Activity

Hey y’all! I’m here with a book recommendation for you peeps, cause I’m sure your TBR lists are waning, right? I mean, most of you are probably down to only sixty books or so… Anyways, I recently read an AMAZING book that I think should move to the top of all y’all’s lists immediately. This book is… drum roll please… *drum noises*

The Giver!

Most of you have probably heard of The Giver, (written by Lois Lowry). I think it’s a pretty well known book, right? Maybe? Well, anyways, I read it this past month and it immediately got a place in my top ten favorite books of all times. And that’s hard for a book to do, because I’m extremely picky, especially when it comes to a fiction book not written by a Christian author.

The Giver is… I honestly don’t even know if any of my words will convey how good this book was. It was eye opening. It was deep-feeling. It was special. It was honest and real and broke my heart and put it back together with the hope it left me with. It was amazing. It made me cry for about half of it, but it is sooooooooo good.

A basic overview if you want the plot, is that Jonas is part of a society that makes everything even and perfect and organized. On his twelfth year, when Twelves are given their grown-up jobs, Jonas is not given a job, but it selected to be the next Receiver of Memory, something he knows nothing about. The Giver, the old Receiver, tells him that their job is to take on the memories of all the past so the people don’t have to have the pain and the memory. They bear the burden of all the former pain and they use the wisdom of ages past to advise the community. But Jonas realizes that it shouldn’t be like this, that memories shouldn’t be taken from people and locked away.

It’s not Christian YA fiction, but there is so much a Christian reader can get out of it. It shows what I’ve always felt about books, that when people who aren’t Christians write of the truths of this world, you can always see how they’re related to the Bible and what God teaches. It’s because those truths He put into this world are undeniable. Even if they refuse to acknowledge Who put those truths in their hearts, they can’t deny that it’s there.

Plus, for a secular YA book, it’s very clean. No swearing, and the closest thing to sexuality or romance is the main character, Jonas, telling his family that he had a dream about ‘the Stirrings’, which is attraction for the opposite sex, and he’s given a pill to suppress these feelings because they’re not allowed to fall in love. There are a few descriptions of former memories which may be disturbing and something that happens in the community that is very, very heart-wrenching. It was very hard to read and made me cry, sad cry and angry cry, but I did not have a problem with the actual reading of it, just the idea of what it was and knowing what was happening. I can’t really be more specific without giving away stuff, but I had no problem with the book. I’m a sixteen year old girl who generally has a high tolerance for disturbing things, if that gives you any reference for if you’d be bothered.

So, that was a little longer than I thought I’d take, but it’s worth it because this book is one of the best I’ve read. Ever. Period. This is a book to be read, a book that should be read. It’s so true, so real. It scared me, and made me laugh, and made me cry, and made me hope, and those are the best books of all, the ones that drag your heart through the dirt but give you a hope at the end that makes up for everything else.

There are also three companion books, Gathering Blue, Messenger, and Son, which I would suggest reading in that order after The Giver. I read Gathering Blue, which was really good, but not as good as The Giver.

If any of y’all have read The Giver already, I would LOVE to talk about it! If you haven’t read it, read it so we can then talk about it!

@ashira @hope @wordsmith @ericawordsmith @kari-karast @i-david @eden-anderson @evelyn @the-fledgling-artist @selah-chelyah