A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess 
Blurb: "What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence." In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost? Social prophecy? Black comedy? A study of free will? A Clockwork Orange is all of these. It is also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates "nadsat", the teenage slang of a not-too-distant future.My ReviewThe thing I liked most about this book was the cover. The story itself, I had mixed views on, but ultimately didn't like. Personally, I've never read anything from the point of view of the villain before, which was interesting in a way and unique, but it also made the violence even more horrendous because Alex doesn't have a reason for doing the things he does, he just likes violence. I think it was a bold story to be written like it is and tell the story it does and the plot line was something I found interesting.However, my main gripe about this book is that it seems to make all youths into villains. I understand that without parental guidance and such, teenagers can go off the rails, - hell, it can happen even with proper care - but this isn't true in all cases, which this book seems to suggest. It generalise this amount of violence from teenagers and at the end it's suggested that it's a phase almost, which I just found ridiculous.Finally, the language... I had real problems with it at the start, but I quickly came to realise what the words meant, though it didn't make reading the book any more enjoyable. I think it was clever and brave of the author to make up teenage slang, but as a reader I just found it irritating.All in all, I know a lot of people love this book and it's a classic, but I just didn't like it.
Blurb: "What we were after was lashings of ultraviolence." In this nightmare vision of youth in revolt, fifteen-year-old Alex and his friends set out on a diabolical orgy of robbery, rape, torture and murder. Alex is jailed for his teenage delinquency and the State tries to reform him - but at what cost? Social prophecy? Black comedy? A study of free will? A Clockwork Orange is all of these. It is also a dazzling experiment in language, as Burgess creates "nadsat", the teenage slang of a not-too-distant future.My ReviewThe thing I liked most about this book was the cover. The story itself, I had mixed views on, but ultimately didn't like. Personally, I've never read anything from the point of view of the villain before, which was interesting in a way and unique, but it also made the violence even more horrendous because Alex doesn't have a reason for doing the things he does, he just likes violence. I think it was a bold story to be written like it is and tell the story it does and the plot line was something I found interesting.However, my main gripe about this book is that it seems to make all youths into villains. I understand that without parental guidance and such, teenagers can go off the rails, - hell, it can happen even with proper care - but this isn't true in all cases, which this book seems to suggest. It generalise this amount of violence from teenagers and at the end it's suggested that it's a phase almost, which I just found ridiculous.Finally, the language... I had real problems with it at the start, but I quickly came to realise what the words meant, though it didn't make reading the book any more enjoyable. I think it was clever and brave of the author to make up teenage slang, but as a reader I just found it irritating.All in all, I know a lot of people love this book and it's a classic, but I just didn't like it.
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