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bookmarvel 's review for:
The List
by Patricia Forde
Recently I’ve been really into books that are like possible futures of society, and the premise of this one is super cool. The entire world flooded because all the ice caps melted (very possible oop) and a small society survived and everyone is only allowed to use these 500 words in order to try to prevent everything bad that humans did from happening again (wars, climate change, etc). Noa is a relatable antagonist because I can understand why he wants to do this, but also like this is changing human nature and my opinion is that it might just be better to let humans drive themselves extinct than to knowingly deprive them of what it means to be human.
I like how the story is told through Netta, a young girl (actually I dunno how old she is, like mid-teenager?) who has been raised in this new society her whole life and she’s very innocent and believes deeply that Noa is doing the right thing for humanity and everything, and she slowly learns about what the world used to be and [SPOILER ALERT] eventually turns against Noa and his rules against language. It’s interesting to watch Netta learn about what is our world currently while we’re seeing what is the only world she’s ever known which is very different from ours.
Also just thinking about List (the language of only 500 words) is pretty wild, like all the dialogue of people speaking in List sounds stilted, like very young children who don’t understand grammar yet or someone just barely learning a new language. And the way Letta uses List because she’s a wordsmith and has access to a lot of old words is kind of like it’s a different language, like she has to think about how to say what she wants to say and she stumbles over her words when she speaks List but not when she speaks the old tongue (I think that’s how the book refers to it). It also made me think about what if today everyone could only speak 500 or 700 or 1000 words, like how hard it would be and what words would or wouldn’t be allowed. Also now I’m wondering how many different words are used in the book itself or even this review, like how many different words is 500 words actually?
Anyways, this book made me think a lot, and now I kind of want to see if I can piece together the words in List from dialogue and the words themselves that are like the titles of the chapters (which is also very cool). Also Noa’s thoughts in italics at the end of some chapters? 10/10 very good, I didn’t know who it was at first but I liked the little peeks into his thoughts, it wasn’t too much and it wasn’t too little. Oh also no romance! I just realized that now and it might be because of Netta’s age which I still am not sure about but no outright romance! There might’ve been a little of something between her and Marlo but I saw it as just good friendship times.
I like how the story is told through Netta, a young girl (actually I dunno how old she is, like mid-teenager?) who has been raised in this new society her whole life and she’s very innocent and believes deeply that Noa is doing the right thing for humanity and everything, and she slowly learns about what the world used to be and [SPOILER ALERT] eventually turns against Noa and his rules against language. It’s interesting to watch Netta learn about what is our world currently while we’re seeing what is the only world she’s ever known which is very different from ours.
Also just thinking about List (the language of only 500 words) is pretty wild, like all the dialogue of people speaking in List sounds stilted, like very young children who don’t understand grammar yet or someone just barely learning a new language. And the way Letta uses List because she’s a wordsmith and has access to a lot of old words is kind of like it’s a different language, like she has to think about how to say what she wants to say and she stumbles over her words when she speaks List but not when she speaks the old tongue (I think that’s how the book refers to it). It also made me think about what if today everyone could only speak 500 or 700 or 1000 words, like how hard it would be and what words would or wouldn’t be allowed. Also now I’m wondering how many different words are used in the book itself or even this review, like how many different words is 500 words actually?
Anyways, this book made me think a lot, and now I kind of want to see if I can piece together the words in List from dialogue and the words themselves that are like the titles of the chapters (which is also very cool). Also Noa’s thoughts in italics at the end of some chapters? 10/10 very good, I didn’t know who it was at first but I liked the little peeks into his thoughts, it wasn’t too much and it wasn’t too little. Oh also no romance! I just realized that now and it might be because of Netta’s age which I still am not sure about but no outright romance! There might’ve been a little of something between her and Marlo but I saw it as just good friendship times.