Adult Fiction

Jenn Reads: Brave New World

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Brave New World by Aldous Huxley was our April pick for the Cheshire Cats Classics Book Club.

Before there was The Hunger Games series, Maze Runner series, Legend series there was Brave New World. Huxley was one of the first authors to write a dystopian novel and all others that follow are using him as an example. He did it first and did it best. I marketed this book as the original dystopian novel, because of how popular that genre is right now. And if you want to know where these authors have likely gotten their inspiration, you need to read this book.

A few fast facts about Huxley: he taught French at Eton and George Orwell was one of his students. When Orwell published 1984, he sent a copy to his former teacher, who

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

basically called the book garbage. Huxley died on the same day as C. S. Lewis and JFK, and both of their deaths were overshadowed by the death of the president. And he was a friend to Igor Stravinsky.

Brave New World is a book that is so similar to our own, it is scary how real this book is.

Published in 1932, Brave New World takes place almost 600 years in the future. This is a world where your future is determined at the moment of your conception. Every single child born in this world is born of the test tube and is “raised” to be one of five classes- Alpha, being the best and highest class, or Epsilon, the lowest class. You have no mother, father, and are engineered for specific tasks. You will never grow old, you will never rise above your class, and you will have no apparent free will. Life will be full of pleasurable things however- sex, drugs, mass consumption, and more.

So what makes a dystopian novel different from an utopian novel? Dystopian novels are characterized by a horrible society headed towards oblivion, while utopian novels have an ideal society. Brave New World is a utopian novel on the surface, and to those living in that society, but it’s really dystopian. There is a huge reliance on technology, instant gratification, and lots of propaganda.

Huxley was disturbed at the path the world was taking: the world had been plunged into a great economic depression, fascism and communism were taking hold across Europe, and the Industrial Revolution was continuing to change the landscape of the world. What would happen to us as a people if all of this continued? Huxley feared that we would become a people slaved to technology, conditioned for pleasure and nothing else, and drugged to reality. If you’re thinking this sounds a lot like today’s society, you would not be that far off. However, lurking on the fringes were Savage Worlds with people who had lived a much different life.

If you read Brave New World today, there are many scenes that will likely make you think twice. One for me was the scene at what I’ll call the children’s center, where children are being conditioned for certain things. This particular set of children is taught to be afraid of loud noises. What is eerie is the level of manipulation that is going on- these children have no free will. Just like our own, the world of Brave New World is a throw-away society. Something breaks, is old, is damaged, is no longer wanted- throw it away!

Huxley had supposed it would take hundreds of years for the things he wrote about to come true, but if you look hard at the world we live in today, it is a lot like the one he envisioned. Hospice, cloning/DNA/biological engineering, helicopters, and e-books were just a few of the things he prophecized for the future.

Brave New World is easy reading, but do not be fooled by the simplicity of the language or writing. Huxley has a lot to say about how we live our lives with each other, with technology, and for the future.

Rating: 3 bookmarks out of 5

See you in the stacks,

Jenn

 

RT Book Review Announces 2013 Career Achievement Awards

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RTEach year, Romantic Times Book Review Magazine honors authors for outstanding achievements over their entire careers.  The staff of more than 50 reviewers and editors carefully choose the winners from a long list of nominees.  The following is a list of some of the  winners of the prestigious Career Achievement Awards.  Winners were awarded statuettes at RT Booklovers Convention in New Orleans on May 16th.

awards

Contemporary Romance Author of the Year – Rachel Gibson

Historical Romance Author of the Year – Eloisa James

Inspirational Author of the Year – Wanda Brunstetter

Mainstream Author of the Year – Mary Alice Monroe

Thriller Author of the Year – Lee Child

Paranormal Author of the Year – Sherrilyn Kenyon

Romantic Suspense Author of the Year – Suzanne Brockmann

Urban Fantasy Author of the Year – Kim Harrison

Young Adult Author of the Year – Tamora Pierce

book awardsBOOK OF THE YEAR – Tear You Apart by Megan Hart

Historical Romance of the Year – No Good Duke Goes Unpunished by Sarah Maclean

Historical Fiction – The Boleyn King by Laura Andersen

Contemporary Romance – Bungalow Nights by Christine Ridgway

Contemporary Love & Laughter – Two of a Kind by Susan Mallery

Romantic Suspense – Law Manby Kristen Ashley

Paranormal Romantic Suspense – Sleep With The Lights Onby Maggie Shayne

Historical Mystery – The Chalice by Nancy Bilyeau

Suspense – The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes

Young Adult Contemporary – Dare You Toby Katie McCarry

New Adult – Wait For You by J. Lynn

Inspirational Romance – The Secret Keeper by Beverly Lewis

You can find the complete list of nominees and winners here.

 

10 Books We’re Looking Forward to in June

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Summer reading never looked so good, here are some great new titles for your beach bag!

Every month, librarians from around the country pick the top ten new books they’d most like to share with readers. The results are published on LibraryReads.org. One of the goals of LibraryReads is to highlight the important role public libraries play in building buzz for new books and new authors. Click through to read more about what new and upcoming books librarians consider buzzworthy this month. The top ten titles for June are:

  1. Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healy
  2. China Dolls by Lisa See
  3. The Ice Cream Queen of Orchard Street by Susan Jane Gilman
  4. I Am Having So Much Fun Here Without You by Courtney Maum
  5. The Matchmaker by Elin Hilderbrand
  6. Summer House with Swimming Pool by Herman Koch
  7. The Lobster Kings by Alexi Zentner
  8. The Hurricane Sisters by Dorothea Benton Frank
  9. The Quick by Lauren Owen
  10. Rogues edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

 

Jenn Reads: Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore

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Our mystery book club recently read Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

A recently unemployed millennial, Clay, wonders into a curious San Francisco bookstore and leaves finding himself employed. It’s a strange bookstore- long with shelves that seem to reach towards the sky and some odd books. His boss, Mr. Penumbra, has just three rules for Clay, the most important of which is to never look inside the books on what Clay calls the “wayback shelves.”

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Clay works the midnight shift and encounters a few characters, all of whom want books from the “wayback shelves.” It does not take Clay long to peek into those books and open the proverbial can of worms. Along with the help of friends, Clay seeks to solve the puzzle of eternal life.

This is a book for anyone who loves to read, loves bookstores or libraries, or ponders what the future will bring. Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a book for today, with its clash of technology and traditional ways and methods. We get asked a lot here at the library what we believe the future of print books will be with the advent of e-books. It is difficult to say for sure (no one has a crystal ball), but I would personally like to hope that print books will always be around. After all, people still use brooms even though they have vacuum cleaners!

This book also raises the question: How do will we solve problems – by using computers or our own brains? How reliant will we become on computers? Clay finds throughout the book that technology can be useful, but it also cannot do the critical and complex thinking our minds can accomplish.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is an easy to read, engaging, and quirky book. I enjoyed the adventure and the resolution of the puzzle (solved without the help of a computer!). There were times however, when problems were too easily solved with a ready answer or helping hand. So-and-so just happened to have that skill or know a person who could help them. It became a little too predictable. I would not recommend this book to anyone who is not at least familiar with some of the changes in technology – this book is full of 2012 popular jargon and pop culture references, which could be confusing for some.

Rating: 4 bookmarks out of 5

See you in the stacks,
Jenn

Linda Reads: Astonish Me by Maggie Shipstead

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astonish meAfter reading a review, I decided to give Astonish Me a try.  I was not disappointed!  This book takes you into the fascinating world of ballet and into the complicated life of a second string dancer.  The chronological way of telling this story was, at first, awkward.  But as the book progressed, it made a complex story more interesting.  There are several ‘main’ characters, each with their own story to tell.  Ms. Shipstead deftly weaves their stories together.  While the world of dance is foremost,  you don’t have to be a lover of ballet to like this book.  This is a story of love, family, marriage, careers and the struggles of life that many can relate to.

Astonish Me is the irresistible story of Joan, a young American dancer who helps a Soviet ballet star, the great Arslan Rusakov, defect in 1975. A flash of fame and a passionate love affair follow, but Joan knows that, onstage and off, she is destined to remain in the background. She will never possess Arslan, and she will never be a prima ballerina. She will rise no higher than the corps, one dancer among many.
After her relationship with Arslan sours, Joan plots to make a new life for herself. She quits ballet, marries a good man, and settles in California with him and their son, Harry. But as the years pass, Joan comes to understand that ballet isn’t finished with her yet, for there is no mistaking that Harry is a prodigy. Through Harry, Joan is pulled back into a world she thought she’d left behind—back into dangerous secrets, and back, inevitably, to Arslan.

Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead is a novelist and short story writer. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Maggie’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The San Francisco Chronicle, Tin House, The Paris Review Daily, VQR, American Short Fiction, The Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. Her story “La Moretta” was a 2012 National Magazine Award finalist. Her debut novel, “Seating Arrangements,” was a national bestseller and the winner of the Dylan Thomas Prize and the L.A. Times Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.