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To offer you the sort of help/ You never get from a spouse
Today's book giveaway is the 1985 dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale.
Amazon.com description:
Respected Canadian poet and novelist Atwood presents here a fable of the near future. In the Republic of Gilead, formerly the United States, far-right Schlafly/Falwell-type ideals have been carried to extremes in the monotheocratic government. The resulting society is a feminist's nightmare: women are strictly controlled, unable to have jobs or money and assigned to various classes: the chaste, childless Wives; the housekeeping Marthas; and the reproductive Handmaids, who turn their offspring over to the "morally fit" Wives. The tale is told by Offred (read: "of Fred"), a Handmaid who recalls the past and tells how the chilling society came to be.
Goodreads description:
It is the world of the near future, and Offred is a Handmaid in the home of the Commander and his wife. She is allowed out once a day to the food market, she is not permitted to read, and she is hoping the Commander makes her pregnant, because she is only valued if her ovaries are viable. Offred can remember the years before, when she was an independent woman, had a job of her own, a husband and child. But all of that is gone now...everything has changed.
The ALA has ranked The Handmaid's Tale #37 on their list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books: 1990-1999. To enter to win this book, comment below and tell me some of your favorite banned/challenged books.
Other things you can enter to win:
- A book about words or Donald T. Regan (from EE)
- Sanditon
- The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency
- I Capture the Castle
- A campaign-button necklace (from EE)
srah - Saturday, 20 November 2010 - 10:20 AM
Tags: books, nablopomo, nablopomo 2010, nablopomo 2010 giveaways
Comments (3)
Abby - November 28, 2010 - 7:09 PM - ℓ
Some of my favorites are on that list... my worldview would be greatly altered had I not been able to read Catch-22, Brave New World, The Giver, or Fahrenheit 451! And The Hitchhiker's Guide just straight-up blew my mind. I would love to add The Handmaid's Tale to my collection.
From that list, The Catcher in the Rye. Like most who read it, I found it as a teenager and really identified with Holden. Ringo Starr was lucky he was never in close proximity to me back then. I listened to the audiobook earlier this year - which is hoot, hearing some middle aged guy talking about "getting the time" and other youthful slang from the '50s - and Holden was more of a brat. Still dug it, though. Ringo's safe.
I don't remember much of The Chocolate War, but the movie adaption is one of my favorites. Stellar soundtrack, too.
If you want to give away Huck Finn, I'll take it. There's a huge Twain-shaped hole in my reading history that I intend on filling sooner rather than later.
Fun fact: I was Lazenby in my high school's production of Ordinary People. All of these years later, I still haven't read the book or seen the movie.