The Underland Chronicles by Suzanne Collins (author of the Hunger Games) is a MUST read. It is the series she wrote before the hunger games. I think it is good for any age (although younger audiences may find it disturbing at parts. Probably 12 and up), but it is not as violent and gruesome as the hunger games. It is a five book series. Has anyone else read it?
I actually had started reading Gregor the Overlander once upon a time but I put the book down after a while and now I have no clue where it is. I barely remember anything about it except for a cave and bats... I think...
When I read first started reading it, I stopped, then came back to it probably a couple of years later. Then I couldnt put it down, lol
Big fan of this series Although it's been several years, I believe that I read it before the hunger games and didn't realize the two series were by the same author until quite a while later.
Man okay now I've gotta vent about this because I was reminded of it but Has anyone read The Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare? I used to be so in love with the series when I was in high school, and then I reread it, and then I reread it again last fall and wow... It's just not as good as I remember. I realize its just a trashy teen drama with imbued with supernatural and fantasy elements and hey, that world building is really neat and all, but man the writing is Not Good (TM). Maybe I've grown up, but the whole universe still has a special place in my heart and I'm still reading one of the spin-off series because I spent money on it I still want to stay in touch with the fandom a little bit. I will protest to one thing though, and that is the disgustingly specific ways that Cassie describes kissing. I may just be an uncomfortable ace of spades but bro.... in The Infernal Devices the makeout scenes lasted like six (6) pages!!! Why????
I read the series while still in high school so 3-5 years ago. I have reread the series twice. It is among my favorite young adult series. My favorite part of this series is the world building- nearly all of my favorite series have top-tier world building. I love when you can actually visualize the world that the series takes place in. I haven't read the spin-offs yet... I bought the first 2 books a few years ago, but they were hard copy books so I forgot about them and now have lost them. I strongly dislike physical copy books- ever since I read my first ebook, I have tried to not read physical books just because I much prefer holding 100+ books at all times rather than 1 or 2 physical copies lol.
oh man I am the exact opposite. I have to be reading a physical book (or something that resembles a physical book, thank you skyrim) or else I won't be able to focus. It's weird Legit tho in City of Heavenly Fire I was gross sobbing over Simon
As always I kept forgetting to post. I finished Nineteen Eighty-Four a few weeks ago. Volume III is really horrible. D: It was well-written, though, and it was not dragged out any longer than it needed to be, I think! In fact, there are quite some time jumps near the end of the book, which was quite welcome to me. This is my thought because of it; it might contain spoilers, of course (but no details). Because of what I had heard about the novel in classes, I had expected more of it to be about Newspeak. I feel like it was more about the inability to keep your own thoughts and values under strong indoctrination and torture than about the inability to keep your own thoughts and values under an extremely limited language. That's still quite interesting, though! It's also somewhat (or quite ) depressing, of course... although I'm not devastated by it, because I think miracles are possible and if Winston (the protagonist) loved Jesus, he might've been able to keep loving Him, whatever happened to him. But I don't know, it's impossible to imagine what you would do in such a situation, I think. :/ I mean, the apostle Peter denied Jesus under much less bad circumstances than Winston was put under in Nineteen Eighty-Four... It is scary! But a fascinating read, for sure. Let's be glad it's fiction, and 1984 has passed without our world being like the one imagined in the novel. I went to the library today, but they have disappointingly few English books available... :/ They do have the entire Rosie series, though, so I got The Rosie Effect! See here for my short review on The Rosie Project.
I recently dived into the books that the anime series Konosuba is based on (books go by the same title as the anime). They aren't long reads (usually 220-250 pages), and each book was really funny- I cannot wait for more to come out. The other day I decided to resubscribe to Kindle Unlimited because I had an urge to read some paranormal stuff as well as some spy thrillers. I will go back to the books translated from Japan/China/Korea, but I wanted to read some other stuff right now. Of course if I could, I would read like all the books at once but that isn't possible.
Am I going to respond? I think I am... If it is possible to read a book wrong, I feel like you’ve done it First of all, a quick logical argument on the logic of the world, it's historical meaning, and authorial intent, that I want to use as a backbone for what I think: Let’s assume that, indeed, if Winston would have believed in God, a miracle would have happened that would have saved him/the ending in some way. There are two ways in which someone who has never heard about religion can become religious: either via learning from someone, or via a miracle. The first, of course, is impossible in the context of the book. If he would have learned from someone without getting what he got now anyway, it would have been a miracle in itself. In the book, no miracles happened. That means that there are two options. Either, in the universe of the book, no god exists, or what happened was exactly what God wanted to happen. There are no other logical options. The world has been close to being like the one imagined by 1984, and quite a lot of people have lead Winston’s life: Nazi Germany, Maoist China, and Stalin’s USSR all have had people under their reign who lived lives very similar to that of Winston. George Orwell was an out-spoken Atheist and usually was on the same line as Camus; all this is intentional. 1984 is, of course, written in 1949, directly after the second world war and during the reign of Stalin. It is very much a response to both of those things. It is not a novel about Winston, or about Big Brother, as it is not an action-driven novel. 1984 is a novel driven by ideas. It is often read as a response to totalitarianism in general. It can be read right next to Hanna Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Though 1984 is not about the party, the party is everything the book is about. With all that, it can be read as an argument against religious belief and against the institution of organised religion. “In a world in which totalitarianism exists, no god can,” is a reading that is fully supported by the text. IngSoc has quite a few deliberate parallels with religion, though saying the book is about belief is a stretch. The reason so many people focus on Newspeak as an important part of the book, is because it is part of what the books is about: le savoir-pouvoir (Power-knowledge,) as Foucault called it, is the concept that what can be talked about, what questions can be asked, depends on who is in power, not just in a totalitarian state, but also in a democratic one. Power shapes knowledge, but, as we all know, knowledge also shapes power. In order to control power one must also control knowledge, and one must be in power to control it. With that, and this is my point, 1984 seems to state that totalitarianism exists because of unquestioned belief in something or someone; and that, in order to prevent it, we should learn to question the correctness of our own thoughts and beliefs, as well as those claimed by what we think is an authority. It is not necessarily anti-religion, but reading it religiously seems quite a stretch, or just incorrect. That’s what I mean with “I feel like you’ve read it wrong.” A true postmodernist would say that that is impossible, as the meaning is created between the text and the reader, but I feel like you’ve somehow done it
I think fortunately neither of us adhere (most or all) postmodernist principles. [There was a response to another part of Egeau's post here, but it ended up seeming totally irrelevant to Egeau's point (which was hard to tell before reading the entire post ), so I removed it.] Well, I personally think the first of the options you present is the case. Not that I had made a logical argument to support it; it's just how it seemed to me, I suppose. But that impression was solidified because it seemed to me that George Orwell did not think God existed, or even that he thought God did not exist, and in that case it would make the most sense to write a novel from that perspective. Ah, possibly! That possibility had not occurred to me, and I skipped the afterword. This is interesting to take from it, as this idea does not exist anywhere in the book, I think. But it is still not unlikely that George Orwell intended a meaning other than just "humans can't cling to anything, sad". That would make me hold the novel in a higher regard! And I think the idea you present does fit the book pretty well, maybe you're right. However, what's a bit strange is that Winston lost his identity because of questioning the correctness of his own thoughts and beliefs, right?
He didn't lose his identity because he questioned his and the party's beliefs, he lost it because the party didn't want him to, because the party relies on people not doing it. Additionally, what he lost was not his identity, it was his ability to question, which was replaced by doublethink. The party changed him from someone who is a thread to totalitarianism, to someone who is not. From someone who questions their own beliefs, "Freedom is the right to say that two plus two equals four," to someone who states that 2+2=5, if the party says it is 5.
Plausible! There could be more to discuss on about but I think it's enough about Nineteen Eighty-Four for now. But if it is possible to "read a book wrong", besides by misunderstanding factual details, I'd say it'd be by believing the author had intents with the book that weren't actually intended. I'd say that overlooking intended intents, as I may have done, is not reading it wrong, it's just not reading it as clearly.
Speaking of 1984... I think the most adult and serious book I had ever read was The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. I read it in the fall of 2018 during my first semester of college of BOY was it difficult to get through. It was disturbing and heavy, but I really liked it. Even today I could think about it for .2 seconds and my entire mood will change because it was just that traumatic of a book. I love a good book or series that sticks with you long after you've read it. That's when you know it's a good one.
Also speaking about 1984... I somewhat recently (half a year ago) read Dave Eggers' The Circle, which is frequently said to be the modern 1984. It is quite good, it has many of the same overarching themes, it very much is about the danger of totalitarianism, but it does so with a plot that it far more believable in modern society, in addition with the core message having changed due to the increased knowledge in psychology and sociology of our society. Though it has far less gruesome details than 1984, I found it quite a lot more freighting because of its realism.
I have now also read The Rosie Effect, the second book! I feel like it's not as fun, but more realistic than the first one. And once again I was impressed by the amount of character development. It seems as if there are no shallow characters in Simsion's books! When I visited Dover last summer I bought Guide to the internet by Jim McClellan from The Guardian. I have read it from cover to cover, and quite enjoyed it! The book was released in 1998, and gives valuable insights into the state of the internet back then, for someone who wasn't even born yet. I am also impressed by the accurracy of most prospective looks from McClellan. In some cases, what he thought had turned out to be a dud is now extremely popular (most notably online shopping, but also push), but most of his predictions turned out pretty well. I wanted to compliment the author on the book, but unfortunately I could not find any contact details, and found out that he left The Guardian 16 years ago. I also finished Because Internet - Understanding the new Rules of Language by Gretchen McCulloch yesterday! This book was released in 2019 (which is when I bought it), and I'd recommend it to anyone interested in what you see on the internet. If you want to know why elderly end their chat messages with ..., wonder about the origin and use of Emoji or are interested about the appeal of memes, you might very well enjoy this book. And it treats many other subjects related to the internet too, these were just 3 examples I could think off from the top of my head!
I don't believe I've recommended it on the thread before, but I really enjoyed This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. The book almost reads like an extended poem rather than a novel which I quite enjoyed. The perspective shift between two narrators really keeps things interesting and on your feet as you read!
