The Road, reviewed by raidergirl3 and CompletedWrap Up

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Road finishes up the dystopian challenge for me. It was a bleak book, but a good read. The prose was perfect for this post apocaolypse tale, of a father and son walking across America. It was dark, and bleak, and depressing and how could a person survive this life? And would you want to? And it is also a book about surviving and hope and love, because those will always be there in life as well.

My full review is at my blog: here

To finish up this challenge, and with only a few weeks to go, here is the list I originally committed to:

Books I plan to read:
1. The Giver by Lois Lowry (banned book challenge as well)
2. Never Let Me Go by Kazou Ishiguro
3. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
4. Brave New World by Huxley
5. either The Road by Cormac McCarthy or Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell (recced by laura)

I read all five, but not Cloud Atlas, plus I also read We by Yvengy Zamyatin and Uglies by Scott Westerfield.
Favorite Book: Never Let Me Go, The Giver and The Road

I really enjoyed this challenge, and the books I found. This is a genre I would not have thought I would like, but I have had to revise this opinion, because I have a stack of new books I still want to read, including Pretties, Specials, Oryx and Cake, Children of Men.
Thanks for the challenge.

raidergirl3 update

Never Let Me Go by Kazou Ishiguro

Awesome book, suspenseful, best dystopian novel I've read. His prose is wonderful and the way he weaves the memoirish story, kept me reading continuously. Not as over the top dystopian as the others I've read, which is why this world was so possible.

full review here

One of the first dystopian novels, written in the early 1920s and translated from Russian, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin is pretty good. This is a creepy preview of Stalinist Russian, where logic and mathematics rule the society, and the group (we) is more important than the individual. Our main character, D-503, loves his world, but an encounter with I-330, a rebel female, turns his thoughts and world around.

I loved how he used math references for everything, to make sense of what was hapening to him. full review here

I just have The Road left to read, and I'm waiting in line at the library for it now.

Uglies reviewed by raidergirl3

I knew this book was popular because there are 6 or 7 copies of each part of this trilogy in our high school library. At the last minute, I grabbed a copy for the summer and I'm glad I did. It wasn't on my list for the Dystopian challenge, but it certainly counts. I'll be getting Pretties and Specials before the summer ends.

It's several centuries after our world, the Rusties, has died out. In this future world, to ensure everyone is treated equally, sixteen year olds are given an operation to become pretty. Tally can't wait for her operation, to become pretty and join the parties and fun life in New Pretty Town and leave the Ugly Town she's been living in. Then, just before her birthday, Tally's new friend Shay, tells Tally that she is running away and doesn't want to be pretty. Tally is conflicted, but the authorities find out and give her few options. I won't tell anymore than that, but I haven't put this book down since I picked it up for a *short* diversion from the very intense book The Bone People. So much for a short diversion.

Uglies is a young adult book, and quite an easy read and somewhat predictable, but I was needing some brain candy. Just like I enjoy Captain Crunch every few months for breakfast, I was needing some easy reading. Uglies was a big old bowl of Captain Crunch.

previously posted at my blog

Brave New World

I finished my latest book for the Dystopian challenge, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. Very good. My review is found here on my blog.

I've finished The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, and Brave New World.
Still to read: Never Let Me Go, either The Road or Cloud Atlas, and I borrowed Uglies, so that will be read as well.