Sunrise on the Reaping by Suzanne Collins — Know Your Enemy

Haymitch Abernathy is sixteen, kind, quick to love, and about to be reaped for the fiftieth Hunger Games. Everyone already knows what he becomes. Full spoilers throughout. Content note: child death. Alex and Lindsey get into the steady dread of reading toward an ending you've known for years, Haymitch's struggle with what he calls implicit submission and whether doing nothing is its own form of obedience, and Maysilee Donner's refusal to let the Capitol treat her as anything less than dignified. They work through Plutarch as the most morally gray figure in the series, whose win condition is simply different from everyone else's, and what the careers reveal about a middle class that identifies upward instead of across. Plus Snow's cruelty in the candy and the milk, the Capitol's edited broadcast as the book's real horror, and twenty-four years of rebellion with nothing to show for it. Also: Alex's live reaction to the teaser trailer, and whether a trailer that makes the arena look epic is a misstep or exactly the point. Recorded before the show had a name. Cry count and ratings at the end.