The poll is closed. The winner is...

A Clockwork Orange

By: Anthony Burgess
Publisher: William Heinemann (UK) - 1962
ISBN: 978-0393312836

Summary:


Review:


Please, get to reading as soon as possible. It will be later posted if or when there is an ending time for reading.
(Since this is Jeff editing the post <Zeta's not at home at the moment>, I'm not sure if he's making a new topic for discussion or if we're compiling EVERYTHING into this one topic. Until said otherwise, though, if you get the book and start reading, go ahead and put your discussions about the book into this topic, but until everyone finishes, PLEASE KEEP EVERYTHING ABOUT THE BOOK'S PLOT WITHIN SPOIL TAGS! Part of reading is finding out for yourself what happens, we don't want people spoiling the story for others!)

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The other entries that did NOT make the cut are in the spoil tags below. These will be kept here for future polls.

My votes:

A Clockwork Orange - thought the movie was terrible, but I think the book deserves a shot.
Merchant of Venice - I have a copy of Shakespeare's complete works which I've yet to get around to reading...so I'd read this at some stage anyway.
Heart of Darkness - because it's so awesome I'd like to read it again. Plus I'm sure it'd be a great book to discuss.

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Faint as a will o' the wisp
Crazy as a loon
Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon

I have read 1984 and One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest and I saw the movie Jurassic Park probably 5 times and hated A Clockwork Orange, so I would like to read something new.

I vote for Lies of Locke Lamora, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time or The Airman

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We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.

Heart of Darkness, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and A Clockwork Orange.
I've read Heart of Darkness, but like Tweedy said, it's so good, I'd read it again. I haven't read One Flew Over the Cuckoo's nest... I've seen about half of the movie of A Clockwork Orange and would like to give the book a shot. Read 1984 already, was decent enough, but I don't think I'd do it again. If I had to vote for two more, I'd do The Merchant of Venice and maybe Airman.

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I voted for Jurassic Park, Merchant of Venice, and One Flew Over the Cukoo's nest. I would have voted for 1984, but I didn't see it

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Awesome sig made by Goten!

I voted for:

Jurassic park - I'm a big Crichton fan but I've never gotten around to reading this.

1984 - I first read this when I was 12 and it would be interesting to see if I see it any differently now.

A clockwork orange - I've always wanted to read this since seeing the movie.

I voted for the book about me killing people.

The Loved One
A Clockwork Orange
The Merchant of Venice

I voted for The Loved One because honestly it's the only book (outside of the Harry Potter series) I've ever read that I literally couldn't put down at one point or another.

Also, I've always wanted to read A Clockwork Orange and I really enjoy reading Shakespeare.

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I voted for the Dark Heart, the Nest of Cuckoos, and the Man of Air. =3

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Goten is dead!

Shoot, I was on vacation and missed this >.<.

Anyways, I voted for The Lies of Locke Lamora, 1984, and Heart of Darkness.
1984 and Heart of Darkness were actually on my personal list to read before this topic was made, so I'll be reading them anyways

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Thanks Ozzy Patrick for the sig ^_^

Poll's closed, votes are in, and the winner is...

A Clockwork Orange
By Anthony Burgess

ISBN: 978-0393312836

Summary:

A Clockwork Orange is written in first person perspective from a seemingly biased and unreliable source. Alex never justifies his actions in the narration, giving a good sense that he is somewhat sincere; a narrator who, as unlikeable as he may attempt to seem, evokes pity from the reader through the telling of his unending suffering, and later through his realization that the cycle will never end. Alex's perspective is effective in that the way that he describes events is easy to relate to, even if the situations themselves are not. He uses words that are common in speech, as well as Nadsat, the speech of particular younger generation subcultures.


Review:

Once you get your rookers on this book, you will viddy your glazzies on a real horrorshow tale of ultraviolence and razrezzing and other veshches. Alex, Your Humble Narrator, is a malenky malchick who govoreets in nadsat, a like slang. To get used to the nadsat without going bezoomny, it helps if you can slooshy Malcolm McDowell govoreeting the story in your gulliver. MM played Alex up on the silver screen, if you've ever viddied that.

If the idea of reading an entire novel written like the paragraph above doesn’t seem appealing, then Anthony Burgess’ dystopian masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange, is not the book for you. Re-read George Orwell’s “1984” instead. In Orwell’s book, a form of communication called Newspeak is mentioned, with an appendix included to explain it, but Newspeak doesn’t dominate the narrative. In A Clockwork Orange, nadsat - a mixture of Russian and other slang - is deeply embedded in the story and crucial to the whole experience. Most of the lingo can be figured out in context, and for the rest, there are nadsat translators now available on the web.

The book opens with Alex - a juvenile delinquent to the extreme - lovingly describing his favorite pastimes: reckless driving, breaking and entering, assault and . When an ugly struggle for the position of alpha male leaves his gang of friends bitter, Alex is betrayed and abandoned at the scene of a particularly nasty crime. Two years of imprisonment do little to curb his natural tendencies (he’s observed reading the Bible often, but he secretly gets off on the violence in the Good Book) so he’s enrolled in a new treatment program to “rehabilitate” him. Alex is reconditioned so that he is incapable of violent or lustful thoughts - or, more accurately, unable to act out such impulses: whenever he feels aggression, he’s incapacitated by intense nausea. His rehabilitation deemed a complete success, Alex is released again into society, where he has the misfortune to cross paths with the people he had wronged before his arrest.

Burgess’ novel - the one for which he is best known - is a satirical look at a near future where the ever-increasing violence among young people has reached a fever pitch and the debate over punishment versus treatment of criminals rages on. There’s no doubt that Alex is a menace, and yet Burgess offers no easy answers. Time behind bars does nothing for the young man, but the flaws of his treatment are fully exposed, demonstrating that there’s no magic bullet to cure criminal behavior. He becomes a puppet in a war of politics, and when Alex is released after "rehabilitation" - weak, defenseless - readers will likely view him as a helpless victim rather than a dangerous criminal getting what he deserves.

A Clockwork Orange is an icon in genre fiction, and the source material for Stanley Kubrick’s controversial film. Any speculative fiction fan who hasn’t read the novel (if such a person exists) should do so immediately.

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Until told otherwise, I'm assuming we have no limit to how long we're allowed to read this book, but for the sake of not taking two months for this, PLEASE START READING THIS BOOK A.S.A.P. FOR LATER DISCUSSION

Also, for complaints about the book chosen, remember the rule.

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Goten is dead!

I wonder if my school library will let me take out that book, we'll see.

~Swept

Is it too late to join?

Not at all.

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We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.

Afraid I am not able to read the first book as my School librarian deemed that I was too young to read it.

It was finally confirmed from (a very, very busy) Tim that we can take plenty of time to read, but as... eh, a few people get done with the book, discussion can start on either this topic, or a seperate topic for the book.

... Personally, I prefer it to be on THIS topic because one huge topic would have more of a chance to get archived.

Anyone who doesn't know, it's A CLOCKWORK ORANGE that's been voted upon for the first read. Go for it, everyone! (And no, I haven't got the book myself yet.)

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Goten is dead!

I'll see if they have it at my local library.

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OR YOU CAN BUY IT, SO THAT AT A LATER DATE YOU CAN CONTINUE IN THE CONVERSATIONS; YOU WOULDN'T WANT TO BE LEFT OUT OF A QUOTE SPECIFIC DEBATE NOW WOULD YOU?

Ohhh! I have this book!

It's an awesome read, hard to follow, but I've read it a dozen times, so maybe I should participate in whatever you are doing!


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Listening to: Coldplay - Viva la Vida
via FoxyTunes

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So when should we have it finished by? We really should pick a date otherwise this could drag out all summer and be the only book we end up reading.

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We do not stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.