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The Magic of Words
- Ashneet Chhabra
- Aug 10, 2021
- 7 min read
Updated: Oct 23, 2023
“Books don’t just be with you, they take you where you’ve never been”
There is something about being a reader, it’s never just about gaining knowledge but experiencing things that you can never experience in your own reality, it’s about escaping your reality and seeing things that don’t exist. How funny it is to watch a dead tree, hallucinating about the things that never existed. Just imagine that moment when you’re reading a book and the whole world around you doesn’t exist anymore. People think that reading a book is just as same as watching a movie, but a movie only makes you see things but a book makes you experience them, feel them and cherish them.
The books that help me escape reality:
- By Scott Westerfeld
Genre: Dystopian,Sci-fi,Fantasy
Books: Uglies, Pretties, Specials, Extras
Characters: Tally youngblood, Shay, David
Tally is about to turn sixteen and she can't wait. She’ll have the operation that will turn her from an ordinary ugly to a paragon of beauty in just a few weeks. She will live in a high-tech paradise when her only job is to have fun as a pretty.
but Tally's new friend Shay isn’t sure if she wants to become pretty. when Shay runs away, Tally learns about a whole new side of the pretty world; and it isn't very pretty. The authorities offer Tally A CHOICE: find her friend and turn her in or never turn pretty at all.
Tally’s choice changes her world forever...
After Tally reaches smoke she learns about the ugly side of turning pretty But now Tally has finally become pretty. Now her looks are beyond perfect, her clothes are awesome, her boyfriend is totally hot, and she’s completely popular. It’s everything she’s ever wanted.
But beneath all the fun—the nonstop parties, the high-tech luxury, the total freedom—is a nagging sense that something’s wrong. Something important. Then a message from Tally’s ugly past arrives. Reading it, Tally remembers what’s wrong with pretty life, and the fun stops cold. Now she has to choose between fighting to forget what she knows and fighting for her life—because the authorities don’t intend to let anyone with this information survive.
Tally thought they were a rumor, but now she’s one of them. A Special. A super-amped fighting machine, engineered to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid.
But maybe being perfectly programmed with strength and focus isn’t better than anything she’s ever known. Tally still has memories of something else.
Still, it’s easy to tune that out—until she’s offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently. It all comes down to one last choice: listen to that tiny, faint heartbeat, or carry out the mission she’s programmed to complete. Either way, Tally’s world will never be the same.
A few years after rebel Tally Youngblood takes down the Specials regime, a cultural renaissance sweeps the world. “Tech-heads” flaunt their latest gadgets, “kickers” spread gossip and trends, and “surge monkeys” are hooked on extreme plastic surgery. Popularity rules and everyone craves fame.
Fifteen-year-old Aya Fuse is no exception. But Aya’s face rank is so low, she’s a total nobody. An extra. Her only chance at stardom is to kick a wild and unexpected story.
Then she stumbles upon a big secret. Aya knows she is on the cusp of becoming a celebrity. But the information she is about to disclose will change both her fate…and that of the brave new world.
Review: This is personally my favorite series, which made me experience an alternate reality of the world that could’ve been or can exist in the future. This also made me think about the fact that being pretty isn't always an advantage. It made me completely forget who I am while reading it and what’s happening around me. “You know you've read a good book when you turn the last page and feel a little as if you have lost a friend”.This series made me feel like that. I would also want to quote my favorite character from this book: “My name is Tally Youngblood and my mind is very ugly”.
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!
Being pretty doesn’t just change the way you look, it also changes the way you think.
Tally turns pretty at the beginning of the second book and forgets about the promise she made to David.
Tally and David weren’t supposed to split the medicine, it made things worse. As one of them eats the lesions in the brain and the other stops it.
The medicine didn't cure Tally of lesions, her willpower did.
Zane dies in the second book.
Specials that were considered to be a myth EXIST. And tally becomes one of them
Pain helps to cure lesions, that’s what cutters are doing.
At the end of the third book, Tally goes to the outside world and decides that she doesn't need medicine to cure herself like the last time.
Tally returns back in the last book to save the world.
-By Louis O’Neill
Genre: Dystopian and young adult fiction
Characters: Freida, Isabel, Darwin
Eves are designed, not born. The school trains them to be pretty. The school trains them to be good. The school trains them to always be willing.
All their lives, the eves have been waiting. Now, they are ready for the outside world. Companion...concubine...or chastity. Only the best will be chosen. And only the Men decide.
Review: This book took me a while to sink in and realize what had happened in the end. To be honest, this book left me with a lot of unanswered questions to which I had to create and answer myself. In this world, the girls are supposed to be pretty or nothing at all. It’s NOT recommended if you have self-doubts about your looks or have an eating disorder. This book is also MEN DOMINATED. I know I wrote a lot of negative things but I think this was supposed to be told before reading as it may trigger some people. Otherwise, this book is definitely recommended for all the people who would want to experience some things about the possible future.
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!
Isabel has not become fat, she is pregnant.
Isabel is the most beautiful eve and hence she was raised to be the Father’s wife.
Isabel commits suicide later after her marriage.
Freida is also killed in the end and is supposed to be used to tests.
Freida was supposed to be killed because she was born with some problems but she wasn’t because she was Isabel’s favorite.
Answering one of the unanswered questions which took me the most time to realize: Isabel killed herself because she was in love with Freida.
- By Ally Condie
Genre: Dystopian, Sci-fi
Books: Matched, Crossed, and Reached
Characters: Cassia, Ky, Xander
On her seventeen birthday, Cassia meets her match, and society dictates he is her perfect partner. EXCEPT, HE IS NOT. In Cassia's society officials decide who people love. How many children they have, where they work, when they die.
But, as Cassia finds herself falling in love with another boy, she is determined to make some choice of her own.
And that’s when the whole world begins to unravel.
Society decides everything, The books you read, The music you listen to, The person you love.
Yet for Cassia, the rules have changed. Ky has been taken away and she will sacrifice everything to find him. And when Cassia discovers Ky has escaped to the wild frontier beyond the society, there is hope. But on the edge of society, nothing is as it seems A REBELLION IS RISING.
And the tangled web of lies and double-crosses could destroy everything.
Cassia’s journey began with a momentary glitch, In the otherwise facade of society. After crossing canyons to break free, she waits.
Silk and paper were smuggled against her skin.
Her revolution is about to start which is gonna change her whole world. But this revolution is going to give her the thing she needs the most, the Right to choose her match.
But something goes wrong...
Review: This is a love story about waiting, finding, and embracing each other, A sci-fi and dystopian fiction. So it is gonna be an addictive series for almost all the readers.
It gives an idea about an alternate reality and a love that can go against the world for each other. One of my favorite lines in this book is when Cassia says, “Ky gives me three gifts for my birthday. A poem, A kiss, and the hopeless beautiful belief that things might work”. This book made me fall in love with Ky, it's never just about looks sometimes it’s about his story, this book had me question the same question Cassia had while falling in love with Ky, “Is falling in love with someone’s story the same as falling in love with the person himself?”. I guess it’s more than that.
!!!SPOILER ALERT!!!
Cassia’s father didn’t lose her grandfather’s tube. He destroyed it.
When Cassia was asked to sort Ky, it turns out it wasn't for better but for the worst.
Society kills aberrations living outside the society.
The enemy wasn’t real but society was made to get rid of all the aberrations inside the society.
Anomalies aren’t at all dangerous.
Blue tablets are not for survival. They are to stop you from going on and make you exhausted and can cause death if you're not rescued.
The red tablet makes you forget everything from the past 24 hours.
Xander and Ky are immune to the tablets because the rising chose them when they were kids and they were given special tablets to be immune.
“I don't want to just read books. I want to crawl inside of them and live there.”
Books don't just go with you, they take you where you have never been. They make you fall in love with people that don’t exist. When you read a book, the neurons in your brain fire overtime, deciding what the characters are wearing, how they are standing, how they look, and what it feels like the first time they kiss. No one shows you. The words make suggestions, your brain paints the pictures.
Trust me, I would give anything to meet my future husband in a library rather than a bar But it looks like I'm still waiting for a fictional character to exist...
Do share this with your friends and family :)
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