The Handmaid’s Tale

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

“I remember the rules, rules that were never spelled out but that every woman knew: Don’t open your door to a stranger, even if he says he is the police. Make him slide his ID under the door. Don’t stop on the road to help a motorist pretending to be in trouble. Keep the locks on and keep going. If anyone whistles, don’t turn to look. Don’t go into a Laundromat, by yourself, at night.” The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood.

I’d heard good things about this book before I read it. I bought it on my Kindle app several months ago because it was on sale for $2 because I knew it was unlikely I’d get it for that cheap anywhere else, or if I waited. For a long time I kind of forgot that I had it on my Kindle app. So I finally got around to reading it and wondered if maybe I just wasn’t going to like it as much as everyone else seemed to.

Complicity

Complicity by Iain Banks

“You could climb up onto them and sit on the rusting iron grid – afraid it would give way but afraid to admit you were afraid –  and look down into that utter blackness, and sometimes catch the cold, dead scent of the abandoned gunned, rising up around you like some remorseless chilly breath.” Complicity, Iain Banks.

When browsing my local library with the titles of 32 books on the list of 1001 in my hand, I came across this one and thought, as more of a mystery novel, it would be a good change of pace from the general fiction books I seem to be reading a lot of lately. The book gives you two points of view. We start off the book with the mystery murderer in Second Person POV, and then each chapter get a little section from him as we see him murder (or occasionally just assault) yet another person he believes has done wrong. For most of the book, though, we follow Cameron Colley, a journalist who has been receiving tips from a mysterious Mr. Archer about some suspicious suicides and a conspiracy plot.

The Plague

The Plague by Albert Camus

“You must picture the consternation of our little town, hitherto so tranquil and now, out of the blue, shaken to its core, like a quite healthy man who all of a sudden feels his temperature shot up and the blood seething like wildfire in his veins.” The Plague, Albert Camus

This book follows the town of Oran on the north coast of Africa through a plague that refuses to leave for seemingly unending months. It starts with the rats of the town all coming out and dying of the plague, and it seems like few people really take interest in what this might mean until the people of the town start getting sick and dying within 48 hours.

Less Than Zero

Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis

“I notice that I can see my Father’s penthouse in Century City from this room and I get paranoid and start to wonder if my father can see me.” Less Than Zero, Bret Easton Ellis

Clay comes home from his university in New Hampshire for a month home during winter break. It’s set sometime before cell phones, while MTV still played music and movies were on videocassette and people used Walkman’s. It actually took me a while to realize that they didn’t have cell phones, and I had to keep reminding myself of that fact. There were a couple times in the book where one of the characters would tell someone else they didn’t have a friend’s number, and I kept thinking ‘Well why isn’t it in your Contacts list?’ There’s drugs and sex and parties and prostitution. If you’ve read Catcher in the Rye and didn’t like it, then I don’t recommend you read this book. Clay is reminiscent of Holden, and the writing style is very similar.

Besides the similarities to Catcher in the Rye, I thought it was a good representation of how it feels to those who go a long way to college to come home during their breaks. He seems disinterested in everything that’s going on at home with his old friends, and his old girlfriend. Actually, Clay was really disinterested in everything. He didn’t even seem to be that interested in the drugs he bought from his dealer, or the people he had sex with. Sometimes I got so tired of Clay’s disinterest in everything that I just couldn’t read it anymore and had to put the book down for a while. None of the interactions he had with his friends seemed to be meaningful at all. The dialogue was never really deep conversations. A lot of “What have you been up to?” “Nothing.” “Are you going back up to school?” “Probably.”

Speaking of sex, all of the guys in the story seem to be indifferent to the gender of their sexual partners. It’s not that I have anything against that, I just found it weird that all the guys were sleeping with other guys casually and still dating girls. I have no idea if the drugs would make them less inclined to care about the gender of their sexual partners, but felt it wasn’t realistic that all of the guys in that group would swing both ways. They were all also so very casual about sex. (Also there’s an underage rape scene… sort of. So if that is a trigger for you, I recommend you stay away.)

The parents also didn’t seem to care much what their children were doing. Clay talked about his drug use in front of his parents a few times in the book and didn’t seem to care that they heard, and they didn’t seem to react to it at all. It just seemed like a strange scenario to me.

Overall, I’d probably give it a 7/10. The writing style was well done and fit with the character and the scenario, but I felt like the character wasn’t connecting with anyone else in the book, which made it difficult for me to connect with him.

Read on!

Molly

The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway

“Then his head started to become a little unclear and he thought, is he bringing me in or am I bringing him in? If I were towing him behind there would be no question. Nor if the fish were in the skiff, with all dignity gone, there would be no question either. But they were sailing together lashed side by side and the old man thought, let him bring me in if it pleases him. I am only better than him through trickery and he meant me no harm.” The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway