So I am constantly looking for new books to read, especially now that it’s summer and I’ve recently found myself without a job. So instead of getting a part-time job to keep the monies flowing, I’ve decided to spend far too much time inside my local Borders—sometimes Barnes and Nobles or Books-a-Million but usually Borders.
Well during my latest book hunting I decided to peruse the buy-one-get-one-half-off-table where I found a dystopian novel—my one true weakness. For some reason I’m in love with dystopian novels and am always looking for a new one (so recommend away). I grabbed the book and went to one of the nearby chairs to read the synopsis on the back of the book and maybe a chapter or two. After reading the synopsis I was sold! I couldn’t wait to read more of the book, so I ran to the counter, bought the book and went home with a crazy grin on my face. That was five days ago and I am still on page 10 of that very same book. How is it that this amazing synopsis has led to such a slow-paced book? Maybe my problem is that I’ve been reading adolescent literature for so long that I can’t stand the narration, or the big words, or something, but this book just isn’t doing it for me. Unfortunately as an ex-reading teacher I can’t just abandon the book, but I can push it to the side while I read more interesting books and then save it for a rainy day. I haven’t gotten to that point yet, but I fear it is creeping up on me.
My question is: why was the synopsis so misleading? How could I have fallen into the trap that the author and editor of that book set for me? I’ve decided to do some research…well I’m going to call it research. I’ve looked up a few books that sound interesting just by their synopsis on amazon.com, now I am going to go and read some of them and post my results here to see if I can find some sort of pattern. It’ll be kind of like a crazy book review system. I am, of course, going to start with my slow-paced dystopian:
Picture courtesy of amazon.com
The Windup Girl
By Paolo Bacigalupi
For this particular novel I will be using the synopsis that was on the book itself, because that is what sold me at that moment and the 4/5 rating on amazon.com, but we’ll leave all issues that I have with that rating for another day.
Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen’s Calorie Man in Thailand. Undercover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok’s street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history’s lost calorie. There he encounters Emiko…
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, crèche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.
What happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism’s genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? Award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi delivers one of the most highly acclaimed science fiction novels of the twenty-first century.
The synopsis has a few more sentences that sing the authors praises but by that point I’ve already been drawn by the plot of the story and don’t need to read any more information about the author’s many accomplishments. So what sold me:
Obviously first and foremost it is about some sort of future society in which the condition of life is extremely bad, as from deprivation, oppression, or terror (definition borrowed from: wordnetweb.princeton.edu). It’s a dystopian novel, I couldn’t say no, I just couldn’t.
Second: Foreign, yet realistic, setting. I like novels that don’t take somewhere near where I am, but I also don’t really like outlandish places that I can’t really buy into. This novel matched both of those criteria so by this point I can barely contain myself.
Final Selling point: Using relatable current events to show the downfall of society as I know it. I mean calories becoming currency (I don’t quite know what it means yet) sounds like something that could happen, especially with the way that people are being super cautious (or not) about what they eat. Throw bio-terrorism in the mix and I’m completely done for.
Oh and…I guess this is where the amazon.com review, and all those shameless plugs for the author factor in, I mean everyone else said it was good…so it has to be, right? Maybe…hopefully.
And that’s why I find myself now reading The Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi. Hopefully it will pick up soon and I will be writing about its awesomeness soon.
Happy Reading All!
Bacigalupi, P. (2010). The Windup Girl. San Francisco: Night Shade Books.
