had said earlier, there are things that Darinda points out that I literally never thought of that way, and I’ve read this book series countless times.
And it’s also just great to have these discussions and somebody to bounce ideas off of. It’s like, OK, I think this theory because of this. And then Darinda is like, oh, that’s interesting because I think this because of this.
And it’s fun. Part of it is it’s fun. And then another part of it is these books especially spark great dialogue in the themes and whatever it’s trying to say about society.
Sharp: And I think any book club, which is like just the discussion of a book, one great thing about it is you get a different perspective because you are reading the book. You get the author’s perspective, you get the characters’ perspectives, all of that. Then once you talk about it, you get other real-life people’s perspectives, too, plus in relation to the author and in dialogue with the characters.
So it’s like an exponential, I don’t know, opening of ways to look at things and ways to think about things that you like.
All of our own brains are limited. I only have my experience. Hallee has her experience. And then the experiences we bring to this book are different than Katniss’ experiences and different from Suzanne Collins’ experiences, and it just becomes this big soup.
Kellams: Dickens’ Great Expectations was serialized. You read them along and talked to your neighbors about them. I hope someone’s doing that with The Hunger Games and y’all.
Israel: I hope so too.
We’ve had people tell us they hadn’t read the prequels yet, and because they wanted to listen to the podcast, they went ahead and read the prequels before they started it.
A couple of people have started it and then gone, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don’t remember enough, and then have told us they’ve gone back and read. That’s fun.
Sharp: Love encouraging people to reread The Hunger Games. Read it for the first time. Reread it every time. For me, every time I reread it, I get something else.
Hallee Israel and Darinda Sharp are co-hosts of Real or Not Real, a Hunger Games Podcast. You can find it wherever you find podcasts. It is produced by Trevor Williamson of Sley House Publishing.
The first season is now complete, covering each chapter of the first book. After a short hiatus, they’ll be back for a second season.
The space at the Fayetteville Public Library where they record their podcast is a free service of the library. Our conversation was recorded at the Carver Center for Public Radio in late January.
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
