Sunday, April 8, 2012

Book Reviews! Animal Farm, Farenheit 451, Brave New World

(In case you're wondering what the heck is up with the novels I read being mostly dystopia-centric, they're assigned for class. Luckily, they're also good and I like talking about them. Currently, I have very little free time (hence the sporadic blogging) and even less of it uninterrupted, as I prefer my reading time to be, so I don't read for myself very much, just for classes. Over the summer, however, I will likely bombard you with reviews of manga, Star Trek novels and whatever dark material I can get my pale little hands on.)

Animal Farm: Possibly because they are by the same author (George Orwell), Animal Farm reminds me quite a lot of 1984, (which, incedentally, was a book I read for myself, not for class) but with pigs. Snowball becomes like the object of the Two Minutes' Hate, Goldstein, who is blamed for everything that goes wrong within the animal totalitarian/communist farm. Again, no ruining the book ending for you, but it really was a very quick, very interesting read and I do reccomend it to anyone who has a little time and a distaste for dystopia.

Farenheit 451: by Ray Bradbury. This is a story about a future in which books are burned, social media is an unrelenting assault upon the senses, and billboard advertisements are hundreds of feet long to compensate for the speeds at which drivers pass them. In other words, my personal hell. The main character, Guy Montag, is a fireman who burns books but becomes disillusioned with the society he lives in, a mentality exacerbated by a girl he meets, Clarisse McClellan. The book follows Montag's journey from brainwashed citizen to semi-enlightened hobo. Have fun!

Brave New World: by Aldous Huxley. This book is centered around a few main characters, each of whom is a different example of the society they live in. People are grown in factories, preconditioned and chemically to fit the stratified social castes, which is set for life. It's really very interesting, 259 pages long, and I read it in roughly four hours, intermittently, because it's just that good. Probably my favorite character is the writer, Helmholtz Watson, who becomes dissatisfied with his mandated topics and writes a sort of poem about loneliness, a topic which is much avoided and discouraged. I would highly recommend this book, even if you're not much of a dystopia fan, just because of the interesting aspects of the society depicted.

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