I used to read a lot in my teen years and for some reason YA fiction is still to this day my favorite genre. I started reading again at the beginning of this year, I'm not sure why I had taken such a long break. Maybe it's the fact that I had children or other interests that had developed but it had literally been close to 10 years that I had read in great quantity. I read about 30 books from January to May and got incredibly burnt out. It was consuming me. I devoured entire series like they were cake and it was my birthday.... or cookie dough and any day of the year really.
I kept a running list in my journal of what books I had read and I plan to give mini reviews of them on here as well as shows and movies. I'm still watching Revolution, albeit I got distracted reading on "The Tribe" while watching tonight.
I used to LOVE watching The Tribe when I was in High School. Seriously, that show was awful and I freaking loved it. The actors were sub-par and the script/plot was just downright cheesy but it owned my soul. I knew it was bad though and I didn't care. It was honestly the first thing that got me into Dystopia's. I never finished watching it though for some reason or another and so I HAD to find out what happened to all these terrible characters and then proceeded to look up almost all the actors to see if my memory was correct in what they looked like. This happens a lot. Wikipedia is the devil.
Back to the topic at hand though, books. I'm not really sure where to start. I think I will start chronologically and I'll probably end up going back and reading them all again because this is just going to make me miss those worlds quite a bit. To kick things off we will start with The Giver.
(Sidenote: I am downright awful at remembering specifics a lot of time. I do not for the life of me remember his or any other characters name. I also am very bad at remembering what happens in individual episodes of shows years after I have watched. I have watched every single Grey's Anatomy episode and all but the current season at least 3 times, but I could not tell you watch happens in each episode. I know seasons, when George dies, when Denny is around, etc. but specifics? Nope.)
I first read it a few years after I'd graduated high school so I was obviously no longer the target audience. I think I was pregnant with my oldest and while it's a short read it made me think quite a bit about society. I hadn't had children yet so when I went back and read it again earlier this year I was a little surprised that my thoughts on the book had changed. I had a hard time with the ending since it is pretty ambiguous and it involves a baby. The baby in general makes the book a hard read for me. The thought of the baby dying the whole time was distracting. The way they treat death so casually and callously was worrisome. The way it is written is spectacular, when he first experiences color it made me look at red differently. I have red hair myself so it was an interesting fit. When he experiences pain, it's beautiful. The feeling of snow, sun, all of it was remarkable.
When I read it again this year I saw how much they were protecting their children from most things. Heartbreak is horrible for anyone, parents feel their children's heartbreaks too. We see them become withdrawn and sad when someone is mean to them, we see them shy away from a new person. In that world those things didn't happen, people weren't different really and their emotions were subdued so they didn't feel pain, sadness, anger, loneliness even. Part of me thinks it's not necessarily a bad thing. But that is the point of a Utopia, it seems to be the perfect thing but there's always something that makes it a Dystopia. In the case of The Giver, it is death. The way they, literally, murder people after they've reached a certain age, babies who fail to meet developmental milestones on time, etc. I've had 3 children, they've all reached milestones at different times. Both of my boys would have probably been killed in their society. They are both small, one has minor health problems and the other had trouble speaking for a long time. My oldest met most milestones on time so she'd be okay (heck, she'd probably thrive since she wouldn't be able to be a sassy brat all the time). Not to mention the birth mothers of the babies and how they're taken from them and only allowed to have a certain number of children. It's heartbreaking as a mother to think about having any of my babies taken away from me.
It is incredibly late and I have to get up early to get her ready for school in the morning.
If you lived in The Giver's world and started to figure out how things worked, started to feel, see violet and yellow; would you pretend you were the same as others, try to convince other people of what you were experiencing, tell someone and risk punishment and possible death, or run away?
If I lived in that world there is no way that I would tell anyone. I would keep it as my own little secret and probably just convince myself that it was just me. I doubt that that would make a very interesting story to read...but I wouldn't risk my life just to try and bring this thing that was mine to the world. I've never been one to run headlong into hardship that could be so easily avoided...unfortunately that also means I would probably never be the hero in a book.
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