Books

[Moe Bitches]

Just imagine if you never read the book and you see that.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

True. Makes you wonder what the boy and the old man are planning to do with the baby...

[Guest]

True. Makes you wonder what the boy and the old man are planning to do with the baby...

on the sled...

[Cuckara]

Award winning author describes her plot and characters in such enthralling terms. A boy, an old man, a baby, and a sled. That does about sum it up.

There's a sled?! Damn, now I have to read the book.

[Tony Schiavone]

There's a sled?! Damn, now I have to read the book.

SpoilerShow

That's how the protagonist gets away with the baby they wanted to murder for crying too much.

First he spends several days running and biking from SWAT copters and A-10 who are looking for him when they realize he faked his own drowning death. He keeps the baby alive by feeding it every last good memory he has to keep it going.
At last he gets to the top of a hill which has a sled that he saw from a previous special memory he received from the Giver.
The final scene is him sledding down to a town at the bottom where he hears Christmas carols--implying the whole world he grew up in (which was in black and white to everyone else) was some kind of Vault cult locked away from the rest of the world.

There's some interesting scenes in it, but the sum of its parts are kind of flat. For me it's a special book because I could see for the first time every scene I was reading laid out like a movie. (That looked nothing like the real movie).
It's also one of those books where making a movie of it kind of ruins one of the early twists, simply because of the nature of it.


I remember The Chocolate War and thinking how effed up that was to be given to a bunch of grade schoolers for summer reading.

SpoilerShow

The message of the book is that you get smacked down by the rich and privileged for daring to buck the system. You will end up losing the second you stop being bored and self-absorbed and start to give a shit about 'tyring to make a difference'--so don't bother.

[Guest]

There's a sled?! Damn, now I have to read the book.

Truly the Citizen Cane of film.

[Moe Bitches]

SpoilerShow

The sled from what I can remember was used when the kid had the redpill and he was experiencing things he never felt before, so he fell of the sled and his knee bone came out. Babies would be killed because they wanted a normal family structure, so no more than two children, as if anymore were to be brought upon the world they would be sent away. The old man is obviously the giver and you know that the boy would become the giver as he gave his memories to the chick.

That ad alone kinda ruins it. Spoilers in case you wanna read it.

[Tony Schiavone]

Well, it was more than that.

SpoilerShow

They were getting rid of kids who also wouldn't be useful or struggled to survive. They called it being "released," which was simply lethal injection, and everyone was on some kind of drug or lack of lack of real human empathy (yes, like leftists).

But yeah, the movie is a huge spoiler because the first sign of the kid's power. A chapter or two later, the old man explains the weird thing he sees as "color." The old man then says that the first sign of psychic 'seeing' or whatever, and says that he first learned to do that by hearing a strange thing called music.

It's not like anyone can't look this stuff up online anyway.

EDIT: Geez,, the author wrote three sequels? OK, I can believe a chick wrote this.
Can't leave well enough alone.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

>A novel with too many sequels

What a shock.

[Cuckara]

>Young adult novel has a million unnecessary sequels
Damn, that never happens.