Dystopian Reads

March 08, 2012

Hello, Dear Readers! It’s nearly here: March 23rd, the long-awaited release date of The Hunger Games movie! In honor of this event, my March book display in the Lone Jack Branch is entitled Dystopia, and naturally, it features a great selection of young adult and adult novels specifically selected to meet your dystopian needs. I won’t bother to review each book, as many of the titles are surely familiar to most of you, and you can guess just by their genre that these novels aren’t going to be light and jolly tales. These stories really make you think, and that is much of their value. The really good dystopian novel requires us to stand back, to examine and question the tenets and mores of our own society, which are sometimes chillingly similar to those of the fictional society. A good plot and compelling characters are the most important factors of the novel though, and on the whole, I think these books deliver. The evil and heartless characters and circumstances in these books are sure to make you shudder, recoil, and demand the question of yourself or your nearest neighbor, "What is wrong with these people?!" Of course, the plucky, grimly determined protagonists in these books also compel us to feel hope, thank goodness.

My display includes both well-known and obscure books; some are quite new, while others have been on our shelves for some time. Here’s an incomplete list:

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, Adult Fiction
Veracity, Laura Bynum, Adult Fiction
Uglies, Scott Westerfeld, Young Adult Fiction
Gone, Michael Grant, Young Adult Fiction
Sharp North, Patrick Cave, Young Adult Fiction
Blood Red Road, Moira Young, Young Adult Fiction
1984, George Orwell, Adult Fiction
Life as We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer, Young Adult Fiction
Unwind, Neil Shusterman, Young Adult Fiction
Maze Runner, James Dashner, Young Adult Fiction

Liz P.
Lone Jack Branch