Orgulho e Preconceito, por Jane Austen

Sinopse

Na Inglaterra do final do século XVIII, as possibilidades de ascensão social eram limitadas para uma mulher sem dote. Elizabeth Bennet, de vinte anos, uma das cinco filhas de um espirituoso, mas imprudente senhor, no entanto, é um novo tipo de heroína, que não precisará de estereótipos femininos para conquistar o nobre Fitzwilliam Darcy e defender suas posições com perfeita lucidez de uma filósofa liberal da província. Lizzy é uma espécie de Cinderela esclarecida, iluminista, protofeminista. Neste livro, Jane Austen faz também uma crítica à futilidade das mulheres na voz dessa admirável heroína — recompensada, ao final, com uma felicidade que não lhe parecia possível na classe em que nasceu.

     Sempre ouvi ótimos comentários com referência a autora Jane Austen, que escreveu histórias que hoje são clássicos literários, mesmo tendo sido escritos há mais de 200 anos atrás. Ela foi e ainda é uma escritora de sucesso e uma de suas obras mais conhecidas e lidas é Orgulho e Preconceito.

     A história se passa na Inglaterra por volta de 1813, quando a condição financeira, a civilidade e educação pesavam muito na reputação dos indivíduos. Havia um alto grau de respeito entre os membros de uma família e da sociedade. As pessoas utilizavam-se de uma linguagem totalmente formal, até mesmo dentro de casa.

Em uma época com poucas opções em relação a lazer e/ou atividade, as mulheres, que não trabalhavam geralmente ficavam em casa, e é possível imaginar como todos sabiam da vida de seus vizinhos.

     O livro tem um início mais pacato, pois a própria vida na época era desta forma; este conta com detalhes como a vida era para a família de Elizabeth Bennet, a personagem principal, que tem mais 4 irmãs, e vivia em uma sociedade onde o valor de uma mulher dependia do valor do seu dote. Já no início da história, Elizabeth conhece Mr. Darcy, um homem de alto poder aquisitivo, o qual veio para a cidade junto com seu amigo Mr. Bingley, que era a grande novidade da região por ser rico e bonito. Darcy passa uma imagem de orgulhoso e arrogante para Elizabeth, o que a faz criar uma máscara de preconceito sobre sua real personalidade - uma máscara que não lhe servia, mas lhe era atribuída; mas aos poucos vemos que com o desenrolar da trama, muita coisa vai mudando, muitos conceitos vão caindo, muitos preconceitos são desfeitos para que todos os personagens encontrem os seus caminhos.

     Elizabeth destaca-se como uma Cinderela esclarecida, ela é uma mulher de personalidade forte e não aceita tudo o que chega até ela, derruba os estereótipos femininos que eram bem fortes na época, e essa característica sua foi o que mais chamou a atenção de Mr. Darcy para ela.

     A mãe de Elizabeth tem síndrome de casamenteira e seu sonho é ver todas as suas filhas casadas - o que lhe significaria mais status e dinheiro. Um ponto que admiro bastante em Orgulho e Preconceito é o fato de que a história não é em nenhum momento apelativa; ela mostra a realidade da época,e como a personagem principal se destacou dessa realidade por ter e confiar em seus próprios pensamentos - ela sabia seu valor.

     A história carrega um pouco mais de clímax bem para o final do livro que traz romances inesperados. 

     Elizabeth e Mr. Darcy não são aquele casal destinado a ficar junto desde o primeiro momento em que são citados, como acontece em muitos livros de romance. É preciso uma quebra de paradigmas de ambas as partes para que haja uma aceitação mútua. É preciso ver além daquilo que está na frente deles. Acho que esse é um conceito muito interessante e que às vezes é esquecido por muitas pessoas. O julgar pelas aparências, o pré-conceito. Acredito que Orgulho e Preconceito é um livro a frente do tempo, por mais que tenha sido escrito há séculos atrás, ele ainda pode ser aplicado a sociedade de hoje em dia. 

Trecho: " Pense apenas no passado quando sua lembrança lhe der prazer."

" Muitas vezes é apenas nossa vaidade que nos engana"

" Não me considere agora como uma mulher elegante com a intenção de te contaminar, mas uma criatura racional falando a verdade de seu coração."

Depressão pós-livro: 35%

Avaliação Final: 85%

Extras, by Scott Westerfeld

                                              Synopsis

Extras, the final book in the Uglies series, is set a couple of years after the “mind-rain,” a few earth-shattering months in which the whole world woke up. The cure has spread from city to city, and the pretty regime that kept humanity in a state of bubbleheadedness has ended. Boundless human creativity, new technologies, and old dangers have been unleashed upon the world. Culture is splintering, the cities becoming radically different from each other as each makes its own way into this strange and unpredictable future . . .
One of the features of the new world is that everyone has a "feed," which is basically their own blog/myspace/tv channel. The ratings of your feed (combined with how much the city interface overhears people talking about you) determines your social status--so everyone knows at all times how famous they are.
As Scott Westerfeld explored the themes of extreme beauty in the first three Uglies books, now he takes on the world's obsession with fame and popularity. And how anyone can be an instant celebrity.

     "To everyone who wrote to me to reveal the secret definition of the word "trilogy"" - And that's how Scott Westerfeld started "Extras", which was not planned in the beginning of the Uglies series. I like to say that "Extras" is an extension of Tally's world, a glimpse of the future that conquered the fans and convinced Westerfeld to write more about it. 

     I think "Extras" is more for the reader who is a super fan of the Uglies series and loves futuristic backgrounds. The story is farther in the future of Tally, deals with a lot of technology, human advancements, hoverboards, face ranks in your eyes, hovercams....

     The main character this time is a fifteen-year-old girl called Aya who lives in the future Japan, and at her city, popularity and fame make everything keep going. I admit that the story gets a little insistent about this point - the main character's obsession for fame sometimes gets exhausting. 

     After Tally Youngblood put down the Uglies/Pretties/Specials system, people were free to think and got a little too crazy in some cases. All kinds of surge were created and technology for fun. Where Aya lives, what we call money nowadays would be their merits and reputation ranks that they get from doing their assigned jobs and getting popular. If they kept the city going just by lighting up people's imagination and creativity, they got rewards such as good places to live, clothes...It is just a different system of a working Society, which I don't have anything against, but became a pretty insisting subject throughout the story.

     Tally Youngblood has an appearance in the middle of the book; by the time she put down the old system, she became really famous, and some people even cult her - which I think was a little exaggeration from the author, although she did a great work for the humanity.

     "Extras" is more of a deeper looking into this futuristic world, adventure, but I wouldn't hold expectations about it.

     

Quotes: " These days "pretty" meant whatever got you noticed"

" From now on, merits and face ranks would decide who got the best mansions, the most carbon emissions, the biggest wall allowances. Merits were for doctors, teachers, wardens, all the way down to littlies doing school work and their chores - everyone who kept the city going, as determined by the Good Citizen Comittee."

"Once you'd told yourself a story enough times, it was so easy to keep on believing it."

Depression after-reading: 80%

Final Rating: 72%

Specials, by Scott Westerfeld

Synopsis

"Special Circumstances": The words have sent chills down Tally's spine since her days as a repellent, rebellious ugly. Back then Specials were a sinister rumor -frighteningly beautiful, dangerously strong, breathtakingly fast. Ordinary pretties might live their whole lives without meeting a Special. But Tally's never been ordinary.And now, in the third book in the series, Tally's been turned into a Special: a superamped fighting machine, engineered to keep the uglies down and the pretties stupid.The strength, the speed, and the clarity and focus of her thinking feel better than anything Tally can remember. Most of the time. One tiny corner of her heart still remembers something more.Still, it's easy to tune that out -- until Tally's offered a chance to stamp out the rebels of the New Smoke permanently. It all comes down to one last choice: listen to that tiny, faint heartbeat, or carry out the mission she's programmed to complete. Either way, Tally's world will never be the same.

     "Specials" comes as a book to fulfill the Uglies series: a concluding ending for the supposed trilogy (Scott Westerfeld couldn't resist to publish a fourth book, "Extras", which is awesome;), and a book with a desired adventure and missed in "Pretties", the second book of the series.

     "Specials" is big in adventure and action. Since Tally Youngblood became an agent of Special Circumstances, she is a special, ans it means a superior category of the society in which had their bodies changed through a surgery to make them stronger; their bones are made of acrylic and her senses are different and more discharged: she can smell your fear, hear your whisper in a kilometer of distance. Along with it, the New Smoke, the rebellion against the operation process in the Society and its hierarchy, is growing stronger and recruiting more and more runaways from the city who were given the cure for the brain lesions. Special Circumstances was getting weaker, what made Tally, Shay and other pretties become Specials. 

     They were assigned to find the New Smoke, denounce it, and bring everybody back. 

     Something bigger than they thought had happened at the New Smoke, what changed their plans. 

     As a special, Tally was changed to understand that she was superior to the other people, and that the human nature was going to destroy the world again, just like happened 300 years before, killing the planet and themselves... She was trained to act like a machine... But there is something beyond being special in Tally that makes her think her way through the spot she is submitted.   

    After finding out the truth of the New Smoke, Tally's eyes are opened, and a whole new world arises. A whole new system. She and Shay together broke the system of uglies/pretties/specials, and furthermore, changed how everything worked.

     I think what had a rude tone was the special's practice of cutting themselves to make their world feel bubblier, icier. The exposure of such violence against your own body should not appear in books of this level, especially because it circulated among teenagers, which can result as a bad influence. The author could have used other figures to symbolize their pursue of satisfaction as Cutters Specials.

     A point that could differ Uglies from Specials is the fact that Specials doesn't explore the romance Uglies had at all, expected from romantic readers. 

    An interesting message from Specials is that, in the end, Tally and David assigned themselves to "watch for the world", even after the freedom breaks in. They make it their job to make sure that the humanity is not gonna destroy everything, again. We need to watch, to treat the world and the people surrounding us with care, protect others from our own inside darkness... 

     I think this book presented an interesting ending for the story, smart, and realistic. I appreciate how, a book that is classified as being directed to "teenagers and young adults" has such a deep meaning between the lines, that sometimes, a section in the library/bookstore cannot explain. 

******************************************************************

What I super appreciated was what Scott Westerfeld provided for the last chapter of Specials: a e-book online with his own comments about parts of the last chapter, filling the reader with a deeper look with his view and why Tally's story ended the way it did. It is totally worthy to check it out.

- He explains the quote: "You see, freedom has a way of destroying things." - It can be interpreted to mean both the good kind of destroying (what Tally did to the Pretty system) and the bad kind (what the Rusties did to the earth).

- A little trick: The last word of Uglies is "pretties", the last word of Pretties is "specials", and, of course, the last word of Specials is "uglies".
From: http://www.simonandschuster.com/specials/kids/behindthepulse/uglies/specialschapterfinalB.pdf

Quotes: " It didn't matter what you looked like. It was how you carried yourself, how you saw yourself."

" Closing her eyes, Tally drank the bash in through her other sense. Maybe this was what being special  was really all about: dancing along with the rest of them, while feeling like the only real person in the country."

" Without the lesions making everyone agreeable, society was left roiling in a constant battle of words, images, ideas."

" Thinking like a special is partly just human nature, it doesn't take much convincing to make someone believe they're better than everyone else."

" You see, freedom has a way of destroying things."

" We'll be out here somewhere - watching. Ready to remind you of the price the Rusties paid for going too far. I love you all. But it's time to say good-bye, for now. Be careful with the world, or the next time we meet, it might get ugly. - Tally Youngblood. "

Depression after-reading: 98%

Final Rating: 96%

Pretties, by Scott Westerfeld

Synopsis

In Tally's world, your 16th birthday brings an operation that turns you from a repellent Ugly into a stunningly attractive Pretty, and catapults you into a high-tech paradise where your only job is having a really good time. Just before her birthday, Tally discovered that turning Pretty comes with a terrible price. She vowed to accept the operation, but with the understanding that her friends on the outside would rescue her, and let her be the guinea pig for the experimental and highly dangerous cure they're developing.
But in the second book of the Uglies series, Tally's Pretty. And everything's changed. The new, Pretty Tally is totally happy right where she is. She doesn't think she needs any kind of cure at all. When someone from her Ugly life shows up with a message, Tally has a hard time listening. Did she really promise to give all this up? Is she bound by a promise she made when she was a different person? If there is anything left of the old Tally, how will she fight her way out to keep her word and help her friends?

     "Pretties" is the second book of the Uglies series. It starts a month after Tally Youngblood had become a Pretty - in her world/ time in the future, everyone who is older than 16 is submitted to a surgery given by the government to become perfect. Not just your face, but your bones and body are changed. After finding out that they also make changes in people's brains - altering the way they think, and their past memories blurry, Tally committed herself to become a pretty and test a new kind of pills developed by the Smokies (people who live outside of the city and are against the system), which intention is to fix the lesions in the brain caused by the surgery. 
     As a Pretty, Tally lives in New Pretty Town, having fun, drinking and going to parties every day. This world of fun ends when her past calls her back to reality: she is given a letter in which she wrote to herself back in the days she had her conscience in the right place. Her decisions after that change everything.
     As Scott Westerfeld call as being "bubbly" - to be clear in your thoughts and able to understand what is going on, Tally struggles with herself throughout the book to keep her mind "bubbly" so she could think right and escape from the city which is controlled by the Special Circumstances (Almost inhuman people who were designed by another kind of surgery to keep everything in control and the city safe from Outsiders). Escaping the city meant finding the Smokies and helping them to give the pills to everybody so they could be cured from the brain lesions and be free. Brain-free.
     On her way to the Smokies, she finds an area called the reservation which is a project, a study made by the Specials that observes tribal people and how the human nature acts with one another. They were the proof that human beings left alone destroy each other and the planet, just like the mankind did 300 years before in the story. Man used the resources without a limit and destroyed the environment, almost killing the whole humanity. 
     The study is a proof that human beings are evil inside of themselves and are capable to self-destruction, hurting and killing each other and the planet. This is the reason why this system was created - to prevent humanity to extinguish itself forever.
     Westerfeld mixes teenager romances and friendship with this well-narrated futuristic dystopy. The story is less adventure than the first book, "Uglies", involves more serious conflicts, and is less innocent, what makes me think that it should be indicated to young adults, not for teenagers. But still, a good story. Scott Westerfeld knows how to grab the reader with such intensity that can create addicted page-turners. 



Quotes: " Left alone, human beings are a plague. They multiply relentlessly, consuming every resource, destroying everything they touch. Without the operation, human beings always become Rusties."

" Their reasons don't mean anything unless I have a choice. And they don't give anyone a choice."

" This was their world out here - this raw, cruel wilderness with its disease and violence and animal struggle for survival. Like this people, this world was ugly. To be pretty was to be from somewhere beyond. Out here, Tally was a god."

" Everyone in the world was programmed by the place they were born, hemmed in by their beliefs, but you had to at least try to grow your own brain."

Depression after-reading: 100%

Final Rating:94%

Reached, by Ally Condie

     Synopsis

After leaving Society to desperately seek The Rising, and each other, Cassia and Ky have found what they were looking for, but at the cost of losing each other yet again. Cassia is assigned undercover in Central city, Ky outside the borders, an airship pilot with Indie. Xander is a medic, with a secret. All too soon, everything shifts again. 

     As a conclusion for the "Matched" trilogy, Reached presents a world ready for the change. After the Society's control in "Matched", and new discoveries and challenges in "Crossed", Cassia, Xander and Ky are ready to change. They are ready to get the right to choose how the world they live in should be. Or, at least, they think they are.
     Reached explores how the Rising, the rebellion against the Society, takes over and how the main characters help it happen. Based on facts in the past such as Revolutions and rebellions against governments, I personally thought that the Rising would get control of the Society with more fighting, not so smoothly as it was in the book. I was hoping that the people would react in a different way, specially the Society sympathizers. 
     After the Rising took control of the Society, the people always believed that the next one to be in power would be the Rising's leader, called the Pilot, and they always expected to see him. They actually did, a normal man with leadership skills. But what they did not realize, is that, after the Rising supposedly took control, the next leader was not a man, but a Plague. The Plague was a virus created by the Society to kill "The Enemy", or the people from lands out of the controlled Society. This virus spread all over the Society, weakening it, and initially, the Rising came as a savior with The Cure. But what they did not expect to happen was a mutation. The majority of the book explores the search for a Second Cure, to save the people who were still alive. 
     Ally Condie brought the readers to a different world and exposed them to a different reality and how people planned to take over it, when not satisfied. They were looking for democracy. 
     When the previous problems are solved, the focus is to find how their part of the world is going to be; who was going to lead them. They had three options left: The Rising, The Society, and Anna, a character that represented a democracy based on how some governments work nowadays. The author leaves the reader with the choice. In his own mind, he can choose who would win, he can choose what would have been a mistake or a right choice. I believe that it would have became a democracy, which is a position in the middle, where the majority of the people are. Not control, not total freedom. This way, people are socially controlled, but it has a limit, a limit that gives them the right to choose the path their lives take.
     Reached is a great book, it combines the young romance with the mind of Social Control and how we view the world. It seems to me that it was more extended than it should have been. But still, a pleasure to read. 
     It is a thoughtful book, and Condie combines poetry and a smooth motif in a incredible way.
     The book cover's also have a meaning, their colors relate to the tablets mentioned in the book and what they do with the people. I loved the illustrations in the covers.
     I think I would recommend Reached and the whole Matched trilogy to young adults or teenagers. It explores critical thinking at the same time that it entertains the reader with a good story on the background.
      The "Matched" trilogy would turn into a good movie series!!!

Quotes: " Sometimes paper is only paper, words are just words. Ways to capture the real thing. Don't be afraid to remember that."

" For we are all walking each other to our deaths, and the journey there between footsteps makes up our lives."

" I wish the two of them could see all of this: green field planted with cures for the future; blue sky; a red flag on the top of the City Hall signaling that it is time to choose."

Depression after reading: 90%

Final Rating: 95%

Crossed, by Ally Condie

     Sinopsis

In search of a future that may not exist and faced with the decision of who to share it with, Cassia journeys to the Outer Provinces in pursuit of Ky - taken by the Society to his certain death - only to find that he has escaped, leaving a series of clues in his wake.
Cassia's quest leads her to question much of what she holds dear, even as she finds glimmers of a different life across the border. But as Cassia nears resolve and certainty about her future with Ky, an invitation for rebellion, an unexpected betrayal, and a surprise visit from Xander - who may hold the key to the uprising and, still, to Cassia's heart - change the game once again. Nothing is as expected on the edge of Society, where crosses and double crosses make the path more twisted than ever.

     After an interesting and incredible adventure in the beginning of the "Matched" trilogy, "Crossed" keeps its futuristic dystopia active, immersing the reader in a different and challenging world in which is narrated this time by two of the main characters: Cassia and Ky.
     The name "Crossed" describes really well the book, which follows Cassia's and Ky's journey out of The Society with one major goal: find the Rising - the rebellion against the controlled Society that had been planned and developed for years.
     The story explores the details of their journey through canyons, rivers, farms... A completely different world from the one presented in the first book "Matched", which is organized, there are no mistakes, no diseases,  everything is controlled by The Society that works as an hierarchy , but a major leader was never presented.
     "Crossed" combines a long journey with a teenager romance. It points out details about a simple life that even citizens of our society nowadays do not realize.
     A whole world is out there. Is it good? Is it bad? That's your choice.
     At to what extent is it worth to have your life controlled with no freedom of thinking, but at the same time, to have no worries? The Society will always keep you safe, everything will be in order, you would know and be secure about your job, who you would marry, what you would eat and do. No worries. No freedom.
     A fact that intrigues me and is also mentioned in the book is that back in the past, before the Society even exists, the people who came up with "this idea" asked the others if they wanted to live in a Society designed like it is described in the book. Most of them agreed and accepted. Even though "Matched" is a fictional trilogy, I can see and apply its roots to our society and to the humans we are. The ones who did not want to live in the Society became farmers our villagers, and eventually they started to be attacked and classified by the Society as Aberrations and Anomalies. They chose to be free, but most of them chose to loose their liberty and be "taken care". 
     Citizen or Aberration.
     Again, the choice is yours.

Depression after Reading: 80%

Final Rating: 80%

Promise Me, by Harlan Coben

Synopsis 

The school year is almost over. In these last pressure cooker months of high school, some kids will make the all too common and all too dangerous mistake of drinking and driving. But Myron is determined to help keep his friends’ children safe, and so he makes two neighborhood girls promise him that if they are ever in a bind but are afraid to call their parents, they will call him. Several nights later, the call comes at two a.m. The next day, a girl is missing, and Myron is the last person who saw her. Desperate to fulfill a well-intentioned promise turned horribly wrong, Myron races to find her before she’s gone forever. 





     As I knew from the second I got "Promise Me" from the bookshelf, this book became an "addictive page-turner" for me. Not just because Forbes or Entertainment Weekly said the same, but because Harlan Coben has always been a master in grabbing the reader with his fascinating suspense and involving mood. I've read other titles by Harlan Coben such as "Trust Me" and "When she was gone", both read in portuguese. Now I had the chance to read one of his most sold titles, "Promise Me" which I knew would be a great and smart story, especially because the main character is Myron Bolitar who is the main figure in other 6 books by Harlan Coben.
     The way Harlan Coben works with Myron Bolitar is amazing. His personality and thoughts are a huge part of the story. Myron has an incredible perceptive mind in which leads the reader to deep thoughts. 
     "Promise Me" could be said as a typical Coben's story. It starts with a simple point, a simple and innocent beginning about a promise made by Myron to help senior high-schoolers to prevent them getting in trouble for drinking and driving, and maybe, saving their lives. What Myron did not know when he made this promise was that it would initiate a whole set of entangled problems involving not just the girl's life, Aimee Biel, but also her family,doctor, teachers...
     The book summarizes itself as a pursue for Aimee Biel when she disappears after Myron's help, and he became the first target of the police and of her parents who begged him to help them find their daughter. Making another promise, Myron seeks the girl and tries to solve and understand the context she was involved in, as an detective.
     A brilliant point of this book is how the facts connect with each other in the end. What seemed to be impossible to make even a little bit of sense, after some conclusions, becomes clear and the reader realizes how the answer could have been right there, right in front of you, and Myron Bolitar comes as a smart and intelligent character who breaks the mystery step by step. 
     The book shows how we can change and how far we can go for whose we love. It is not a matter of just love, it is a natural instinct, especially from parents, how it is showed in the book.
     "Promise Me" as a Harlan Coben work, captures the reader and tells lessons revealed by mystery well told. 

Depression after the reading: 70%

Final Rating: 90%