Kaylan’s Comments (group member since May 19, 2011)

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

Shari wrote: "While I read 1984 and Animal Farm in high school, but at that time, they were just books that I was forced to read. The book that really started my interest in dystopian novels was the Handmaid's ..."

Have you read anything else by Margaret Atwood? If not, I strong recommend that you do! Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood are amazing. I just started the final book in that trilogy, Maddaddam which was released today...

it can be preorded for kindle or book on amazon! release date 9/3/13.... I am so excited to have some sort of actual information!!!!

Does anyone know when the Maddadam Trilogy #3 is being released? Its been showing up as "untitled" in good reads but I can't seem to find anything on line...

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 discovery of "A Handmaid's Tale" has me craving Margaret Atwood whenever i try to to read other things. haha.

A Handmaids Tale was definatly one of my favorite recent reads, I would highly reccomend it.

"I do find it hard to understand the line between Science Fiction, Science Fiction with dystopian or utopian elements, and dystopias. Can you shed any light on this?"

From the utopia/dystopian readings that I have done, I feel as though in most of these "societies" they take real ideas and then "perfect" them with science or crazy advancements which make that people are living so-called happily, society is functioning, and also why they don't actually realize that they're are missing out on some vital feeling or pleasure of living. I don't know if it is on the list, but "The Giver" by Lois Lowry really clearly shows that (or to myself it did).


I also think that More must have first isolated his island in "Utopia" with some knowledge that a society such as the one he creating would not believable be maintained if there were any outside influences? This idea is talked inbout in "Nineteen Eighty-Four." Although unlike Utopian societies, they welcomed visitors into their community....