Book prices and movies

I was thinking about the upcoming movie of "The hunger games" and I asked my goddaughter, who's gonna be 18 at the end of the month, if she had ever heard about the books as they are young adult literature, but she had no idea what I was talking about. Nor any of her classmates had ever heard of the trilogy.
I first heard about the books and the movie about a year ago through a site I read from time to time, called Geek moms (although I'm not a mom yet), and they were so excited about the books that made me wanna read them too. For various reasons I started (and finished) reading them last month and loved them and now I've been whining to my husband to watch the movie although it doesn't have any spaceships or superheroes and other boy's stuff. He is gonna take me...the things you do for love...

Anyway, what I've been thinking about is this: Is it ok to be learning about nice books only after you hear that they are making a movie of it? I'm currently halfway through "The girl with the dragon tattoo" and really like it but hadn't even heard about the book before the movie (which I'm not going to see before finishing the book first).
As i have already told before, I live in Athens Greece and the fact is that especially when growing up we didn't have many, if any at all, public libraries. So for my reading, that I loved, I had to rely on presents from relatives and friends. I found out about Michael Ende when I was 12 and an uncle brought me "The NeverEnding Story". I'm one of those happy people that read "The Hobbit" and "The lord of the rings" at a young age and was thrilled to see (and expect) the movies. However, as the years are passing I find it more and more difficult to find out about good books to read!
I used to be a quite regular client of my favorite bookstore, where I found out about "the discworld" and "The hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy" but nowadays prices of books seem to grow in astonishing high levels. I haven't been in a local bookstore for over 2 years to buy a book for me or my husband. I haven't read a book in Greek for those 2 years as the prices start at 15 euros and I can find them online at the 1/3 of the price!

Last winter I heard about the book "The island" that was taking place in Greece in Spinaloga (a leper colony) only after a tv series was to be aired. So I searched for the book to read, in Greek, it cost 17 euros!!!! just because it was certain to spike on the sales!!!! So, I bought it online for merely 7 euros and loved it and I didn't watch the series as it was sure to ruin my pleasure.
I searched for "The hunger games" a book that I haven't found someone I know that has read it and it costs 18 euros double the price of Amazon. So I think this sucks!!!!
People will only find out about the book after the movie that premiers next week and if someone wants to read the books afterwards they'll have to pay a hell lot of money as buying all three will cost 55 euros!!!! For 3 books!!!! So I guess none will bother...and that's how people stop reading...
I know that I'm probably bitching right now but I always thought reading books is very important for young people! They are important for older people too!! Most of my friends either don't have the time or the will to read a book but they will most definitely watch the movie. I told my youngest brother that he should read "The game of thrones" books and he replied he'd rather watch the series!!!
Oh my God I say! Is human race growing stupid or something? Is it because the books are so expensive that we don't care about them anymore? We don't have enough time as we run around trying to earn some money to survive in a collapsing economy? Is it because it is easier watching something that reading about it? Do we luck the fantasy?
I really don't know but I hope if or when I have children of my own I'll be able to teach them how to read books. To help them understand it's more important to first understand what the writer wanted to share with us before seeing how Hollywood understood that.