The Giver

Paperback, 200 pages

English, Chinese language

Published Oct. 31, 2014 by 河北教育出版社.

ISBN:
9780385732550

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (3 reviews)

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

35 editions

Review of 'The Giver' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I first read this book in high school, but I'm glad I picked it up again to read.

At the beginning, the author throws you straight in, which can make the reader feel like an outsider and not sure about anything.

The copy I had (e-book) had a number of missing spaces between words, and weird line spacing (where the line would finish, then the next word would be on the next line). Both of these happen multiple times which sometimes may for some frustrating reading.

There are a number of things that happen in the book that happen in real life,

"But the committee would never bother The Receiver with a question about bicycles; they would simply fret and argue about it themselves for years, until the citizens forgot that it had ever gone to them for study."

There are a couple of times where the author moves forward …

Review of 'Giver' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Ordinarily, I’m not a huge fan of the YA Dystopian genre. Reading this story, I think I finally realised why that is: they’re all poor imitations of this one!

Just kidding. They’re actually quite different.

In most modern YA Dystopian stories, we’re told “the way things are” over a few pages, early in the story. Most of these stories are also told in the first person (often through the eyes of a teenage girl), and they’re presented in a way that intends to disgust and revolt us straight away. The situation is unequivocably, irrevocably bad, it needs to change as soon as possible, and the protagonist is going to be the one to do it.

You’re told what to think and how to feel about the state of the world.

This story’s different. It’s told in third person, and focusses on Jonas, a regular kid of approximately eleven years old …