From the Bookshelf of Never too Late to Read Classics…

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

Start date: September 18, 2016

Finish date: October 18, 2016

Discussion: Children's Classics Buddy Reads

Discussion leader: Rosemarie

Why we're reading this: Ya Classic
[close] Ya Classic

Find A Copy At

Libraries

Group Discussions About This Book

Showing 2 of -8 topics — 662 comments total

Children's Classics Buddy Reads

* Which children's classics are you reading now?
By Rosemarie , Northern Roaming Scholar · 222 posts · 250 views

last updated Nov 07, 2025 06:14PM

Astrid Lindgren Buddy Read
By Rosemarie , Northern Roaming Scholar · 20 posts · 97 views

last updated 22 hours, 12 min ago

showing 10 of 12 topics view all »

What Members Thought

Sep 04, 2014 Suzan (Suus Leest) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Originally posted on my blog

A plane crashes on an island. Only children survive. For them, this first appears a utopia: no adult supervision, Ultimate freedom. This changes quickly. Fights about who is to lead. The youngest children scared for a 'monster'. The perfect world collapses into a nightmare.
While I was aware of the horrifying turn the novel would make later on, the beginning of the novel felt like an adventure story. Perhaps I had understood other people wrongly, maybe this was not su Originally posted on my blog

A plane crashes on an island. Only children survive. For them, this first appears a utopia: no adult supervision, Ultimate freedom. This changes quickly. Fights about who is to lead. The youngest children scared for a 'monster'. The perfect world collapses into a nightmare.
While I was aware of the horrifying turn the novel would make later on, the beginning of the novel felt like an adventure story. Perhaps I had understood other people wrongly, maybe this was not such a haunting story. Obviously, I was too naive, and the tone of the story changed quickly.
In the very beginning, already, there is the notion of power, of leadership. Who is to lead the group? Even when we've only been introduced to two characters, there is already a clear 'superior'. When more children come together, this battle becomes even more intense. Without authority, the children immediately decided some structure was needed, tasks also are divided. However, this results in multiple quarrels. Reading the novel critically, the novel never starts out as an excitin adventure, it's already a dramatic horror story to begin with.
The structure they impose on themselves may delude the reader into thinking the children have it all together. Alright, there is a struggle on whom is to do what, but there's no real harm in that. Quickly, though, the children turn into savages, and the slight order they had is turned around. They split up into two camps who fight eachother brutally and this is when any reader will be disgusted and terrified.
A few things bothered me about this novel, probably all related to the fact that it is a children's book. The writing style was, to me, uncompelling, and resulted in me having a hard time reading the novel quickly as I was unable to concentrate for too long. I cannot truly remember what it was about the style, but I feel like it is likely a result of Golding's eyed audience. This is also the case in terms of morals: they are too obvious which annoyed me.
However, Golding makes up for this by writing no single sentence without allusions. Any sentence can be analysed, and on each page one can write a three thousand word essay. This is interesting and extremely entertaining, but only to a certain extend. I could not be bothered to actually look into each word in great depth, as that would slow down my reading so much, and honestly, I can only bring myself to doing that for some of my favourite novels, and this one is not one.
I do feel everyone should have read it. It is a classic, and it is rightly so. ...more

2 likes · Like · see review

Jul 13, 2015 Alexander rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature

This little novella is standard reading in schools, or at least was when I was in school, but somehow I was never in a class that did, we always read weird books like Spies by Michael Frayn or I'm the king of the castle.

It seems that this book is meant to be read by someone in their formative years because it didn't have impact that other books in it's vein did [Of Mice an Men, Flowers for Algernon, etc.]

Some of the symbolism is still very good and the aspects of human nature and society that t ...more

Like · see review

Nov 29, 2014 ULa rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: plus-ultra, blue-ranger, cumulonimbus

5 bintang karena novel ini membuatku kesal, marah, dan jengkel terhadap karakter - karakter penting dalam kisah ini. Menyebalkan sekali, mereka benar - benar kekanak-kanakan (memang mereka anak - anak lol).

Like · see review