I just finished The Giver today. It was as good as I had anticipated.

Submitted by TheKarolinaReaper t3_zwbk3d in books

I’ve been wanting to read The Giver by Lois Lowry for some time now. I got it for Christmas and I was beyond thrilled. It was so good and so well written, I read it all in one day. I also got the whole series and have started the second installment. If you haven’t read The Giver yet I highly recommend it. Its only 225 pages long. It’s a quick but satisfying read. It’s considered a “banned book” with all the book banning right now. The premise of escaping a totalitarian government will do that I guess.

10/10

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nIBLIB t1_j1ub3jf wrote

This was part of my year nine (that’d be first year of high school in the states, I think) reading/course work list. It’s so damn good, and the slow burn of learning all the dark side of utopia is amazing.

I didn’t realise it was a series.

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TheKarolinaReaper OP t1_j1um3p4 wrote

I didn’t know it was a series either until I was talking about it with my siblings. There’s four books total in the series:

The Giver, Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son.

I’m only a couple chapters into Gathering Blue.

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Cathartic_Nonsense t1_j1uj0vk wrote

This book had such an impact on me in high school, it’s one of the few books I still remember from back then…

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Narge1 t1_j1ve92g wrote

This was assigned reading in 7th grade and it blew my little 12-year-old mind. It was the first book I read that felt "important." I'd read books I enjoyed at that point, but never anything that really made me think. I still love it.

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Zachbnonymous t1_j1v6o9s wrote

I first read this when I was probably a little too young for it, around 9 or 10. I remember feeling so afraid for Jonas and the baby toward the end. I've read it several times over the years, and it always gets me.

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shanec628 t1_j1wxogc wrote

I also read it around the same age. I remember it being the first book I read that made me realize books were more than just words on a page.

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andrew_justandrew t1_j1vrfmy wrote

I originally read The Giver when I was a kid, but I've read it several times since then as both an older kid and an adult. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think it's a really good book to read, period, but also a really thoughtful book. Sometimes it feels to me as though we're dangerously close to the type of society depicted in The Giver.

As an adult, I also recently read the three remaining books in that series. I think you will enjoy them. Gathering Blue was actually my least favorite in the series, but I think that's an unpopular opinion so YMMV.

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itsmariboro t1_j1uik7t wrote

Oddly enough, I read this in my Christian Baptist fundamentalist elementary school. My first scifi novel. Hated reading before this book. Never looked back. Glad u also enjoyed OP.

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hdgx t1_j1uu063 wrote

I recently re-read Gathering Blue for the first time in 20 years, and loved it. Never liked The Giver as a kid, but maybe I should try it again.

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contacts_eyes t1_j1ur2iq wrote

I read this as as a kid in the 90s, i loved it back then, i read it at least three times i think (the pre internet days didnt have many entertainment options for kids)

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Semanticss t1_j1w554z wrote

I liked the book as a kid because it was so different than anything I had ever heard before, but our 4th grade teacher read it to us, and I think that was a little too early. Although reading it as an adult feels like it was written for children.

VERY surprised to hear that it's being "banned" today, because I think we were assigned to read it 3 times in primary school, and my teachers directly used thia book to criticize communism.

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hiricinee t1_j1wf7bx wrote

My favorite thing about the novel is that it generally doesn't attempt to paint the totalitarian government worse than it has to. It even gives a measured case for freedom- if you really want out from the prescribed lifestyle, you're going to have to face pain and a lot of unpleasant things.

Also does a great job of having the Sci fi - fantasy bridge, which is generally better in my opinion when a work is Sci fi first then fantasy second (think about the Force in Star Wars.) You have the perfectly explained technological and science based universe- and then the wizards show up and no one knows what to do with them.

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Sivy17 t1_j1wha9s wrote

We read it in 7th or 8th grade if I recall. I thought it was ok? The crux of the book being utopia/dystopia was obvious to me from the beginning so I was just waiting for the book to move on. No idea why it's a controversial book. Easy enough read. Spells a lot of things out.

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DeborahJeanne1 t1_j1wuim6 wrote

I never heard of this book. But, as I always do when someone recommends a book they are extremely excited about, I did a library search and put the book on hold for pickup in a couple of days. The comments have me really excited now! Thank you for the recommendation. 📖📚🍹

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TheKarolinaReaper OP t1_j1wvktl wrote

You’re welcome! I hope you enjoy it!!

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DeborahJeanne1 t1_j1wwm9n wrote

And I’m so glad you got it for Christmas! There’s nothing more exciting than getting a book you really want to read! Sounds like it was a surprise - which tells me 2 things about you: someone knows you very well, and a simple thing like a book, can make you richly happy.

I’ll let you know what I think!

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HomoVulgaris t1_j1xzf2s wrote

In a lot of ways, this book anticipated the trend in "dystopian fiction" in teen literature. Reading it got me ready for harsher stuff like 1984 and Brave New World. Getting this book banned from school is absurd. What would the children read, then? Only the Bible?

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TheKarolinaReaper OP t1_j1y11za wrote

1984 is next on my list of books to read.

Yeah, no good comes out of book banning. Lol, seriously though. “If it ain’t the Bible then it’s got to go!!”

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Elijahbeaudoin t1_j1vaj37 wrote

Was forced to read it for school in 8th grade. Hated it so much I ate the book. Glad you like it though!!

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KieshaK t1_j1wqjsd wrote

I also hated it! Didn’t eat it though.

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MoonChica t1_j1vbfo0 wrote

I had to read it for one of my college classes. I recommend the sequels too. Very interesting.

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Serafirelily t1_j1vidcz wrote

I knew of the book and after seeing the movie I read the series and I am one of those who enjoyed the film better. I am not into dystopian novels so I am definitely not the target audience but I worked in public libraries for years and a lot of people love this book though I don't understand why.

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rowrowfightthepandas t1_j1vq9na wrote

My teacher read that book to the class when I was 8. It was one of the most thought-provoking books I'd ever read at the time. Really made me appreciate literature more, and the kinds of stories you could tell. She read other stories to us, Redwall, Guardians of Ga'hool, but The Giver was the one that lingered in my memory.

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Mikebabb t1_j1vvkj2 wrote

Great series. All very different, but interconnected.

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newaccount721 t1_j1vwk7g wrote

Maybe I should give that one a reread. I definitely enjoyed it

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les_sur36 t1_j1vzvtx wrote

Such a good read! First read this back in 2004

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QuothTheRaven713 t1_j1w1o43 wrote

I read The Giver in 4th grade because I saw it on my teacher's shelf and asked if I could borrow it. To this day it's still one of my favorites.

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EternityLeave t1_j1wpc82 wrote

Read it in 5th grade, loved it. That was 25 years ago. I just stumbled on the sequels in one of those DIY neighbourhood free library boxes and I am sooooo excited to read them. One of the few books from my childhood that I still remember every detail.

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Character_Spirit_424 t1_j1xvuh1 wrote

I agree, its an amazing book, I believe I read it for the first time in 5th grade? (Ahead of my level and had an awesome teacher encourage my reading)

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_silkworm_ t1_j2405zy wrote

Yes! I read this when I was 11 and it was wonderful! The others in the series aren't quite as good, in my opinion, but The Giver was perfect.

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Ren_tho t1_j1ttndc wrote

>It’s considered a “banned book” with all the book banning right now. The premise of escaping a totalitarian government will do that I guess

Just throwing this out there, but maybe it has to do with the >!killing of infants!< and >!tricking people into getting euthanised!<. As good as the book is, I can understand why it would be considered inappropriate for kids.

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QuothTheRaven713 t1_j1udro3 wrote

I read it at 10. It's one of my favorite books of all time.

No books should be banned.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vfj9p wrote

So if The Turner Diaries (always a good litmus test) popped up on your state's middle school curriculum, you'd be cool with that then?

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QuothTheRaven713 t1_j1w1k9q wrote

That's a bad-faith strawman running on low intelligence.

Schools are usually good at discerning what subjects and books are okay for students to read, and at what grade level. Flowers for Algernon for instance has a short story version shared to middle schoolers, which eliminates the sexual content, while high schoolers get the full novel version that leaves it intact.

Aside from The Giver, most dystopian novels are aimed at an older audience. The Giver and maybe The Hunger Games would be taught in middle school, but dystopian books with heavier/more explicit topics like 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, etc., are all high-school age and up.

And even without all that, the discussion wasn't based on school curriculums. It was on the subject of book bannings. What books are assigned to a certain curricuulum or not has no basis in what I said. Only book bannings, and I'm thoroughly against any books being banned for any reason.

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laurpr2 t1_j1w43l4 wrote

>That's a bad-faith strawman running on low intelligence.

No, it's a litmus test.

Anyone who says they're against "book banning" (which is to say, not banning at all, but books being removed from school curriculum or school libraries) must be on board with any book being in said curriculum or libraries. Otherwise, if they're okay with some books being excluded based on their content, they aren't actually against "book banning" at all.

For example, when I say I am against book banning (properly understood), I mean it. I believe people should be able to sell, buy, own, and read any work of fiction, including books that I think are evil and harmful (like The Turner Diaries).

I can infer that your response means that when you said "No books should be banned," you didn't really mean that—you meant that The Giver should not be banned (which I agree with if we're talking about middle school and higher).

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QuothTheRaven713 t1_j1w6kus wrote

I don't even think any book should be banned from curriculums. I do think that books that are assigned should be appropriate to grade level, the same way I wouldn't approve of someone taking a 9 year old to a PG-13 or R-rated movie. Would I feel that's inadvisable, sure, but I wouldn't call for banning it.

There's a difference between feeling some books should be taught in curriculum at any appropriate age level and thinking they should be banned. If a middle school doesn't teach about a book, but a kid finds a book that's out of their usual age range in the school library or something and decide they want to read it on their own, then that's fine as long as they're aware of what they're getting into.

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laurpr2 t1_j1w89or wrote

>I don't even think any book should be banned from curriculums. I do think that books that are assigned should be appropriate to grade level,

But those are just two sides of the same coin. If you deem that Stephen King's "IT" isn't appropriate for middle schoolers, then you've "banned" it from the curriculum.

None of these "book bans" ever prohibit kids from ordering the "banned" book off Amazon or getting it from their local libraries or pirating an ebook. They're free to read what they want without any repercussions from the school. "Book bans" (despite the inflammatory language surrounding them) boil down to restricting what's on the curriculum and stocked in the school library.

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bigthink t1_j2473fn wrote

One is deciding not to use something. The other is disallowing it from being used.

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Ren_tho t1_j1uoddn wrote

I agree it shouldn't be banned. But we also shouldn't misrepresent why others think what they do.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vf2w7 wrote

No no no, that's far too nuanced....burn the book-banners at the stake! Including anyone who doesn't want The Turner Diaries in school classrooms (whoops, there goes most of the sub).

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TheKarolinaReaper OP t1_j1tulc2 wrote

Yeah, that’s pretty understandable, though I don’t agree with book banning. Ironically, I remember checking a series of books out of my high school library with the premise of using “unruly” children or orphans as unwilling organ donors ie killing kids. They used kids as literal replacement parts but I don’t think that series is banned. It’s called Unwind and the ages are for 12 and up.

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Ghost_Pains t1_j1v6kug wrote

I promise every kid in high school has seen and heard far worse by that age lol

There are literal children’s stories darker than The Giver.

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laurpr2 t1_j1u1x5r wrote

Correct. And notably, a book being "banned" in the US means that in certain jurisdictions public school teachers aren't allowed to make it mandatory reading and/or it's removed from the school library. In other words, the book isn't really banned at all as anyone and everyone is free to sell, buy, own and read it....which is definitely not the case throughout history and around the world.

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TheKarolinaReaper OP t1_j1u3kbx wrote

Very true, I just hope the banning doesn’t reach the level of severity like it has in the past or in other places. Public libraries are already under attack here in the U.S. Banning books is such a scary concept to me.

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laurpr2 t1_j1u3vwd wrote

Well, to get to that point the First Amendment would have to be more or less done away with, which is unlikely to ever happen as long as the Constitution stands given 1) the difficulty of changing any part of the Constitution generally and 2) how closely integrated the First Amendment specifically is with American history and culture.

Edit: lol of course this got downvoted, this sub has a hard-on for thinking American readers are the most persecuted people in the world. Love that y'all think that Ukraine-style confiscation of Russian literature is right around the corner.

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PfizerGuyzer t1_j1ultef wrote

America has a gigantic amount of people with absolutely zero first amendment rights. Prisoners say hello.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vg1wc wrote

Hate to break it to you, but prisoners lose all sorts of rights. Whether they should have access to books like The Turner Diaries is a broader political question that has no place on this sub—not a sign that the government is about to come in and confiscate your copy of The Giver.

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andrew_justandrew t1_j1vqod9 wrote

That's actually very likely to happen. Just ask the U.S. Supreme Court.

Edit, to add: I don't mean that the U.S. Supreme Court currently appears poised to take away any more of our first amendment rights, just that they're really good at taking away rights in general.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vtv6t wrote

There have not even been any local attempts at book-banning in the US, much less a movement at the national level. There is zero reason to believe the Supreme Court will ever condone such a thing, and no legal basis for making that argument, either, as the First Amendment is extremely clear about it's protection of free speech rights.

By "they're really good at taking away rights in general," I assume you're talking about abortion rights. Well, abortion rights were basically created by the Supreme Court based on the argument that the the constitution establishes a right to privacy (this itself is established not explicitly in the Constitution but through a fairly complex legal argument about due process that you're welcome to Google), and because people know you've had sex if you get pregnant, you have the constitutional right to abortion as a means of protecting your privacy. That is tenuous legal footing to start with, all created by the Supreme Court and never placed in the Constitution itself....and what the Supreme Court giveth, the Supreme Court can almost as easily take away by saying "yeah, we think our earlier interpretation was wrong."

Conversely, the First Amendment as it pertains to freedom of speech in the publishing world is incredibly clear. The legal argument the court would have to make to permit book bans, even if they were so inclined to do so, would have to be even more convoluted than the creation of abortion rights....and said book bans would almost certainly be so wildly unpopular that it's likely Congress would act to reinforce free speech rights.

Book banning isn't going to happen.

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andrew_justandrew t1_j1vyjgs wrote

Hey, there. My comment was intended to be more of an off-hand remark as I was scrolling through the comments. I wasn't trying to prompt political debate, although I probably should have realized this possibility when I originally commented. I never said or meant to say that there was any sort of effort towards wide-spread book banning at the national level. My comment was more directed at your remark that the U.S. Constitution prevents rights from being taken away.

I don't really think this is the appropriate place to get into a political conversation about the Supreme Court, so I don't want to provoke further conversation. However, I will say this: I actually was not referring to abortion. I am very familiar with substantive due process, but I have no intention of getting into the specific subject of abortion in a subreddit about books (unless the book is about abortion, maybe...). When I wrote that comment, I was actually thinking about a Supreme Court decision that dropped this summer that held a citizen doesn't always have the right to assistance of a lawyer in court, in defiance of the Sixth Amendment. That was the example of the Supreme Court taking away rights—even enumerated rights—despite the Constitution. This was only the first example that popped into my mind, but there are so many examples of this, all unrelated to abortion, that you're welcome to Google.

Take care!

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laurpr2 t1_j1vzg35 wrote

>My comment was more directed at your remark that the U.S. Constitution prevents rights from being taken away.

I never said that.

I said that to get to the point of book banning (properly understood) the First Amendment would have to be more or less done away with, which is unlikely to ever happen as long as the Constitution stands given 1) the difficulty of changing any part of the Constitution generally and 2) how closely integrated the First Amendment specifically is with American history and culture.

Take care!

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Educational_Cream958 t1_j1u4k8j wrote

I'm not American and I had the book as a set book in high school and it allows for some wonderful conversations.

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laurpr2 t1_j1vfvdf wrote

Me too. Bit of a non sequitur really. Doesn't change the facts that "book banning" isn't really banning and that we should be honest about why the book has been challenged.

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