YA Series You (Probably) Missed

I just finished the third book in an incredible Young Adult series and thought I'd give a recommendation to all of you who haven't read it, or even heard about it. It's the Hunger Games series, by Suzanne Collins. The trilogy consists of:

1. The Hunger Games
2. Catching Fire
3. Mockingjay (just released August 24th)
   

Like most good YA books, I found out about this one from my sister. Since experience has taught me she has a sixth sense about these things (She'd practically memorized the first Harry Potter books long before it became the world phenomenon) I decided to take her recommendation right away instead of waiting to be convinced, as I have done so many other times (i.e. Twilight).

If you've read a synopsis or had someone tell you what the story is about, just ignore it and read the books anyway. The premise of the story could easily turn you away; I know because it almost did me, so I'm not even going to give you an idea of what it is about. The creativity and fantastic writing will erase any misgivings that the "gist" of the plot might give you.

The reason I said in the post title that you probably missed this series is because it seems to have attracted so little attention, at least not the amount it deserves. Sure, I've read some positive book reviews and the first two books have been on the NYTimes Children's bestseller list for awhile, but it comes nowhere close to the media buzz of some other books I could mention. No offense, Stephenie Meyer, but these are way better than Twilight. Is it being overshadowed by those books or is it just because there isn't a movie yet (please tell me our society is smarter than this). The release of Mockingjay really highlighted the lack of attention for me. I marked the date on my calendar months ago, but if I hadn't I might not have known it was coming out. No late night releases, some stores didn't even have it available the first day. Scholastic must be cutting back on their marketing expenses, so I'll help them out with a bit of old-fashioned word of mouth: Read Hunger Games!

And yes, there is talks of a movie, but don't wait for it. You know the books are always better :)

Am I wrong, is everyone reading these and just not telling me? Or maybe I'm living in crazy corner of the world and everywhere else it is the talk of the town?