From the Bookshelf of EVERYONE Has Read This but Me - The Catch-Up Book Club…

The Giver (The Giver, #1)

Lois Lowry

Start date: April 1, 2024

Finish date: April 30, 2024

Discussion: MODERN / POPULAR READS

Why we're reading this: April 2024 - Modern
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What Members Thought

Nov 06, 2010 Stephen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, teen-reads, z-read-in-2011, and-saw-the-movie

I generally have trouble with dystopian fiction and put this one off for some time.

Yet, when I started it, it was strangely compelling. In many ways it turns the genre inside out. In the the overbearing society viewed in 1984 Big Brother was everywhere and wanted to know everything. Here we have a society that wants to know nothing. In many ways this willful ignorance is even more chilling. It's certainly presented in such a way that you can't really condemn the people who keep it going. They d I generally have trouble with dystopian fiction and put this one off for some time.

Yet, when I started it, it was strangely compelling. In many ways it turns the genre inside out. In the the overbearing society viewed in 1984 Big Brother was everywhere and wanted to know everything. Here we have a society that wants to know nothing. In many ways this willful ignorance is even more chilling. It's certainly presented in such a way that you can't really condemn the people who keep it going. They don't know any better. Somehow that makes it even more problematic.

While I was reminded of 1984 at first, other passage had me recalling Logan's Run and even the movie Soylent Green.

I was actually surprised when the term love (the whole family at christmas scene) came up as the thing that the Giver disclosed but which the new receiver couldn't share with his family.

The concept of sameness is something that I'm now going to be considering for months and then to some degree my perceptions will never be the same.

I've sometimes considered what would make for the perfect book. Among the criteria that I've come up with are characters that I care about and an epiphany generating idea. This book has both of those criteria nailed.

It's been discussed that it's unclear whether Jonas lives or dies at the end of the book. The author says that she left this purposefully vague. Yet, we do care. While either ending could still be construed as a happy ending, we really care about the characters by this time.

And yet, either way, the people of the community get memories back, no? And the results of that would certainly make for an interesting sequal but never as interesting as this initial book was.

In addition to the complex questions I'll now be debating about the joys of diversity and the sorrows associated with freedom I'll be wondering...What does the giver mean when he says that Rosemary is his daughter? Since all births are are sort of anonymous, he might have been referring to raising her; or maybe she's just his spiritual daughter. After all, among the most precious things that we teach our children are our values, no?

If you haven't yet, you really should read this book. Simply reading it may not make you a better person, but honestly contemplating the questions it raises sure will. ...more

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Apr 16, 2011 Sunflower rated it it was ok

Shelves: e-books, fiction-read-2011

This is one of those books that keep getting referenced by others, and usually positively, so I was expecting great things. Somehow, like Coelho's work, it just doesn't do it for me. I didn't find it coming back into my thoughts unbidden, like a good book does. Perhaps if I had read this when I was younger, maybe studied it at school?
As a dystopia story or a study of human relationships, it isn't detailed enough to be great. As an exploration of suffering, or an elucidation of how a perfect wor ...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Genevieve rated it liked it

Children's book set in a strange futuristic, utopian kind of place. The book is really good but the ending was ambivalent and weird. Left me feeling unsatisfied. ...more

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