From the Bookshelf of Nothing But Reading Challenges…

The Handmaid’s Tale (The Handmaid's Tale, #1)

Margaret Atwood

Start date: March 22, 2014

Finish date: March 31, 2014

Why we're reading this: CLICK HERE to get to the discussion. We voted and this book won for March's Adult Sci-fi/Fantasy.…more
[close] CLICK HERE to get to the discussion. We voted and this book won for March's Adult Sci-fi/Fantasy.

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Dec 28, 2016 Andria rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016-faves

This is a tough one to rate. I've clicked back and forth between 3 and 4 stars a few times.

What I can say for sure: This book affected me. Maybe part of that involves reading this book in 2016. It's been a tumultuous year personally for me and socially/politically for my country. I would also attribute it to Atwood's visceral, brutal writing. Her prose is somehow sparse yet loaded, packing a punch with every sentence. It took over one month for me to make it through the book (and it isn't long). This is a tough one to rate. I've clicked back and forth between 3 and 4 stars a few times.

What I can say for sure: This book affected me. Maybe part of that involves reading this book in 2016. It's been a tumultuous year personally for me and socially/politically for my country. I would also attribute it to Atwood's visceral, brutal writing. Her prose is somehow sparse yet loaded, packing a punch with every sentence. It took over one month for me to make it through the book (and it isn't long). Some days, 10 - 20 pages were all I could manage before I was emotionally drained.

It's difficult to rate that kind of experience. Did I enjoy reading this book? No. Did I get a lot out of reading it? Yes.

And oh, the ending...

(view spoiler)

Upsetting but worth it. ...more

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Jul 31, 2007 Meghan rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-i-own, book-you-might-read-in-school, favorites

George Orwell-ian twist of a world that has been transformed into fear as people are forced to conform into the "new norms" and women are held captive in a world of absolutely no freedom of any kind, which has been separated into a sort of caste system, where the main character has been separated from her family and forced to be a handmaid, a woman who presumably can bare children, for the wealthy, whose wives can not. It is her job to concieve their child, and if she cannot then she will be ban ...more

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Jun 21, 2017 Joyce rated it really liked it

Shelves: book-club-choice, the-great-american-read

I read this right after it came out and found it haunting. Re-read it for book club recently. Even scarier today given our current political climate. Being denied the right to read would kill me - it really would.

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