Rainy Day Reads

I’ve wanted to read some more Atwood for a while, so when I came across this one at the library I decided to pick it up.   Oryx and Crake is about Snowman, formerly known as Jimmy. He lives in the woods in a post apocalyptic setting, taking care of the children of Crake. As the history slowly unfolds we learn how he came to be in this position.  When Jimmy was a child he lived in a compound run by a company producing meat. In this society man has started to genetically splice animals in order to achieve more “desirable” traits, like more meat or less aggressiveness. These experiments sometimes get out of hand and wreak havoc on the local eco system. Jimmy’s best friend, known as Crake, is a genius within the genetic splicing community and  his delusions of grandeur lead him to invent some less than great things.  I thought the concept of the novel was interesting. What happens when man starts to mess with nature? Who has there right to decide who a...

I have heard talk about this book for ages, since it is something of a modern classic. For some reason I never understood the plot of the book, and thought it was a Jane Eyre type thing. Don’t ask me why…But perhaps for this reason I never got around to reading it. Having read and loved Jane Eyre I figured that was enough of that. But recently I saw a video on Youtube where it was discussed and the plot briefly summarized. And then I found out that the plot was completely different from what I thought it was. So i ordered it from my library and read it. And liked it! The book is about a dystopian society where women are reduced to one of a few categories. There are the demure Wives, the servant Marthas and the Handmaids. These so-called handmaids are “issued” to the elite families of the society and here they are meant to be impregnated by the husband, so they can give birth to a child for the wife.  We meet our particular handmaid as she starts a new “posting” in the hous...