A.K.’s Comments (group member since Oct 11, 2012)

A.K.’s comments from the Utopian and Dystopian Reading Group group.

Yeah...I could do without all the awkward love triangles lol.

I'm with you - I call them "realistic dystopians." Hunger Games and Divergent were good reads, but the worlds were completely displaced from our own. I like the ones that really make you think about current events, that, yes, maybe make you a little paranoid. ;)

I love her religious parallels in this, because instead of being overtly political or religious it is more of a modern myth retelling than anything else (in my mind). I love modern myth retellings; I enjoyed Oryx and Crake more than Handmaid's Tale for this reason (though I loved both).

I don't know if this is allowed, please delete with my apologies if it's not, but I just wrote a YA utopian/dystopian along those lines. I won't link, I'm almost positive THAT'S not allowed, but it's called The Burning of Cherry Hill and was released like last week haha. Fits the "obscure" requirement for sure. Carry on. :) (And good luck with your dissertation!)

She talks about it on Twitter a bit. It's in the works. I get the feeling it's being released relatively soon...before 2014, but I'm not positive.

Kaylan wrote: "I reread Lois Lowry's "The Giver" for a lit class to use in comparison to Thomas Moore's "Utopia". Re reading the giver sent me right into something just shy of a dystopian obsession... Also, the ..."

Atwood will that do that to you, lol.

Do you like post apocalyptan stories like The Road? Social satire set in a futuristic, oppressive world like 1984? Throwback horror dystopian like Lord of the Flies? Speculative warning like The Handmaid's Tale? Straight up, futuristic dystopian horror like The Hunger Games? Quasi-utopian stories like The Giver? What's your favorite?

I read The Giver when it came out when I was 10 and fell in love with a genre I couldn't even name for another decade. Dystopians have been my favorite ever since. I loved 1984 and Fahrenheit 451 as a kid, now I've graduated to Oryx and Crake and The Road and the like.