There is more to dystopian books than Divergent

A few thoughts over coffee about what should make it on my list

Imagine you wake up one day in the morning and just before you have a coffee, you read this Tweet….

Thanks to my Twitter feed, I came across Starr Sakstein’s blog post Crazy for Dystopian fiction #100books

I was excited — till the moment I actually started to read it. Because Starr Sakstein recommends highly Divergent— and I have my issues with that.

I have love hate relationship with that book — and for a reason. Young Adult is a great business, all the empowered girls who kick someone ass on the background of a catastrophe/end of world/evil (sexy) vampires… I mean, possibly if you want to make money, either write steamy romance or young adult. Those are the books that sell. Divergent left me wanting more — maybe to be written by a better author. It’s a great idea, just the whole plot at some point goes terribly, terribly wrong. Maybe if the author spent more than a month writing the book. Maybe if she was left to mature a bit. Not sure…

And so I thought of my own recommendations — well, with the help of Dystopia! and Best Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction lists from Goodreads. So here is my list of books — and please note, that the order is irrelevant.

  • Hunger Games — kind of obvious, I don’t need to add more…
  • Brave New World — let’s add some classics
  • World War Z — the movie is rubbish. Don’t watch it. If you did, erase it from your memory. The book is amazing. The book has a new hero — zombie apocalypse. And in a way, it could be anything. Very disturbing. Very captivating.
  • The Day of The Triffids — ha, now, that’s a classic book. And killing plants.
  • Cloud Atlas — not sure if to put it into the group below, I don’t think even the author knew what he wants to say. But the clone’s story was really captivating.
  • Do Warm Bodies count?

And those I wouldn't mind forgetting…

  • Never Let Me Go — seriously, you don’t need to like the characters of a book, but shouldn't you care, just a little bit? Bored to death…
  • I guess London Fields could come here, but it’s rather blurry why that book got so good reviews…
  • Other, which I have forgot…

Now, my coffee is finished. I proved I read books. Thanks to Goodreads I found quite a few books I put on my list. Here my rant finishes — and I would welcome your comments. Because when it comes to books, it’s really about personal preferences.

Zlatka Larsen

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