#12Booksof2025 January/Book 1 : I had a few 5-star reads in January, and they were all from the #ToB2025 competition (not that I've finished everything from the shortlist yet, lol)
This surrealist Fahrenheit 451 was particularly captivating!
pickThis dystopian novel which pulls heavily from 1984 follows a book censor as he becomes obsessed in the books he‘s reviewing. It looks at a society where the majority of books are banned and a child having an imagination is considered an illness. The absurdness of it all would be funny if not for how terrifying the parallels to certain things happening in the world.
pickAl-Essa's “looking glass“ is perhaps more than it seems, and we are easily manipulated into caring for characters even though they bear titles, like stock figures, rather than names. The “Everyman“ approach keeps a strange distance, until we come to understand the power of our own imaginations with an ending that has been described as a “narrative rupture“ or a “twist worthy of Kafka.“ #TOB2025 #TOB25
pickI found this entertaining, but also unsettling as more and more book banning occurs around me. I‘m not sure how I feel about the ending.
pickA humorous, clever and satirical story about book censorship. I enjoyed all the references to Orwell's 1984 and other banned books.
#ToB25
#gottacatchemall (Raticate: betrayal) @PuddleJumper
pickBooks about the future can be really fun and scary, all at the same time. This poor schlub, whose job is making sure allowed books reflect the views of the current government, is caught in a quandary when he starts to fall in love with the stories that are banned. Was never sure where this book was going, but it felt timely and sometimes realistic.
@BarbaraBB
pick#BookReport
Only two books finished this last week. While I‘m enjoying being back in the office it is cutting into my reading time. I enjoyed the tagged book. A very timely fairytale.
pickScary! First, the books. Then, the ideas. Finally, the ones who really scare the dictatorships, the ones with imagination.
Our children.
https://pen.org/transgender-books-removed-from-stonewall-national-monument-websi...
"And even though, time and time again, books had been presented to him as evil agents plotting to take over the world, and even though books had almost thrown him out of the house-not to mention biting his wife-he couldn't bear the thought of burning them. Banning them was punishment enough."
pickI‘m not usually a fan of satires, but I liked this one. Though it was a bit too close for comfort to our potential medium term future in the US. #tob25
