Divergent by Veronica Roth

Somewhere inside me is a merciful, forgiving person. Somewhere there is a girl who tries to understand what people are going through, who accepts that people do evil things and that desperation leads them to darker places than they ever imagined. I swear she exists, and she hurts for the repentant boy I see in front of me.

But if I saw her, I wouldn't recognize her.

Beatrice is nervous. She has a test coming up soon. The test. The test that will determine her future. On a particular day each year, all sixteen-year olds have to take a test that will find the dominant quality they possess and thus find the faction that best suits them. A day after the test, they have to make their choice. If they choose a different faction from the one they were born in, they cannot return back or meet their parents. Beatrice's test doesn't go as expected, forcing her to keep a secret, and she ends up making a choice that surprises everyone. However, when she begins to hear hints of a growing conflict, her secret becomes suddenly life-threatening and she has to do something to save herself.

Finally, the review I've been writing in my head for two months but have been really reluctant to translate that to paper (or bytes). I almost feel like I'm standing among a sparse group of people on one side of the fence facing a huge fanbase who loved this book. Honestly, I found just one other person on my Goodreads friends' list who rated this book at 2 stars, everyone else gave it 4 or 5. I'm bordering at 3. You see, I didn't get the appeal of this series. At all. And that was quite disappointing because it is being touted as the next Hunger Games phenomenon, and I loved the Hunger Games series! Just recently, soon after the release of the first HG book, someone in the publishing industry was asked what next after the entire HG movies were released. And he pointed at the Divergent trilogy. I could only look down disappointed. (I wish I had noted down who said this, but right now you only have my word here and it's true.)

Divergent is the first book in yet another YA dystopian trilogy in a market that now seems saturated with them. I love me some good dystopia. I love watching dystopian movies and I like imagining all the possible ways the world can reach a state of utter chaos and mismanagement. (That makes me better appreciate today's world as we know it.) Divergent is actually good. It invests in the concept of a test to determine one's true calling but hides that behind the idea that the individual always has choice in the matter. Quite unlike The Giver, in which what you were deemed good at becomes your job for life, but still not too different for me to not raise my eyebrows. There are five factions in Divergent - each valuing a particular trait - truth, insane daredevilry bravery, selflessness, knowledge, peace. Obviously, there are people who do not fit in either. They become the homeless who have to live on other people's kindness (usually those of the Abnegation faction). And then there are people who spoiler... mumble ... spoiler. As our heroine of this trilogy is.

My big issue with the book is that I felt the author was trying too hard to create the dystopian world. Unlike many other utopian and dystopian lit I have come across, this world never quite felt natural to me. A lot of the elements felt too convenient, and so much goes unexplained, violating the 'Show, Don't Tell' adage. I was reminded of too many other books while reading this one. I am by no means saying that the idea isn't original. It is, to a limit. I just felt that I had read other better similar books, especially The Giver and The Hunger Games. I ended up feeling that the world was standing on some weak stilts. Even the conflict at the end felt artificial and its motivation felt very weak. Although there were very vague hints of some impending danger, the conflict felt to me to have come out of nowhere - without sufficient buildup and anticipation. I guess I could say that it felt more like a terrorist attack than a planned war. But at the same time, knowing something about the coming conflict, spoiled the element of surprise that terrorism usually brings.

As is customary now in YA dystopia, there is some romance too. Actually, cross that. There is just a little more romance than I felt comfortable with. Which is okay. I've never enjoyed the fixation with romance in YA books, but its presence didn't really bother me because I expected it. What did bother me was how lame it all sounded. There is an unapproachable guy who is up to his forehead full of secrets and we have a heroine who is feeling somewhat attracted to that image. Ring a bell, anyone? At one point, the romance felt too sugary and eye-rubbing for me to even enjoy it.

I did like (a little) Beatrice's character. I didn't care for any of the other characters - almost all of them felt very flat to me. I initially felt guilty that I was again being too demanding of strong characters before I remembered that there are other YA books with strong characters. I liked Beatrice because of the reason I like a woman/girl character - she is independent, thinks for herself, can protect herself. I also liked the whole training session in the book - there are skills to be learned and the competitors are ranked by their performance. A little game in any book is always welcome.

I should probably end my review now, lest I get some tomatoes hauled at my face. If you haven't read this book yet, you may not need to take my opinion here. There are PLENTY of readers who loved it, which makes me the oddball, something that rarely happens with dystopia. Last weekend, I went and picked up Insurgent (the second book in the trilogy), because that's how confused I am about my reading choices, but I am yet to open a page of that book. I am thinking it is something I could read over the weekend in a couple of sittings, just to know what happens, but unless Insurgent does the Divergent formula a little better, I may not find my thoughts on that book any different.


I borrowed this book from the good old library.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

The books are to remind us what asses and fools we are. They're Caeser's praetorian guard, whispering as the parade roars down the avenue, "Remember, Caeser, thou art mortal." Most of us can't rush around, talking to everyone, know all the cities of the world, we haven't time, money or that many friends. The things you're looking for, Montag, are in the world, but the only way the average chap will ever see ninety-nine per cent of them is in a book.

Guy Montag is a fireman. Not a fireman that put out fires and rescued people from crumbling rubble, but a fireman who burnt books and even people who chose to be burnt with their books. That's what their system dictated. That's how things have been for as long as he could remember. He's never questioned the system or entertained any curiosity towards books and their contents. That is, until a sixteen-year old girl stops him one day and asks him a lot of questions that are beyond him. These questions make him both curious and angry because he never thought about them before but he didn't want to feel cornered by her questioning either. But then a few days later, he never sees her again and something he does as part of his job (something he has done for many years) makes him pause and question the status quo, thus opening a can of worms.

Fahrenheit 451 is yet another book that a lot of people have read in school but I am only now reading it for the first time. And just like many books that are read by the younger population (Brave New World, Animal Farm, Fountainhead), I wonder if perhaps I might have identified with it more then.

I've always wanted to read this book, because one of the commonest references to this book that I come across is the idea that - if you could save a book, which would it be? There are plenty of challenges around this question and plenty of bookish games as well. The last 40 or so pages of the book are what addresses this question, and when I reached that point, I tweeted this:

And that's exactly what I still feel. Not that the ending was eye-popping-worthy or shocking. It was just impressive and satisfying. It oozed a feeling of respite coming a world that was bent on destroying books. There are plenty of passages that condemn books and even more that indicate the ignorance of the people who question the value of books. Unlike in the other "utopian" societies I have read about, Fahrenheit 451 didn't arrive at its bookless state through the evil State's draconian laws or after some insensible war. People slowly stopped being interested in reading, and began entertaining themselves in front of the television. When the State saw that people were happier without books, they decided to ban reading completely and that's where the definition of firemen changed. Even to firemen in the present world of Fahrenheit 451, the idea of stopping fires is laughable.

Although I enjoyed the concept of the book, and would definitely recommend it to any one, I had issues with the preaching and the stream-of-consciousness flowing through most of the book. Those two aspects sorely reminded me of Brave New World, and while I get the need for the authors to preach to get the point across, I guess I can simply not stand any form of forceful advising. I could also see how the stream-of-consciousness was necessary since Montag gets a shock of awakening and all he could think of was why some people protected books. But his transition from the I-don't-really-care to the Books-are-important felt way too abrupt and unconvincing to me. And that's the other reason why the narration bugged me initially.

Oh, and what's up with all those horrible metaphors that made me cringe terribly?

Her face was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it.

Eh what?

There were quite a few like that which didn't make for pleasant reading. Despite the issues I had with this book, I do feel that it is one that people should read. Honestly, I don't think such a world would ever come to pass, but I liked the concepts that were explored in this one, even if the book felt poorly executed.


I borrowed this book from the library

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Banned Books Week)

A sudden noise of shrill voices made him open his eyes and, after hastily brushing away the tears, look round. What seemed an interminable stream of identical eight-year-old male twins was pouring into the room. Twin after twin, twin after twin, they came–a nightmare. Their faces, their repeated face–for there was only one between the lot of them–puggishly stared, all nostrils and pale goggling eyes. Their uniform was khaki. All their mouths hung open. Squealing and chattering they entered. In a moment, it seemed, the ward was maggoty with them.

In Huxley's utopian (or dystopian, depending on how you look at it) future, a capitalist civilization has been carefully constructed on the principles of stability. New life is literally manufactured in an assembly line process where the fertilized eggs of to-be-top citizens (called Alphas and Betas) are cultured without much treatment, while those of to-be-the-dregs-of-the-society (such as Gammas, Deltas and Epsilons) go through a lot of processing to make them stunted and intellectually challenged. A lot of these low-class citizens are twins. As in, one fertilized egg made to divide so many times, that you have 40-80 identical people staring at you. Creepy? Through the growing years, all the citizens are conditioned (or brainwashed in their sleep) to believe a bunch of tenets that the government has drawn up. Nobody questions their existence or revolts against what they do. Everyone grows up knowing what they will become when they are old enough. They are trained not to fall in love or have any sort of emotional connection with anyone. Since no one is conceived in the traditional manner, the idea of a mother or father is repulsive. Worse, people have sex on a regular basis with different people and even encourage their friends to "have" this woman that they slept with last night, because she is fabulous in bed.

Repulsive? I nearly puked my way through the pages.

In trying to create a utopia that has no violence, no negative sentiments, no conflicts, no individual above a group, no poverty, no famine, and no dearth of anything, Huxley invents a world that has no humanity either. The ideas for his utopia are derived from the world as he knew it in the 1930s - the increasing dependence on machines, the industrial revolution, the wars, the arrival of capitalism. Of course, there are no computers in his book, because computers weren't invented then.

Most of the characters in the book are conditioned into the new world way of thinking - "Dating" the same person for long was considered improper, the act of birthing a child is a very obscene act that when they have their controlled "history" lessons, people cringe at the mention of the words "mother" or "father", and when people wanted a break, they took a drug called "soma" to get them high and take them on a dream-holiday. You can say that soma is something like pot, except the government encourages its citizens to have it, but in limited quantities. However, a man named Bernard isn't entirely in agreement with the system, but only because even though he is an Alpha, he doesn't look like one, probably because something messed up his cells during his fabrication, as I like to call it. When he goes with his current "girlfriend" to a Savage reservation, which houses the few natives who aren't yet civilized, he comes across a boy named John born of a once-civilized-woman. Bernard then proceeds to bring John to the civilization.

I thought Huxley did a fabulous job of creating a world that stood on its own, all just for stability. All through the book, I had my arguments against a lot of things that are done, but they are all from the humane perspective. In one chapter, the World Controller (something like a President) manages to dismiss all my questions. Despite what I thought about the book having been written well, I didn't really like Brave New World. In creating a world as different as possible from the one we live in, Huxley spends a big part of the book talking about sex and his characters' fascination with it. Young kids were even encouraged to play erotic games - all part of their conditioning. All of it makes the reader uncomfortable - that is definitely his intention, but there were a lot of other aspects of the world that he could focus on than just on individual characters recommending their date of last night to their best friend because she is "pneumatic" or having curves, and how the kids playing those games kept popping up on every other scene.

Then there is the fact that a lot of the low-status citizens are Negros or Senegalese or Dravidians - again meant to make the reader uncomfortable, but I couldn't see the point of explicitly mentioning certain races, especially races that are traditionally biased against. I also found this book a mashup of a Shakespearean novel and the arrival of capitalism. The ending is almost entirely inspired by Shakespeare, and I found it very comic rather than tragic. I went in expecting something huge and moving to happen at the end - I wanted to feel inspired to not let the world we live in get to that end, but I only felt disappointed by what happened. Of course, I should note that this book was written in 1932, and the themes were probably more relevant then - with all the uncertainty about where the world was heading, still the ending felt to be from a totally different book, and not fitting in with the rest of the story. I found the writing very hard to get through occasionally - that meant I had to read past the first page before I could get myself invested in the story. Sometimes, he stated the same thing so often that I wanted to say, alright, let's move on, please. But there were also times when the book made for wonderful reading.

So that's a lot of whines, but I was disappointed. I did expect a lot, and while I enjoyed the book at some level, I found more issues with it than things to praise. I do not however think that this book should be kept away from young adults, because there are a lot of things to learn from this book, most importantly whether stability is more important than humanity. I know many of you have read this (and loved it), so I would love to hear what you thought of it!


I borrowed this book from my library. I have to say that both the "banned" books I read this week - Brave New World and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian were shelved in the YA shelves in my local library, as they should be. Yay!

The Giver by Lois Lowry (WOW!)

“What if we could hold up things that were bright red, or bright yellow, and he could choose. Instead of the Sameness.”

“He might make wrong choices.”

“Oh.” Jonas was silent for a minute. “Oh, I see what you mean. It wouldn’t matter for a newchild’s toy. But later it does matter, doesn’t it? We don’t dare to let people make choices of their own.”

“Not safe?” The Giver suggested.

“Definitely not safe,” Jonas said with certainty. “What if they were allowed to choose their own mate? And chose wrong?"

“Or what if,” he went on, almost laughing at the absurdity, “they chose their own jobs?”

In Jonas' utopian world, adult males and females are matched to be a couple based on their traits so that their dispositions balance out. If their 'marriage' works out for three years, then they can apply to bring home a child. There are separate birthing females who deliver children, and these children are sent to be cared for by couples who have applied for a child. Each couple can have only two children - one male and one female. In December, there is a two-day ceremony during which each child between the ages of one and twelve celebrates the milestone of completing another year. Depending on their age, a child is given a bicycle, assigned volunteer hours, gets his/her hair cut, or given a life career. Jonas himself is approaching twelve years of age, the age at which he will be assigned his career, and he is feeling apprehensive about it. What if they assign him a career that doesn't fit him? But then, the committee gives him the highest honor of being the Receiver - the one person who receives all the memories of the past (including all the horrible things that happened - hunger, pain and war, and the good things like color, snow, happiness and love) from the previous Receiver (who is now the Giver). Except, now Jonas feels strange about the life that he took for granted thus far.

This past weekend, I drove to my friends' place in Raleigh, which is just a little less than 3 hours from my home. As I always do on those drives, I popped in a Newbery Medal winner in my car CD player and settled in to listen to the one book I was most reluctant to read, for reasons I don't remember any more. But as the narrator started reading the first few passages, I was hooked. For the first time since I started listening to audiobooks (or rather the second time - Dracula would have the honor of first place), I began to find ways to lengthen my drive, especially on my return - driving through tiny towns en route or taking unnecessary pit stops. Just as Kira-Kira (another Newbery Medal winner) wowed me, The Giver also had me intrigued from the first page.

Lois Lowry creates a very utopian world in The Giver - a world where the concept of "Sameness" has been adopted. In this world, everyone is same - they have the same skin tones, same hair color, same eye color and have their decisions made for them by a higher authority. Since there are no differences to exploit, there are no competitions. It's easy to see the appeal of such a world, where you get your perfect career, where there is no bigotry or racism since everyone has the same basic physical attributes, where the old are taken care of in a housing by professional people whose job is to do that, where couples move in with other childless couples once their own (assigned) children move on to their careers, where rudeness, bragging, and wrong use of language are all punishable offences. For someone who has tasted freedom (people like us), we can immediately spot the failings of such a community - while it may be a great idea never to have to worry about your career, the fact that people don't have freedom of choice would be a huge put off for us. But, for people like Jonas and his parents and friends, who have not known any other world, the idea of choosing one's own career is a hugely laughable and impossible idea.

I loved this book! I've been a huge fan of dystopia for many reasons, but mostly because I stop taking things for granted when I come across great dystopian literature. While most of the worlds explored in such books will probably never come to pass, they explore ideas that are ostensibly the solutions to today's problems or ideas that are extreme versions of the troubles of the world. The Giver envisions a world where no one starves, everyone has equal opportunity, there is no pain and there are no bad feelings between people. Accidents don't happen, and everyone lives to a ripe old age. But to make a utopia, there would always be some sacrifices - to lock up all the badness in the world, the people were forced to also lock up the goodness as well. The people don't feel pain, but they also don't feel happiness and love, and family isn't a concept that's understood at all. There was a scene where Jonas experiences the memory of Christmas, and I was terribly moved by that moment, realizing that Jonas and his people don't celebrate life and living. All these good and bad memories had to be held somewhere - that is the Receiver's (Jonas) job. Ultimately, we begin to see that there can never be a utopia without an accompanying dystopia - a yin for a yang, heads for tails. Even for a book like The Giver, targeted to an audience far younger than me, I was hugely impressed by the depth of this novel, by the questions it raises, by how it makes the reader actually think about the consequences of wishing for utopia.

Although this book is slim and a fast read, Lois Lowry gives a well-etched description of Jonas' world. There were some aspects that weren't explained all too well, but they didn't bother me. The ending of the book was very ambiguous, but I don't want to give it away. It was an ending that's fitting in so many ways, and I could see two possible interpretations - one somewhat dismal, the other very optimistic, but however I chose to see it, the message is a happy one and I liked how the author left it to the reader to decide what could have actually happened. As I understand it, the question is resolved in the third book - Messenger, which makes me eager to go grab the next books right away from the library.

And there's a lot more about this book I want to keep talking about, but then I'll find it hard to stop. I was thrilled to discover that this book has two more sequels and there's a fourth book coming out next year. Mostly I loved how it becomes obvious that you cannot live in a world in any way than how we live in ours - would you rather live in a perfect world with no wars, hunger and famine but no happiness, sadness, family or love; or would you live in the world as we know it with all the horrible evil but with the ability to have feelings, appropriate or not.

I borrowed this book from my library.

Review: Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins

I don't remember exactly what inspired me to pick the first Hunger Games book, who recommended it to me, or how come I chose to read it when I knew nothing about it. I read The Hunger Games last year, well before I even discovered book blogs, so I know it's not any book blog that introduced me to this series, although that can't be said for most of the books I read nowadays. After I read The Hunger Games, I was left with an odd sense of weirdness and worry, because I didn't like the book right away. How could I, when the book had so much violence and gory death descriptions? How could I say I loved a book where kids killed each other - some without any sense of guilt? How could I love a book with one of the most horrifying deaths ever (those who read this book will remember how the last tribute died)? I felt horribly nauseated and remember closing the book many times. But after thinking about the book for a few days, I understood the message of the book and what Suzanne Collins meant to achieve. That I was disgusted was just the apt response. That I understood how horrible Katniss' dystopian world is - was just what I had to pick up. Once I accepted that, I saw the book in a whole new light. Soon after, I read Catching Fire and if possible, enjoyed loved appreciated it (for want of a stronger word) even more. But neither of those books actually prepared me for the ride Mockingjay gave me, because, my-oh-my, this book is definitely way more complex!

Picking up from where we left in Catching Fire, Katniss is now in District 13 (yeah, it was always up there). Gale had managed to save Katniss' and his family from the bombs that destroyed most of District 12. As for Peeta, no one knows if he's alive or dead, as he had been captured by the Capitol towards the end of Catching Fire. Katniss spends most of the first many chapters in a heavily drugged up stupor. In fact, Katniss is dazed at so many parts in this book, and since the story is from Katniss' perspective, it means we are also as dazed as her. Suzanne Collins really wrote those sections very well, so much so that there are parts I read twice just to understand what happened. In her dazed state, there was so much Katniss couldn't, wouldn't absorb, and I, the reader definitely didn't either. Much as those passages were realistic, I felt cheated sometimes, because that served as an excuse to gloss over certain parts of the book, so that we are effectively in a fast-forward mode. In fact, things seem to be happening when she is in one of her stupors.

Mockingjay is so much about war and its repercussions, as it is about relationships and sacrifices. Even with a very dystopian setting, the themes explored as very relevant in our world. It shows how much war can be used to manipulate people and how much it can tear people apart. It shows how you will always be scarred psychologically by the wounds (not always physical) exerted by the war. It shows how the powers that fight a war still look for power - both sides, no matter what their intentions - can still play by the dirty rules. Haven't we always seen that? It also explores how there is never a and they lived happily ever after for war survivors, how they are constantly tortured by the demons they faced. I loved the ending of Mockingjay. I couldn't imagine a more perfect and realistic way to end things. I didn't see a need for a long drawn out explanation of what happened to each character and what happened during the aftermath of a certain event. But what I objected to was the actions of two characters, who I won't name here.

I am still on the fence on how I found Katniss in this book. I never liked her much in the first two books either, because as so many other characters mention in this book and the other two, Katniss is extremely selfish. (That said, I don't know what I am when I am left alone to my thoughts. We all probably have thoughts that we are embarrassed to share with anyone, because they may show us in a different light.) Then again, Katniss' selfishness/survival instinct can be blamed on her upbringing, where she had to pretty much fend for herself since she was a young girl. I alternatively felt bad for her and mad at her through the book. It's hard to be always on her side.

Another thing I appreciated was that this book wasn't a Team Peeta vs Team Gale battle. I didn't want to read another YA book about a girl choosing between two guys. That would be so cheesy and demeaning of a genre that has some excellent books and yet so many that choose that path. It's not every girl who gets to choose between two dashing guys, and besides, that sucks anyways, it's too heart-breaking. Still, there was oodles of romance in this one too, which I think could have been done without. At least, I'm glad we didn't have the girly giggly Katniss here, that we saw so much of in the previous two books (because I really cringed at that).

The other selling point here is that we don't have superhero teens doing things that adults can't do. It's not that I think teens need to be rescued instead of the other way around, but it's clearly not realistic when adults play dumb and teens seem to know everything. Isn't that, well, two extremes? I wanted a moderate picture and Mockingjay gives that. I was pleased that Katniss was not a heroine. Because she never was. She was thrust into a limelight that she never wanted. She just wanted to take her bow and go hunting just like she always did, without having to wear makeup or outlandish gowns. She just wanted an ordinary childhood, but she never got that. This is another reason why so much of her dizziness through the book makes a lot of sense.That's another reason why the ending made a lot of sense too.

Suzanne Collins' writing is beautiful. Although the book is huge, no words are wasted. She doesn't ramble nor does she preach. And yet there are so many philosophies spread through the book that they are more conscience-pricking one-liners than passage-long (pun-intended!) observations. I love it when writers can express an idea in very little words. I will have to read this book again just to catch those quotes. I couldn't note down any earlier because I couldn't put the book down to fetch my notebook.

  

Check out this book @ Goodreads, BetterWorldBooks, Amazon, B&N.

I bought this one, in fact pre-ordered it because I couldn't stay away from the hype.
Tidbit: It's been just a month since this book released, but there are already 27k+ ratings in Goodreads. Which is the next book that's going to be as highly awaited as this book and the Potter books?