The Giver by Lois Lowry

I loved this book when I was younger, and so I wanted to read this one this year in my quest to read books that make me happy. I started and finished it last night in about an hour and a half--another thing that makes me happy when reading a book. And I felt the magic of this book, the sense of wondering and worrying about how did these people get there, and is this what the future is going to be like? The choices that the people in the world of The Giver have chosen to live in the safest way possible--without choices and without emotions. But they have one person who is the vault of memories of the whole human race, and Jonas, at the age of twelve, is selected to be the next Receiver to learn about life as it really was and is--pain, and truth, and love, and memories. He even learns about colors for the first time, and begins to be able to see them in a world of black and white. His transformation, and his decisions he makes as a result of his wisdom he gains from learning about life, is the point of this story, and I love it.

I think it is so interesting to remember back and think that this is one of the first dystopian novels set for middle-grade or young adults, and how all of the current dystopian novels are kind of descendants of this one. And it's interesting that this book has been banned so often and viewed as so controversial, when the Hunger Games, a book about children killing children, has been so much less so. I think this one is not even in the same category as Hunger Games--it's much more beautiful and well-written, and has much more interesting themes and ideas. The message may be about the same, about questioning authority, but this story has a lot more depth and imagination in it, and the future world is much more interesting. (Not that I didn't enjoy Hunger Games, as much as the next person.)