Showing posts with label dystopian. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dystopian. Show all posts

Sunday, November 25, 2012

Group Pictures-The Handmaid's Tale

We met last week on November 18th to discuss The Handmaid's Tale. November 18th just happened to be Margaret Atwood's 73rd birthday! And we didn't even plan ahead for that one! The Handmaid's Tale was loved by some and not others, but it did prompt some great discussion...and that's why we love book club! We definitely recommend this one for other groups.

Take 1


Take 2
 
 
 
 

Monday, October 1, 2012

November Book Choices!

This month, we'll select a book from the dystopian genre.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood | Paperback, 311 pages

A gripping vision of our society radically overturned by a theocratic revolution, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid's Tale has become one of the most powerful and most widely read novels of our time... Offred is a Handmaid in the Republic of Gilead, serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife. She may go out once a day to markets whose signs are now pictures because women are not allowed to read. She must pray that the Commander makes her pregnant, for in a time of declining birthrates her value lies in her fertility, and failure means exile to the dangerously polluted Colonies. Offred can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Now she navigates the intimate secrets of those who control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules.

Brilliantly conceived and executed, this powerful evocation of twenty-first-century America gives full rein to Margaret Atwood's devastating irony, wit and astute perception.

The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987, and it was nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award. It has been adapted for the cinema, radio, opera, and stage. You can get the audio version, read by Claire Danes, at Audible. It has a 3.97 rating on Goodreads.

Helper12 by Jack Blaine | Paperback, ?

Helper12 works as a Baby Helper in Pre Ward, the place where babies spend their first six months of life before they’re tracked for vocations and sent to training. She does her job well, and she stays out of trouble. But one day, the Sloanes, Society members who enjoy all the privileges of their station—family unit clearance, a private dwelling, access to good food and good schools—come to “adopt” one of the Pre Ward babies. The Director makes a deal and the Sloanes walk out with a brand new child.

They also walk out owning Helper12—the Director sells her to them, and there’s nothing she can do but go. At the Sloanes, Helper12 enters a world where people should be able to enjoy life—with high position and riches come the opportunity for individual freedom, even the chance to love—but that’s not what she finds. The Sloanes are keeping secrets. So is their biological son, Thomas.

Helper12 has some secrets of her own; she’s drawing, which is a violation, since Baby Helpers aren’t tracked for Art. And she’s growing to love the child she was bought to care for—at the same time that Ms. Sloane is becoming disenchanted with her impulse baby buy.

When all your choices are made for you, how do you make some for yourself? Helper12 is about to find out.

Helper12 has a 3.46 rating on Goodreads. That's all I know about it...where did this weird a$$ book come from?!

The Running Man by Richard Bachman/Stephen King | Paperback, 317 pages


The Running Man is set within a dystopian future in which the poor are seen more by the government as worrisome rodents than actual human beings. The protagonist of The Running Man, Ben Richards, is quick to realize this as he watches his daughter, Cathy, grow more sick by the day and tread closer and closer to death. Desperate for money to pay Cathy’s medical bills, Ben enlists himself in a true reality style game show where the objective is to merely stay alive.
 
Richard Bachman was a Stephen King pen name. You can read about the situation here. The Running Man has a 3.66 rating on Goodreads.
 
Karen is hosting the November meeting. It will be the BCS meeting where  we'll choose books for 2013.


Monday, September 17, 2012

Group Picture-The Last Policeman

This month we read The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters. Thanks to Eric at Quirk Books for sending it to us! We really enjoyed this book and can't wait for the second book in the planned trilogy! We also are anticipating the upcoming TV show. We highly suggest this book for book clubs!

 
 
 
 

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta




At first, this book sounds like a Christian based story, but maybe it isn't after all! The synopsis of this book peaked my interest. It sounds part dystopian, and part Sci Fi! I put it on my to-read list. It looks like the author, Tom Perrotta, has written several other books also.

What if the Rapture happened and you got left behind? Or what if it wasn't the Rapture at all, but something murkier, a burst of mysterious, apparently random disappearances that shattered the world in a single moment, dividing history into Before and After, leaving no one unscathed? How would you rebuild your life in the wake of such a devastating event?

This is the question confronting the bewildered citizens of Mapleton, a formerly comfortable suburban community that lost over a hundred people in the Sudden Departure. Kevin Garvey, the new mayor, wants to speed up the healing process, to bring a sense of renewed hope and purpose to his traumatized neighbors, even as his own family falls apart. His wife, Laurie, has left him to enlist in the Guilty Remnant, a homegrown cult whose members take a vow of silence but haunt the streets of town as 'living reminders' of God's judgment. His son, Tom, is gone, too, dropping out of college to follow a sketchy prophet by the name of Holy Wayne. Only his teenaged daughter, Jill, remains, and she's definitely not the sweet A student she used to be.

Through the prism of a single family, Perrotta illuminates a familiar America made strange by grief and apocalyptic anxiety. The Leftovers is a powerful and deeply moving book about people struggling to hold onto a belief in their own futures.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Fahrenheit 451







I thought I would highlight this book today because the title sounds HOT and todays high temperatures are forecast to be over 100 degrees!





I have never read this book, or any books from Ray Bradbury, I wonder why? It sounds like the kind of book I like.





The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning, along with the houses in which they were hidden.



Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires. And he enjoyed his job. He had beena fireman for ten years and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs or the joy of watching pages consumes by flames, never questioned anything until he met a seventeen year old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid. Then Guy met a professor who told him of a future in which people could think. And Guy Montag suddenly realized what he had to do.



This book was originally published in 1953!




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