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Mar 22, 2008

Martine rated it:

A Clockwork Orange is one of those books which everyone has heard of but which few people have actually read –- mostly, I think, because it is preceded by a reputation of shocking ultra-violence. I’m not going to deny here that the book contains violence. It features lengthy descriptions of heinous crimes, and they’re vivid descriptions, full of excitement. (Burgess later wrote in his autobiography: ‘I was sickened by my own excitement at setting it down.’) Yet it does not glorify violence, nor More...

11 comments like (91 people liked it)

Feb 20, 2011

Paquita Maria rated it:

This originally started out as a comment on Michael's awesome review, but then I realized that I have too frequently been writing these overly wordy responses to reviews about books I myself have yet to review, and it made me feel totally silly...as in, I should probably be keeping my rants contained to my own GR page rather than vomiting them all over all of your wonderful review threads. So! Here I am, and here is a review of a book that I read about 15 years ago, based solely on almost half- More...

35 comments like (19 people liked it)

Apr 12, 2010

Annalisa rated it:

Interesting. Disturbing but insightful. Real horrorshow.

For as dark as cynical as the book is, the main point I got out of the book is that freedom of choice is more important than being good. Burgess takes the most atrocious person possible and strips him of his ability to choose until optimal vulnerability makes you agree that choosing evil is better than not choosing at all.

The obligatory warning that vague spoilers follow:

Here we have a futuristic society More...

8 comments like (19 people liked it)

Dec 17, 2009

hypothermya rated it:

I had been avoiding this book for several reasons. The first of these was perhaps the weighty reputation this book has for being shocking and controversial. I was slightly afraid that the book wouldn't be as monumental as it had been built up as. The second was my initial exposure to the Kubrik film based on this book. Even the most blase 14 year old will have a strongly negative reaction to the film; the exact response it was intended to elicit, I'm sure. Finally, this book seemed to be a More...

1 comment like (14 people liked it)

Sep 06, 2008

Sandi rated it:

Well, what can I say about "A Clockwork Orange"? Maybe I should first suggest that anyone who wants to read it should print out this glossary: A Nadsat Glossary. I will be eternally grateful to Matt (Tadpole316) for sending me that link. My printout is looking a little rough.

I had seen the movie about 15 years ago. It was disturbing and many of the images were already so much a part of our cultural consciousness that it was at once familiar, yet disturbing. Many of More...

12 comments like (11 people liked it)

Oct 04, 2007

Maggie rated it:

I am the sort of person who can't watch very violent movies without covering my eyes or burrowing into my husband, who is kind enough to tell me when the gore has ceased.

However, I loved this book, for all the red, red krovvy and in-and-out and the ultraviolence. The dialect of Alex, your Humble Narrator, can be somewhat off-putting at first, which is something that Burgess himself admits in the introduction. But slowly you find yourself understanding the nonsense flowing so easily More...

2 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jun 10, 2011

Charity rated it:

If you're worried that you don't have the full edition of this book, let me break down the formula for you. A full-content edition will have:

3 sections, each containing 7 chapters, for a total of 21 chapters.

The 21st chapter was only omitted from American editions published prior to 1990, so if your edition was published after that, you should be golden.

Well, maybe golden is a subjective term because I personally found the 21st (final) chapter to be the weakes More...

1 comment like (6 people liked it)

Jan 11, 2012

Absentminded rated it:

That starry chelloveck Anthony Burgess had some sodding guttiwuts to write such a horroshow piece of ultra-violent fiction. And the lingo. My, oh my! All the starry lewdies won't even pony what us molodoys are gavoreeting about, O my brothers and sisters! If only my droogs would join in this bezoomy cal.

I know not all of you would get what I just said. But don't worry, no one does in the beginning. You slowly start to get the hang of it as you progress through the story narrated by the More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

علی rated it:

Years after watching the film by Stanley Kubrick and reading the book, I read somewhere about the title, that Anthony Burgess chosed a combination of a Cockney expression and the word ”orange" which in Malay means ”person”!(Burgess has been serving in the British Colonial Office in Malaysia, for a while).
The new understanding made me excited as I got the chance to reread it years after, I understood why it’s been divided to 3 parts, what’s the philosophy by passing from one part to a More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Mar 09, 2011

Stacie rated it:

There should be a choice for "currently listening to"...just picked this up to listen to during my commute to work. Second go at an audio book - so far I am enjoying being read to.

DONE READING...Y'all need to excuse my language for a minute.

Holy Fuck! This is the most fucked up coming of age story I have ever read. Fucked up, but fan-fucking-tastic!

I have always figured I was not an audio book kind of girl. I am not an auditory learner, so often have More...

15 comments like (5 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2007

Brooke rated it:

Old review scrounged from my blog:

I borrowed A Clockwork Orange from Bill. I have been wanting to read this book for years, mainly because I also want to see the movie, but couldn't bear to watch it until I'd read the book. By doing so, I have left myself out of a social loophole, missed many jokes, wondered at costumes, and never knew the cryptic sources of certain band names. But despite all that I've missed in life because of it, I am still glad I read the book before I saw the mo More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Mar 10, 2009

Tara rated it:

Wow - a great book. I'm probably pretty lucky that I've never seen the film adaptation, nor even glimpsed pieces of it, but had only 'heard' that the movie was tremendously violent and of course there's the posters and all that. I wanted to read the book before seeing the movie, and I'm super glad I made that decision because a lot of this book came as a surprise to me. The middle part where Alex is conditioned, especially (the psychology classes from college kicked in and made my brain burn wit More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 01, 2010

Sana rated it:

The first thing that hits out at you is the slang dialect that makes up most of this book. I was put off at the beginning by this nadsat slang, but a few pages later I pretty much got the hang of it. I didn't like the idea of using a guide, as it was a lot more fun to make sense of the slang through context. It wasn't bezoomny, on the contrary quite horrorshow!

A Clockwork Orange is about Alex, the protagonist and our Humble Narrator, and his love for violence and classical music. Dre More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 02, 2008

David rated it:

When I opened up this book and began to read Burgess' narrative, I was completely and utterly lost. When I closed this book, I was completely and utterly amazed.

An early turn-off in "A Clockwork Orange" is the dialect of the narrator, Alex, who uses a set of nadsat slang that any modern reader is likely to find confusing at first. However, readers, don't just put the book down--read on, and soon you'll find yourself understanding the words, and the experience becomes much m More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 18, 2008

Sarah rated it:

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here

1 comment like (7 people liked it)

May 16, 2010

Paul rated it:

In 1960 Anthony Burgess was 43 and had written 4 novels and had a proper job teaching in the British Colonial Service in Malaya and Brunei. Then he had a collapse and the story gets complicated. But I like the first cool version AB told, which was that he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour and given a year to live. Since as you know he lived a further 33 years, we may conclude the doctors were not entirely correct. However - the doctor tells you you have a year to live - what do you d More...

14 comments like (20 people liked it)

Nov 14, 2007

Lindsay rated it:

It's an interesting plot and the way it's written is really what makes it worth reading. Everything else is just kind of shitty, though. Our antihero, Alex, commits horrific acts of violence with impunity, is caught and subjected to experiments which make him incapable of being aggressive, is beaten up by his former victims, manages to undo the scientific conditioning, goes back to being violent, then gets tired of it and decides he wants to have a son. All the while reminding us that nothing More...

6 comments like (9 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2012

Ian added it

The Cover

A black hole within a white zero within a black cog.

Darkness, nothingness and insignificance.

How It Came About I

The following account is from an article here:

http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/...

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess.
Cover by David Pelham (1972)

This has become quite a well-known image. However, something that none of these images [can] convey is the urgency and speed at which s More...

9 comments like (18 people liked it)

Dec 11, 2008

Sara rated it:

A Clockwork Orange is not a morality play, but it bears enough of a resemblance to one that it seems worthwhile to consider it, provisionally, in those terms. The morality play is a medieval form of drama that utilized allegory to instruct its audience on moral questions. The protagonist in a morality play usually represented humanity as a whole, or a portion of humanity (upper classes, clerics, etc.). All of the characters with whom protagonist came into contact were equally symbolic figures More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Sep 26, 2011

Petra rated it:

Free will: good or bad? If a person exercises their free will to do bad, should they be stopped? At what cost?
If one’s free will is removed, what remains of the person? How important is free will to a person’s make-up? When is the line crossed between an individual’s right to be themselves and society’s right to protect itself?
I listened to the audio version of this book and found the Nadsat slang to be lyrical and rhythmic and truly added to the context and reality of this story. More...

6 comments like (2 people liked it)

Feb 12, 2010

Jacob rated it:

You’re probably thinking why a bookworm like me is reading a book like A Clockwork Orange. Like with most books my friendship with a book begins with the title. I'm not one of those types who need a picture on the cover for me to be drawn to the innards of a book. The title is well enough for me. My imagination already begins to show something just with the title. As with A Clockwork Orange I had only heard of the title and never heard of the author. This book was the Harry Potter's, Wicked, an More...

4 comments like (3 people liked it)

Oct 07, 2011

h. rated it:

Like Lolita, I'm horrified to find that I read this novel. The house-breaking, beating scene honestly disturbed me.

I like to be disturbed in a Modest Proposal or Bucket of Face kind of way --- by satire that wields over-the-top, impossible violence. The kind that makes you bust a gut. The violence depicted in this novel is real, so I don't go back there. I looked into the heart of man's darkness once in Dachua and got it totally. To look again seems sickly voyeuristic, and I'm determ More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

May 18, 2011

Bill added it

Oh my brothers, viddy well this like review of a horrorshow dobby book called A Clockwork Orange, written by this real oomny chelloveck Anthony Burgess. In it, this molodoy young malchick Alex, or Your Humble Narrator, goes around with his droogies drating and shop-crasting and the like, all for a bit of pretty-polly and some of the old in-out in-out. But poor Alex snuffs a starry old ptitisa one nochy, mistaken-like, and is caught by the grahzny millicents, bog blast them, and sent away to the More...

0 comments like (5 people liked it)

Aug 26, 2010

Kaput rated it:

A book that can still leave a feeling of distaste. Far easier to read than I expected, you soon get in to the swing of the way it is written and I really enjoyed the onomatopoeia that made it seem like everything being said was spat out as quickly as possible.

Under all the grotesque, gleeful horror there is a serious message being posed by this book about the nature of free will. Free will has a dark dimension because people will not always choose good. When they choose 'bad' society More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Aug 05, 2010

Marcus rated it:

I haven't seen the movie and don't plan on it, but the book is great. Before reading it, I didn't know much about it except that it was "crazy" and apparently something that teens read in High School then immediately put down and go out and either form a punk band or get a tattoo or dedicate their life to writing. Generally books with that reputation (On The Road, Atlas Shrugged, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance etc.) just don't appeal to me that much (OK so I liked Atlas Shru More...

2 comments like (2 people liked it)

Oct 15, 2011

Julia rated it:

Burgess disse: "We all suffer from the popular desire to make the known notorious. The book I am best known for, or only known for, is a novel I am prepared to repudiate: written a quarter of a century ago, a jeu d'esprit knocked off for money in three weeks, it became known as the raw material for a film which seemed to glorify sex and violence. The film made it easy for readers of the book to misunderstand what it was about, and the misunderstanding will pursue me till I die. I should not More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 10, 2008

Beth F. rated it:

I had a set of preconceived notions about this book that have been completely blown out of the water by my first reading. I feel like a shmuck for not having read it sooner. Clearly, I’ve just joined the Clockwork Orange fan club.

There were a couple kids from my high school who loved this book—one guy in particular I could not stand. We were in a lot of the same classes and almost always ended up in an argument about one thing or another that usually ended with him saying, “OMG! More...

17 comments like (4 people liked it)

Sep 06, 2008

M.C. rated it:

"In a mad world, only the mad are sane," said Akira Kurosawa.

To the fellow droogs of A Clockwork Orange, this quote must ring out as an out-of-trend veshche of the forgotten yesterdays.

An epic dystopian tale, A Clockwork Orange traces the latter part of the teenage life of Alex, the ringleader of a company of four that is solely immersed with committing acts of violence that ranged from assault, robbery, to "ultraviolence."

Though filled w More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jul 08, 2008

Maureen rated it:

I find this book almost as impossible to review as it would be to look away from the violence that unfolds in its pages. Inside the mind of Alex is a murdering fifteen year old who paradoxically loves classical music. Along with his mates, the droogs, Alex wreaks havoc on random people who cross his path, meting out vehement brutality against a largely unsuspecting population.

When he is caught and submitted to brainwashing, the story moves into an even higher gear, speculating as More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Apr 16, 2008

Pierce rated it:

Emmm... MILD SPOILERS ahead I guess.

I'm glad I read this but I don't think I have anything particularly significant to say about it. Except that it seems like people have been declaring an inexorable slide in the morals of young people for a hundred years and yet there are still many decent young people. So I just don't know, whether it's true or whether it's fear of the generation rising beneath you. Nobody of any age or class exhibits particularly moral behaviour in this dystopia, so More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)