(no subject)

[asterroc]

I just started the audiobook of "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, and I'm nearly done, it's a short and enthralling read. It's aimed at young adult readers, but it's really secretly hard Sci-Fi / speculative fiction in the grand style of old: it proposes a future setting and explores how people (in this case an 11-year-old boy) would react within that setting. calzephyr77 I think it was you that liked YA and wanted to read more SF; this one is definitely worth the (short) read. The audiobook production tries to enhance things by adding ambience music; I recommend the print version instead.

Edit: I didn't realize that this book had been out forever, so it didn't occur to me that there might be spoilers in the comments. There are, though not horrible ones as of yet. Just don't read the comments if you don't want to be spoiled.

Comments

[q10.livejournal.com]

sorry to repeat if you saw when i blogged this at the time, but, although i generally thought that book was pretty good, i was really bothered by the poorly thought-out population dynamics. they say that each designated child-bearing woman bears exactly three children, and that the designated child-bearers are excluded from high-status jobs, and i think it's at least implied that the sex ratio of the population is 1:1. but these numbers would require that, in order to maintain a stable population, about 2/3 of the women in the society would need to be designated child-bearers. only we don't see a society with those gender dynamics - it's strongly implied that most little girls are looking forward to the prospects of other jobs. it's not relevant the main concerns of the book, but the way it apparently wasn't thought out still bothers me.

[zandperl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I thought that too at first, but then decided I didn't want to figure out the details. I also decided not to dwell upon things like who were the birth fathers, and that they were selectively breeding for stupidity (though now that I'm 3/4 of the way through the book, that does sound about right).