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Dystopian and dark AF. Just what I was looking for.

#OneWordReview : "MASTERPIECE".

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the book:

"Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are."

“The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.”

"I don't think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see"

(due to word limit I'm adding some more quotes in comment section below)

I bought this book on my recent trip to Portugal. It is my first by the Portuguese author Jose Saramago. It is way outside my comfort zone! An epidemic of blindness hits the city and it shows the social structures we take for granted falling apart. At times it is brutal and dark but it is also brave and heroic and well written.
It has a strange writing style with long paragraphs and minimal punctuation. I am glad I read it and would read another

I wanted to share my travels in Portugal 🇵🇹 I have come to Obidos north of Lisbon. It is a beautiful medieval walled town well known for its book shops and literary festival. I am staying at “The Literary Man Hotel” which has books every where. Above top left is the book shop which was originally a church where I purchased Jose Saramago‘s book Blindness. Other photos are from our hotel and myself at the medieval wall. Such a gorgeous place❤️

I am lucky to be travelling in Portugal at the moment. It is amazing.. lots of coloured tiles and brightly painted houses, cobbled streets and ancient churches. I found these beautiful book marks today and couldn‘t resist😍✈️📚#travel #portugal

Picked this up the other day.

It's the story of an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in an unnamed city, and the social breakdown that swiftly follows.

Fans of post-apocalyptic fiction should take a look at this. ☢

If anyone's has actually read it, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

I just finished watching this for movie/bookclub. The movie was very true to the book but with much omitted of course due to length. Visually it was artsy (blurry and very black and white). Book was better as usual.

A productive January for me. Maybe cause I was sick and alot of these were less than 300 pgs. I usually average 7-8 books a month.

#Finale #anewchapter
@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @vkois88

3 stars. A very interesting and unique story. The writing style of no quotation marks and very few paragraphs was interesting and sometimes challenging. Written by the Nobel Prize winning author Jose Saramago and translated from Portuguese into English.

You know .... when it's time for bed but you're not ready to stop reading.

I've been on litsy for a year now but I haven't really interacted with everyone here that much, so I thought I'd do this to let people get to know me 😅

1. Philippines 😊
2. José Saramago. Tagged book is my first Saramago book and I'm loving it so far
3. At least 100 books...
4. Bed ❤️
5. The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne

#littenintro thank you @tessavi! 😊

At the Honda dealer having my B1 service. I'm giving Blindness a second try. Then to bookclub tonight.

This book is so bad it killed the translator.

Day 5 of #adventrecommends

Blindness was the first dystopian novel that I read that wasn‘t YA. While it is disturbing and challenging to read at times, it is incredibly profound.

This book is disturbing, exciting and complex. It makes me think. It‘s HARD to read did to the structure and style. So I am both reading and listening at he same time and it helps a lot. #JoseSaramago #audiobook

#Blindness Fav book❤️

Fantastic... One of my favorite books

#backpackeurope travelogue *fictional*
Country 53: Portugal, my last unique country in Western Europe. I visited Lisbon and saw Cabo da Roca lighthouse and Belem medieval tower!
Holy moly this book was hard to read (due to how horrific it is) - a blindness epidemic occurs and the inflicted folks are put into quarantine camps. Humanity devolves from there. Well written but SO, SO upsetting. And I thought Handmaid's Tale was tough to read! 3/5

What a difficult read but worth sticking to. The writing style was so hard for me to follow but by the second half of the book the story really carried me along. So much emotion.

I‘ve been bouncing from the book to the audiobook with this one but wondering if anyone has watched the movie?

I am just trudging through this book. The writing style is making it very difficult for me to find any kind of rhythm to my reading and it‘s going so slowly.

Little by little everybody becomes blind or frightened to suffer the same "illness" as the neighbour, the husband, the daughter. But the blinder the characters are the sharper the vision of the reader becomes. Saramago obliges us to close the eyes and see the truth, to wake up at last when there's nothing more to do than risk to see deeply in ourselves.

Catching some downtime on vacation for reading.

Starting book 2 of my #vacationreads . Probably won‘t get too far into this as I‘ve got a pretty full week of activities ahead of me.

Yes, I am using a quote from another book to encapsulate the heart of this one.

An epidemic of “white blindness” strikes a city. How can society function?

Saramago is certainly a worthy Nobel winner. I found the narrative to be similar in form to stream of consciousness, which could sometimes be challenging. This book seeks to explore what it means to be human. I found it to be a tough but enriching read.

#riotgrams 20. Book You've Reread - I remember rereading this within a month of reading it the first time. Absolutely brilliant.

"If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals."

An unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicts nearly everyone. Panic and a social breakdown swiftly follow. The government attempts to contain the contagion and keeps order via increasingly repressive measures.The novel follows some people who meet by chance and try to survive. #Disabled #MayLovesClassics

Our waterlogged copy, from my friend reading it in the bath while 🍷. Anyway, I am starting the penultimate chapter and finishing it today. Wow has this been a heavy reading experience! #readinginthebath #wine #saturday

This is one of those books that they make you read in school and have you pick apart all the symbolism and deep quotes but you‘re just like, but why, tho?

Warning for forced sex, blood everywhere, and the worst of humanity.

My boyfriend‘s and my #bookhaul today from Half Price Books. 😄📚

I read this years ago and it still haunts me. Truly frightening and so descriptive....

#readingresolutions #darkness

@Jess7

A mysterious epidemic of blindness strikes. In an effort to contain the virus, the government quarantines the known victims & those they've been in contact with. Overcrowding, insufficient rations & resources leads to progressively nightmarish situations & violence. I was immediately drawn in by Saramago's breathless & sinuous prose. Despite the absence of proper character names, I soon became invested in them. Allegory of the very highest order.

"Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king, this is a fact we should never forget." Saramago's voice in this one is fascinating for several reasons, not least of which is the sudden shift into different modes, the self-aware proverbial being among them.

I took an unplanned day off. I read the first 100 pages in this stunning novel. It's time to take a break & go see The Shape of Water while eating lunch. Lunch being popcorn & a soda, obviously.

Phew, I feel like a weight is off my shoulders now that I have finished this book. It is great, but I have read so many depressing books lately that this was just one too many right now. The story explores the most primal survival instincts of human nature. Like many stories told about surviving wars, it is amazing how quickly people can lose all empathy, and even humanity, in order to survive. Time to dive into some happy Christmas reads!

It showed me that men (and maybe women too ;p) are beasts. It was only observed/SEEN when the characters were BLIND. It taught me that we are currently SEEING things but not really SEEING. We are BLIND to the evil society to the point of taking part in it. It takes a sickness in the form of BLINDNESS to really SEE the world for what it is. This book is a big paradox.

Wow!
This is such an unusual read, both in terms of the prose and the content.
Three chapters in and finding it hard to put down #saturdayread
Thank you @wormkim for lending it to me :)

Book #5 (and final) of my Ireland trip. This was a super fast read. I don‘t know that I enjoyed it, but it is definitely a good book!

Had a great time meeting Litsy-ites today! Even Harvey couldn't stop us! This was my blind date with a book match - thanks to @whereistexasjen and BIG thanks to @Soubhiville for organizing the meet up! 😀

If we cannot live entirely like human beings, at least let us do everything in our power not to live entirely like animals.

The difficult thing isn't living with other people, it's understanding them.

If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow?

Went to get my oil changed/car inspection but left my book in the car...😭

❤️❤️ Lisbon, Portugal

I risk and late post but I promise I stopped before the cut off. I tried everything to read until the end but my eyes weren't having it, even audio books were too much of a strain but I read moe than I would normally (though I think I got a better time last year) so am still somewhat happy, next time I'll plan it out! #24in48

#primeday #bookhaul which took a long time to get here since I choose super saver shipping to gain a $1 Kindle book credit. But it was worth the wait for such a good haul. Using the $5 off $15, this was just over $10!

Day 5 of the #juneprideweek challenge: #transpride 💙💕💙💕 @NovelDescent @howlinglibraries

"This is the stuff we're made of, half indifference and half malice."
Oscar assisting #dogsoflitsy #imonaboat

1. Upstate New York
2. 😫I'll have to do top 3, but even this is tricky; Blindness by Jose Saramago, Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, Beloved by Toni Morrison
3. Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews
4. Lord of the Rings trilogy
5. Hmm...I went from Alias to Vampire Diaries and I guess my current favorite is Veep!
6. The Gaslight Anthem
7. Black
8. Literary science fiction & fantasy
9. Health care
10. Nope but I have a cactus 😂