It runs from October 15th through the end of the year, and the goal is to read 1-4 dystopian books. So far I've read 2 and it's been 2 weeks. So, yeah, I like dystopian...
I have read
The Ask and the Answer andThe Forest of Hands and Teeth
(and I still need to review both...),
and am reading
Y: The Last Man
.For the rest, I'm going to pick a few off of my dystopian list and try to work that down a bit. I'm looking at choosing from the following:
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, which I just bought
Jennifer Government by Max Barry
The People of Sparks by Jeanne DuPrau
The Road by Cormac McCarthy
Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden
The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary Pearson
If you've read any of those and want me to lean toward them, or if you've read any great dystopic fic that you think I may not know about, please, chime in...
definitely do Y the last man. and, the road - i will too.
ReplyDeleteI loved Y The Last Man. Great great story. And Adoration of Jenna Fox. What a well-written story, and a but unsettling. Me and the husband had a huge conversation about it (I had listened to the audiobook in the car one weekend when we were driving to and from Boston) afterwards.
ReplyDeleteAlright, definitely reading Adoration... then. Bit disturbing AND big discussion = I'm in.
ReplyDeleteI recently got interested in dystopic fiction and I just read a really interesting book called The Unit, which I had first heard recommended on Books on the Nightstand. If you want to know more about it you can read my review of it on my blog.
ReplyDeleteSome YA dystopic books that I've beem intending to read are The Giver, Maze Runner and Candor, all of which look like really good books.
I loved The Giver, Simcha. Some people get really angry at the end, but I think it tells you a lot about yourself. But if you get angry, make sure you read the rest of the set (Gathering Blue and Messenger)? They round it out nicely.
ReplyDeleteI want to read the other two, they are on the never-ending tbr pile.
Do find that there is a big difference between adult dystopia books and YA ones? I'm pretty new to the genre and have not completed any of the YA dystopian series of books so I don't know how they end but I got the impression that they are not quite as hopeless feeling as adult books. would this be true? And do any of the adult books in this genre have happy endings?
ReplyDeleteI think that's probably a bit true, Simcha, especially of older YA books (older as in published awhile ago, not as in aimed at an older audience). I think that current YA authors are perhaps more willing to have darker material and a more pessimistic outlook, but maybe 10 or 20 years ago, this wasn't as acceptable.
ReplyDeleteDo you prefer the darker adult outlooks, or the more hopeful, young ones?
(also, have you ever read Oryx and Crake? It's one of my favorite dystopias)
I'll have to admit that I do have a preference for happy endings (does that make me shallow?). But the reason I usually pick up a dystopic book is my curiosity as to how to author will resolve the story, which from the description seems to complicated and hopeless. And I'll admit to my disappointment at finding that most of the books I have read do not have a happy ending. I just read Tanith Lee's Eva Fairdeath and was not satisfied with the ending at all, it was so abrupt. I never finished Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series so I don't know what kind of ending he used but I think that Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games will probably end with the world being a better place (happy ending) though I just hope she doesn't deal with the Peeta vs. Gale situation by killing one off
ReplyDeleteThe Peeta/Gale thing worries me, too. I sort of feel like that's what she's going to do; I don't know how else she'll resolve it. I guess we'll see. And I like the Uglies series ending.
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