Rarely do I see a movie first and feel compelled to read the book and then the next book and so on… But this time, I did.

There was nothing else to watch at home and I’m not ashamed to admit my ignorance that when Divergent was put on, I had no idea what to expect and therefore expected nothing but to hopefully be entertained for a couple of hours.

When the movie was over, I had questions and I wanted to know more.

Right onto the IMDB I went searching for information. Vaguely remembering that students read this book, I remembered it was part of a series.

It was time to read.

And boy did I. I read the whole book in 2 days, staying up til 3 in the morning to finish. The movie was mostly true to the book, the book of course being better. So I bought the next in the series, Insurgent.

Now that I’m midway through Insurgent (I bought it yesterday), I noticed something about myself and my own proclivity for dystopian fiction. Ever since I read George Orwell in the 9th grade, I’ve been drawn to books that approach political topics through the anti-paradise approach.

There’s something about the apocolyptic setting, the strong protagonist and the desire to for justice and truth that appeals to me on so many levels. This coupled with the reality of how things actually end as opposed to how we want them to is also really effective.

As much as I like to watch happy endings in movies, the reality that life isn’t always happy or just is more interesting to read. Watching authors toil with these inherent human wrong-doings speaks to my own want to change the world.

It turns out the basic genre characteristics remind me of why I teach: I want to enact change. The characters in these books do too. It doesn’t always work out or it may be them against the world, but it never stops them from trying. That’s why I love them and so do adolescents.

How do you feel about dystopian fiction?

*Other dystopian novels worth reading:

• The Giver by Lois Lowery
• 1984 by George Orwell
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
• Divergent series by Veronica Roth

Are there books you’d add to this list?

Tagged: #100books, Divergent, Dystopian fiction, reading, Veronica Roth