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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
I would rank this book as one of the best I have ever read. The first several chapters dragged on for me, but they provide necessary background information for the remainder of the novel. However, the rest of the story was amazing and I absolutely loved it! I find it hard for a book to make me feel so many emotions, but Delirium had me feeling: fear, hope, love, madness, anger, etc. The ending was foreshadowed a couple of times throughout the story. It does end up being that tragic ending that you secretly wished that it wouldn't be. I was brought to tears. If you liked stories like The Giver or Uglies, then you will enjoy this one.
I think I need a break from dystopia. Because this one was pretty good - interesting, well written, fast paced - but when I got to the end, and found out that this too was the start of a series, I couldn't help but cringe. I'm ready to read an action packed book with an actual ending, not an ambiguous, set the stage for the next episode kind of ending.
That aside, as a "dystopian love story where a society makes all your choices for you" I thought this one was more original than the relatively similar Matched. The brain stuff is pretty legitimately creepy. And I liked that it was set in a recognizable place (Portland), which heightened the creepiness of the futuristic differences. I was a little more interested in Lena's best friend Hana than the main character herself, but often that can't be helped. If I had read this book a year ago, I might have given it more stars, but at this point it's all starting to feel a little too familiar.
That aside, as a "dystopian love story where a society makes all your choices for you" I thought this one was more original than the relatively similar Matched. The brain stuff is pretty legitimately creepy. And I liked that it was set in a recognizable place (Portland), which heightened the creepiness of the futuristic differences. I was a little more interested in Lena's best friend Hana than the main character herself, but often that can't be helped. If I had read this book a year ago, I might have given it more stars, but at this point it's all starting to feel a little too familiar.
3.4 stars.
Kinda meh at times, but I really really really like the idea of love as an illness, Lena's mother, and the love poetry bits. The love poetry got me good.
Kinda meh at times, but I really really really like the idea of love as an illness, Lena's mother, and the love poetry bits. The love poetry got me good.
this was so good actually, i cant believe ive been putting this series off for so long! its off to a great start and i cannot wait to pick up the next book because my god do i need to know what happens after that ending!!!!!!!
I felt a quiet rage bubbling the entire time I read Delirium. What circumstance occurred where people thought eliminating affection was a good thing? I don't know why this United States alt-universe happened - perhaps the next books in the series explains more history - but I do know I was angry that this lobotomized society was created. It thoroughly rubbed me the wrong way. However, the book is a great YA read. The claustrophobic world of Delirium, while irritating, did not stop my interest in finishing the book. Lena, Hana, Alex and Grace, the most appealing characters in the book, are very easy to like.
Teenagers Lena and Hana are a delightful pair and best friends. Every time I picked up the book I wanted to learn more about their lives. Despite this dreadful police state they live in, they can squeeze in moments of time for fun and secrets, especially while bike riding or running, and be themselves. Even under the draconian, controlled society they live, where eventually everyone undergoes a brain surgery which appears to be a perfected lobotomy at 18 and is immediately paired with a selected mate by the government, these lovely high school girls giggle, hope and have fun in the meantime. But they are 17, and soon they will be 'cured'.
All of their lives they've been educated to expect the surgery and marriage to a strange man on graduation from school, which they've been taught is a preferred existence than having choices and emotions, particularly the emotion of love. Love leads to a diseased and painful early death - or so they've been told. All of the townspeople, who are living within an electrified fence with armed guards keeping them inside, move with dulled purpose in their daily tasks,without affection for their children or each other. No one hugs, dances or touches, duty and regimentation are the only rhythms expected of people. For those who have yet to have the operation, still possessing emotions, they live in a capsule of constant fear. There is constant scrutiny and judgement; from the time of waking to returning from school to their parents, conformity is enforced.
Lena has felt her entire life the suspicion that she cannot be quite all right. She is living with her aunt and cousins because her father was a sympathizer with the 'invalids' - people who escaped their fenced-in community to live in the woods. Her mother, despite being 'cured' three times, somehow still had emotions and a playful nature. Worst of all, Lena's mother loved her. First Lena's father ran away, then her mother committed suicide when slotted in for a fourth operation. Ever since, Lena has been desperate to fit in and to never be found lacking in conformity.
Then, one day, an important day because Lena is being evaluated for how well her thinking has been trained to be like everyone else's, she sees a young man - a gloriously handsome 19-year-old man. Although he bears the mark of being cured, he is very different from the mechanized robots most of the adults appear to be. He laughs.
Lena is horribly afraid. From The Book of Shhh description, which she has studied all of her life, she thinks she might have caught the disease Love. Romance readers, start your engines now. The author is a champion love story writer. But the book is about more than this, ultimately.
This is a Romance with bite. While it moves at a smooth pace and the language is musical, perfect for describing Lena's world and inner life and cares, she is in a well-lit clean neighborhood of darkness. Children must watch out for each other because their parents do not repair any damage incurred emotionally - there are no soothing caresses for painful moments, only a cold dutiful checking for scrapes and injuries. Thankfully, Lena has Hana. Hana is a bit braver and wilder than Lena, but no matter. They have each other's back. There is the silent little girl Grace, also orphaned, with whom Lena shares her bedroom. Without each other, Lena's aunt Carol's home would be a cold-hearted place, full of cured, married adult relatives. Always being watched and every moment calibrated for sameness, yet Hana and Lena find ways to be a little bit like normal teenagers. Hana leads, Lena follows, and soon Lena unexpectly discovers Hana has been living a secret life of music and fun. Between the handsome boy Alex and Hana, Lena learns her world has been nothing but lies.
Warning! There is a cliffhanger ending, which means you must read the rest of the series! You cannot stop at reading Delirium, Book 1, but must go on to Book 2, Pandemonium, to find out if this is going to end happily, or turn out to be more like Romeo and Juliet - definitely I hope not!
Teenagers Lena and Hana are a delightful pair and best friends. Every time I picked up the book I wanted to learn more about their lives. Despite this dreadful police state they live in, they can squeeze in moments of time for fun and secrets, especially while bike riding or running, and be themselves. Even under the draconian, controlled society they live, where eventually everyone undergoes a brain surgery which appears to be a perfected lobotomy at 18 and is immediately paired with a selected mate by the government, these lovely high school girls giggle, hope and have fun in the meantime. But they are 17, and soon they will be 'cured'.
All of their lives they've been educated to expect the surgery and marriage to a strange man on graduation from school, which they've been taught is a preferred existence than having choices and emotions, particularly the emotion of love. Love leads to a diseased and painful early death - or so they've been told. All of the townspeople, who are living within an electrified fence with armed guards keeping them inside, move with dulled purpose in their daily tasks,without affection for their children or each other. No one hugs, dances or touches, duty and regimentation are the only rhythms expected of people. For those who have yet to have the operation, still possessing emotions, they live in a capsule of constant fear. There is constant scrutiny and judgement; from the time of waking to returning from school to their parents, conformity is enforced.
Lena has felt her entire life the suspicion that she cannot be quite all right. She is living with her aunt and cousins because her father was a sympathizer with the 'invalids' - people who escaped their fenced-in community to live in the woods. Her mother, despite being 'cured' three times, somehow still had emotions and a playful nature. Worst of all, Lena's mother loved her. First Lena's father ran away, then her mother committed suicide when slotted in for a fourth operation. Ever since, Lena has been desperate to fit in and to never be found lacking in conformity.
Then, one day, an important day because Lena is being evaluated for how well her thinking has been trained to be like everyone else's, she sees a young man - a gloriously handsome 19-year-old man. Although he bears the mark of being cured, he is very different from the mechanized robots most of the adults appear to be. He laughs.
Lena is horribly afraid. From The Book of Shhh description, which she has studied all of her life, she thinks she might have caught the disease Love. Romance readers, start your engines now. The author is a champion love story writer. But the book is about more than this, ultimately.
This is a Romance with bite. While it moves at a smooth pace and the language is musical, perfect for describing Lena's world and inner life and cares, she is in a well-lit clean neighborhood of darkness. Children must watch out for each other because their parents do not repair any damage incurred emotionally - there are no soothing caresses for painful moments, only a cold dutiful checking for scrapes and injuries. Thankfully, Lena has Hana. Hana is a bit braver and wilder than Lena, but no matter. They have each other's back. There is the silent little girl Grace, also orphaned, with whom Lena shares her bedroom. Without each other, Lena's aunt Carol's home would be a cold-hearted place, full of cured, married adult relatives. Always being watched and every moment calibrated for sameness, yet Hana and Lena find ways to be a little bit like normal teenagers. Hana leads, Lena follows, and soon Lena unexpectly discovers Hana has been living a secret life of music and fun. Between the handsome boy Alex and Hana, Lena learns her world has been nothing but lies.
Warning! There is a cliffhanger ending, which means you must read the rest of the series! You cannot stop at reading Delirium, Book 1, but must go on to Book 2, Pandemonium, to find out if this is going to end happily, or turn out to be more like Romeo and Juliet - definitely I hope not!
What an exceptional novel that really put the bounds of love to the test in a world where love is viewed as a disastrous, deadly disease. Honestly, the concept of taking love out of the lives of the people is a cruel and unusual punishment in my eye, and Lauren Oliver takes this horrible amputation of emotion and turns it into a breathtaking flight for survival with Lena and Alex. Oliver engrossed me, had my fingers clinging to the pages as if they had morphed into cliffs. I wanted to learn more about the feelings and the struggles of living in a world where the word "LOVE" was considered the most vial profanity of them all, and where expressing the notions of it was pure crime.
I took my time with reading this novel in comparison to my usual fastforward/skimming reading habits when it comes to blogging. Lately, I haven't been able to get into the feel of reading with college and having a boyfriend and hanging out with friends being the active part of my life at the moment; they are the focus of my life at the moment, the memories that I am looking forward to look back on. Blogging and reading, though a strong hobby of mine, has been placed on the back burner for the past few months, but I swore that I would pick it up again. I just needed a good book to really set me into the swing of things.
And then came Delirium.
Just the concept of the book was enough to make me adore it. Character wise, Lena, being the society-conformed girl that she was made out to be, really did show what it meant to defy the odds and what you were born into knowing when you finally get that taste of how it feels. Though in some instances I felt that parts of the story were shoved with unneeded details and names that I would never remember, the beauty of the prose and the change that it was administered once Lena became "infected" with the growing emotion of love did me in, I was spellbound until the very end.
I admit it did take me a while to read this book. I had been lazy over my break and still not really fully into the course of reading, but I did finish it and I can say that I'm excited to pick up the sequel when I can finally get my hands on it. (Maybe the college library has it?) But, I do know that once I get my hands on it I will be shutting myself away until I finish :)
Final Summation: Even with the overuse of unneeded information and descriptions, Delirium took me away to a world that I wanted to learn about with character that I wanted to root for and cheer on as they struggled to remain together. The take on dystopian really comes out strongly, but not in a world desolate and destroyed, just corrupted. And the loss of love that the world is structured upon just makes me fall for it even more.
I took my time with reading this novel in comparison to my usual fastforward/skimming reading habits when it comes to blogging. Lately, I haven't been able to get into the feel of reading with college and having a boyfriend and hanging out with friends being the active part of my life at the moment; they are the focus of my life at the moment, the memories that I am looking forward to look back on. Blogging and reading, though a strong hobby of mine, has been placed on the back burner for the past few months, but I swore that I would pick it up again. I just needed a good book to really set me into the swing of things.
And then came Delirium.
Just the concept of the book was enough to make me adore it. Character wise, Lena, being the society-conformed girl that she was made out to be, really did show what it meant to defy the odds and what you were born into knowing when you finally get that taste of how it feels. Though in some instances I felt that parts of the story were shoved with unneeded details and names that I would never remember, the beauty of the prose and the change that it was administered once Lena became "infected" with the growing emotion of love did me in, I was spellbound until the very end.
I admit it did take me a while to read this book. I had been lazy over my break and still not really fully into the course of reading, but I did finish it and I can say that I'm excited to pick up the sequel when I can finally get my hands on it. (Maybe the college library has it?) But, I do know that once I get my hands on it I will be shutting myself away until I finish :)
Final Summation: Even with the overuse of unneeded information and descriptions, Delirium took me away to a world that I wanted to learn about with character that I wanted to root for and cheer on as they struggled to remain together. The take on dystopian really comes out strongly, but not in a world desolate and destroyed, just corrupted. And the loss of love that the world is structured upon just makes me fall for it even more.
adventurous
hopeful
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
Yes
I love this book so much. I’m so glad it still holds up for me a decade + later. I love Lena and Alex. And Grace and Hana. This version of the world seems so much more realistic than it did when I first read it, which I think makes it all the more powerful.
I love you. Remember. They cannot take it
I love you. Remember. They cannot take it
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Animal death
Moderate: Police brutality, Death of parent
Annoyed that it's a trilogy was just looking for an easy read. A lot of faults, but enjoyable.
Portland, Maine, USA - wir befinden uns in einer nicht allzu weit entfernten Zukunft. Stell dir eine Welt vor, in welcher die Liebe als eine Krankheit anerkannt worden ist. Eine Welt, in welcher ein Heilmittel gegen die Liebe erfunden worden ist, welches man an seinem 18. Geburtstag gespritzt bekommt. Eine Welt, in der es keine Liebe geben darf, denn sie ist etwas Gefährliches, etwas ganz Schlechtes; eine Krankheit, die in jedem Fall tödlich endet... Amor Deliria Nervosa. Und die Menschen glauben es, lassen sich heilen, sind sogar froh darüber. Sich zu verlieben ist verboten - denn man verliebt sich nicht, man wird infiziert mit der Krankheit. Lena dachte immer, dass der Tag ihrer Heilung ein guter Tag für sie werden wird... Dass sie dann endlich nicht mehr in Gefahr sein würde, sich mit der Deliria zu infizieren. Doch dann lernt sie Alex kennen und alles wird anders. Ihre gesamte Welt stellt sich auf den Kopf und Lena merkt, dass die Liebe vielleicht doch keine Krankheit ist, wie man ihr und allen immer eingepflegt hat...
Ich habe Delirium von Lauren Oliver in nur knapp fünf Tagen gelesen. Wenn ich sehr viel Zeit zum lesen habe und das Buch mich dann auch noch so sehr fesselt und in seinen Bann zieht, ist es nichts Seltenes, wenn ich ein Buch so schnell lese. Nachdem ich mir in letzter Zeit einige Dystopien gekauft und gelesen habe - zweifellos kommt meine Faszination für dieses Genre von "The Hunger Games", welche meine Liebe dazu bei mir ausgelöst hat - gehört Delirium nun auf jeden Fall, neben THG und Divergent, zu meinen bisherigen Favoriten, auch wenn man diese drei Geschichten nicht miteinander vergleichen kann, sieht man mal davon ab, dass es alles Dystopien sind und in einer Welt spielen, die von der Regierung kontrolliert wird. Die Idee, dass die Menschen die Liebe als Krankheit identifiziert haben und ein Heilmittel dagegen entwickelt haben, finde ich unglaublich toll. Die Regierung bestimmt auch, wen die Menschen als Partner zugeteilt bekommen und wann sie heiraten müssen. Nach dem Eingriff sollen sie zufrieden und glücklich leben - ohne die Gefahren und dem Schmerz der Liebe. Ob der Mensch, der die Liebe als tödliche Krankheit Amor Deliria Nervosa identifizierte, wohl sein Herz gebrochen bekam? Das ist, wie ich finde, eine gute und berechtigte Frage.
Das Buch zu lesen war sehr spannend, eines dieser Bücher, welche mich so sehr in Atem halten, dass ich es kaum aus der Hand legen konnte. Auch die Charaktere waren mehr sehr sympathisch; Lena ist eine tolle Heroine, ich mag sie sehr und ihr Wandel im Verlauf des Buches ist spannend mitzuverfolgen. Ebenso Alex, welcher von heute an einen Platz in den oberen Reihen auf meiner "fictional characters I'd love to marry but they're... well, fictional" Liste bekommt. Auch Hana finde ich toll und hoffe sehr, dass sie im nächsten Buch wieder dabei sein wird. Ein persönliches Highlight war auch noch die kleine Gracie, welche ich unglaublich süß und herzig finde.
"Delirium" ist ein sehr spannendes und schönes Buch. Die Geschichte hat mich in eine interessante, sogar beängstigende und traurige Welt gezogen, mir jedoch auch wieder einmal den Glauben an die wahre Liebe bestärkt und dass es sie irgendwo da draußen geben könnte. Es hat mich mitgerissen und von Anfang an begeistert, weshalb es ganz verdient fünf Sterne erhält von mir. Ich kann die Fortsetzung kaum noch erwarten.
Ich habe Delirium von Lauren Oliver in nur knapp fünf Tagen gelesen. Wenn ich sehr viel Zeit zum lesen habe und das Buch mich dann auch noch so sehr fesselt und in seinen Bann zieht, ist es nichts Seltenes, wenn ich ein Buch so schnell lese. Nachdem ich mir in letzter Zeit einige Dystopien gekauft und gelesen habe - zweifellos kommt meine Faszination für dieses Genre von "The Hunger Games", welche meine Liebe dazu bei mir ausgelöst hat - gehört Delirium nun auf jeden Fall, neben THG und Divergent, zu meinen bisherigen Favoriten, auch wenn man diese drei Geschichten nicht miteinander vergleichen kann, sieht man mal davon ab, dass es alles Dystopien sind und in einer Welt spielen, die von der Regierung kontrolliert wird. Die Idee, dass die Menschen die Liebe als Krankheit identifiziert haben und ein Heilmittel dagegen entwickelt haben, finde ich unglaublich toll. Die Regierung bestimmt auch, wen die Menschen als Partner zugeteilt bekommen und wann sie heiraten müssen. Nach dem Eingriff sollen sie zufrieden und glücklich leben - ohne die Gefahren und dem Schmerz der Liebe. Ob der Mensch, der die Liebe als tödliche Krankheit Amor Deliria Nervosa identifizierte, wohl sein Herz gebrochen bekam? Das ist, wie ich finde, eine gute und berechtigte Frage.
Das Buch zu lesen war sehr spannend, eines dieser Bücher, welche mich so sehr in Atem halten, dass ich es kaum aus der Hand legen konnte. Auch die Charaktere waren mehr sehr sympathisch; Lena ist eine tolle Heroine, ich mag sie sehr und ihr Wandel im Verlauf des Buches ist spannend mitzuverfolgen. Ebenso Alex, welcher von heute an einen Platz in den oberen Reihen auf meiner "fictional characters I'd love to marry but they're... well, fictional" Liste bekommt. Auch Hana finde ich toll und hoffe sehr, dass sie im nächsten Buch wieder dabei sein wird. Ein persönliches Highlight war auch noch die kleine Gracie, welche ich unglaublich süß und herzig finde.
"Delirium" ist ein sehr spannendes und schönes Buch. Die Geschichte hat mich in eine interessante, sogar beängstigende und traurige Welt gezogen, mir jedoch auch wieder einmal den Glauben an die wahre Liebe bestärkt und dass es sie irgendwo da draußen geben könnte. Es hat mich mitgerissen und von Anfang an begeistert, weshalb es ganz verdient fünf Sterne erhält von mir. Ich kann die Fortsetzung kaum noch erwarten.
Amazing book! Reminds me a little of the hunger games. Can't wait to start the next one in the trilogy