A Clockwork Orange in Pick-a-Shelf

Mar 16, 2008 Slayermel rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, classics, own, made-into-film, 1001-books, science-fiction, book-club, 20th-century, dystopia, kobo

This was quite a good book. It took me a while to get into the writing style as the book is written from the Narrators perspective who speaks Nadsat (many of the words are Slavic in origin). However it did not take to long for me to get used to it.
The story is essentially about Free Will, and it has many scenes of violence or should I say ultra-violence which are described in detail by our humble Narrator Alex. I can definitely see why this book made the list of "1001 Books to read before you d ...more

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Apr 22, 2012 Nicole rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-list, 2012

I started this book and almost stopped immediately, due in a large part to the non-nonsensical slang that the narrator uses. It turned out though that the slang was a blessing of sorts because this book is brutal. With the slang you may not be sure precisely what's happening, but you can still get the gist of the violence, and it's bad.
I had gotten through three chapters and was about to give up and post a review questioning why some stories become so legendary, when I re-read the synopsis and ...more

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Nov 09, 2008 Joanie rated it really liked it

Shelves: from-the-library, 1001-book-list, rg-bookclub

Reading this book was a little torturous at first. I had to get over trying to look up every word in the glossary in the back and just go by context and then I was able to get into the flow of the story a bit more.

Having seen the movie a few times I was pretty familiar with the story but it was really interesting how the use of the Nadsat slang minimized the violence in the book. I found myself almost forgetting that I was reading about violent attacks because the words to describe the attacks ...more

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Feb 09, 2009 Andrew rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I thought this a really good book. I don't really understand all the fuss about the violence. I mean, sure, it's mentioned, but it's not like it was in the over-the-top movie version. The movie hardly came close to the social properties that the book was obviously trying to propose. I can only imagine what the expurgated version held and why. I've read much more trying social propaganda (and more violence) from Heinlein, Orwell, and the like. I would try to put this book on a university reading ...more

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