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Parable of the Sower
- Narrated by: Lynne Thigpen
- Length: 12 hrs
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Publisher's summary
God is change. That is the central truth of the Earthseed movement, whose unlikely prophet is 18-year-old Lauren Olamina. The young woman's diary entries tell the story of her life amid a violent 21st-century hell of walled neighborhoods and drug-crazed pyromaniacs - and reveal her evolving Earthseed philosophy. Against a backdrop of horror emerges a message of hope: if we are willing to embrace divine change, we will survive to fulfill our destiny among the stars.
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Featured Article: 175+ of the Best Quotes from Black Authors, Activists, Entrepreneurs, and Artists to Celebrate Black History Month
Black History is American History. Whether writers, poets, activists, entertainers, scientists, entrepreneurs, or some combination thereof, Black people have frequently offered exactly the right words when they were needed most. This sweeping collection of wise, stirring, and thought-provoking words from Black Americans offers much to inspire all Americans.
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What expert dystopian fiction sounds like
"We lost the genius Octavia Butler far too soon, as evidenced by the close-to-home and all too imaginable dystopian future imagined in the Earthseed duology. Lynn Thigpen’s performance is a work of pure art. As one Audible listener (Amber) put it: "Her voice is raw silk, and her pacing and inflections are perfection, adding layers of meaning to a single word of dialog." Shivers."
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- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A few generations from now, the coastlines of the continent have been redrawn by floods and tides. Global powers have agreed to not produce any new plastics, and what is left has become valuable: Garbage is currency. In the region-wide junkyard that Appalachia has become, Coral is a “plucker", pulling plastic from the rivers and woods. She’s stuck in Trashlands, a dump named for the strip club at its edge, where the local women dance for an endless loop of strangers and the club's violent owner rules as unofficial mayor.
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Trashlands
- By Richard W. Carlson on 01-10-23
By: Alison Stine
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When Love Calls, You Better Answer
- By: Bertice Berry
- Narrated by: Cherene Snow
- Length: 6 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Blackboard best-selling author Bertice Berry is beloved for her spirited romantic comedies. In When Love Calls, You Better Answer, she introduces a good-hearted woman with a track record of attracting bad men. Tireless social worker Bernita Brown has been through it all.
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This is the most amazing book I’ve ever read!
- By Amalishe Tambala on 03-01-20
By: Bertice Berry
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Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
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Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
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The World's Largest Man
- A Memoir
- By: Harrison Scott Key
- Narrated by: Harrison Scott Key
- Length: 9 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Harrison Scott Key was born in Memphis, but he grew up in Mississippi, among pious, Bible-reading women and men who either shot things or got women pregnant. At the center of his world was his larger-than-life father - a hunter, a fighter, and a football coach. Harrison, with his love of books and excessive interest in hugging, couldn't have been less like Pop, and when it became clear that he was not able to kill anything very well or otherwise make his father happy, he resolved to become everything his father was not.
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I laughed every day to and from work. Loved it!
- By KufRN on 06-06-18
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Burro Genius
- A Memoir
- By: Victor Villaseñor
- Narrated by: Robert Fass
- Length: 11 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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When Victor Villaseñor stood at the podium and looked at the group of teachers amassed before him, he became enraged. He had never spoken in public before. His mind was flooded with childhood memories filled with humiliation, misunderstanding, and abuse at the hands of his teachers. With his heart pounding, he began to speak of these incidents. To his disbelief, the teachers before him responded to his embittered recollection with a standing ovation. Many could not contain their own tears.
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The VERY WORST NARRATOR EVER!
- By DIANE ELLIS on 02-20-20
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Black Boy
- By: Richard Wright
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James
- Length: 15 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Richard Wright's powerful and eloquent memoir of his journey from innocence to experience in the Jim Crow South. At once an unashamed confession and a profound indictment, Black Boy is a poignant record of struggle and endurance - a seminal literary work that illuminates our own time. The once controversial, now classic American autobiography measures the brutality and rawness of the Jim Crow South against the sheer desperate will it took to survive as a Black boy. Seventy-five years later, his words continue to reverberate.
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Outstanding
- By Trevin Harvey on 11-11-20
By: Richard Wright
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In Order to Live
- A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
- By: Yeonmi Park
- Narrated by: Eji Kim
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In In Order to Live, Yeonmi Park shines a light not just into the darkest corners of life in North Korea, describing the deprivation and deception she endured and which millions of North Korean people continue to endure to this day, but also onto her own most painful and difficult memories. She tells with bravery and dignity for the first time the story of how she and her mother were betrayed and sold into sexual slavery in China and forced to suffer terrible psychological and physical hardship before they finally made their way to Seoul, South Korea - and to freedom.
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Wow. What a story!
- By Jfm on 02-01-16
By: Yeonmi Park
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A Different Drummer
- By: William Melvin Kelley
- Narrated by: Jay Smooth
- Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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June 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state’s entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.
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A wonderful and moving story
- By E. on 10-25-19
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Night Stalker
- By: Shirlee McCoy
- Narrated by: Emily Durante
- Length: 5 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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After Special Agent Adam Whitfield’s ex-wife is nearly killed when she stops an abduction, the serial killer that Adam’s been hunting turns his focus on Charlotte Murray for getting in his way. Now, as the Night Stalker closes in, Adam has two missions: bring the murderer to justice and save Charlotte - because failure isn’t an option.
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Christian faith throughout story
- By Celtic Gardens on 10-20-20
By: Shirlee McCoy
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The Voice of the Night with Short Story, "Silence"
- By: Dean Koontz
- Narrated by: Pavi Proczko, Kirby Heyborne
- Length: 9 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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No one could understand why Colin and Roy were best friends. Colin was so shy; Roy was so popular. Colin was fascinated by Roy - and Roy was fascinated by death. Then one day, Roy asked his timid friend: “You ever killed anything?” From that moment on, the two were bound together in a game too terrifying to imagine - and too irresistible to stop.
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can not believe dean koontz wrote this book
- By Anonymous User on 10-05-21
By: Dean Koontz
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imaginative!
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Well-balanced space opera
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Whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are producing speculative fiction. Organizers and activists envision and try to create such worlds all the time. Walidah Imarisha and adrienne maree brown have brought 20 of them together in the first anthology of short stories to explore the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change.
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Her name is Binti, and she is the first of the Himba people ever to be offered a place at Oomza University, the finest institution of higher learning in the galaxy. But to accept the offer will mean giving up her place in her family to travel between the stars among strangers who do not share her ways or respect her customs. Knowledge comes at a cost, one that Binti is willing to pay, but her journey will not be easy. The world she seeks to enter has long warred with the Meduse, an alien race that has become the stuff of nightmares.
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Messages
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Abel Sanchez and Other Stories
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Here is an essential Unamuno collection, offering a full-length novel, Abel Sanchez, and two remarkable stories, "The Madness of Doctor Montarco" and "San Manuel Bueno, Martyr".
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Spanish Dostoyevsky
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The Deep
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Yetu holds the memories for her people - water-dwelling descendants of pregnant African slave women thrown overboard by slave owners - who live idyllic lives in the deep. Their past, too traumatic to be remembered regularly, is forgotten by everyone, save one - the historian. This demanding role has been bestowed on Yetu. Yetu remembers for everyone, and the memories, painful and wonderful, traumatic and terrible and miraculous, are destroying her. And so, she flees to the surface, escaping the memories, the expectations, and the responsibilities.
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why was this read by a dude?
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Station Eleven (Television Tie-in)
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Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.
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gah!
- By Stacy on 10-08-14
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Earth Abides
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The cabin had always been a special retreat for Isherwood Williams, a haven from the demands of society. But one day while hiking, Ish was bitten by a rattlesnake, and the solitude he had so desired took on dire new significance. Ish headed home when he finally felt himself again—and noticed the strangeness almost immediately. No cars passed him on the road; the gas station not far from his cabin looked abandoned; and he was shocked to see the body of a man on the roadside near a small town. Without a radio or phone, Ish had no idea of humanity’s abrupt demise.
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The accolades are undeserved
- By 2duckornot2duck on 04-26-21
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La estirpe de Lilith [Lilith's Brood]
- Trilogía Xenogénesis [Xenogenesis Trilogy]
- By: Octavia E. Butler, Luis García Vigil - translator
- Narrated by: Juanita Delgado Jaramillo
- Length: 32 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Treinta años después de su primera publicación en castellano, La estirpe de Lilith, título que reúne la Trilogía Xenogénesis en un solo volumen, vuelve a las librerías dispuesta a reivindicar a Octavia E. Butler como la gran pionera que deslumbró en ciencia ficción siendo una mujer negra. Hoy se la considera la primera escritora afroamericana de género en incorporarse al canon de la literatura norteamericana.
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Excelente Voz y Narración
- By Silvia R. Arregoyte on 01-26-23
By: Octavia E. Butler, and others
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Gather the Daughters
- A Novel
- By: Jennie Melamed
- Narrated by: Laurence Bouvard
- Length: 10 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
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Years ago, just before the country was incinerated to wasteland, 10 men and their families colonized an island off the coast. They built a radical society of ancestor worship, controlled breeding, and the strict rationing of knowledge and history. Only the Wanderers - chosen male descendants of the original 10 - are allowed to cross to the wastelands, where they scavenge for detritus among the still-smoldering fires.
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A gripping but disturbing read
- By Ashlyn on 08-03-17
By: Jennie Melamed
What listeners say about Parable of the Sower
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amber
- 05-28-14
Dystopia before dystopia was cool...
Love, love narrator Lynne Thigpen. LOVE HER. While hers is plainly the voice of a mature woman and not a teenager, she perfectly channels Lauren’s “old soul” persona. A few reviewers have complained that she’s too slow, but poetry is not improved by speeding it up, and Thigpen’s reading is just that—pure poetry. Her voice is raw silk, and her pacing and inflections are perfection, adding layers of meaning to a single word of dialog. I hung on every sentence, every word, and was happy to be carried along at the story’s natural pace. Hungry for more of her work, I looked her up. It’s clear that she has been pigeonholed into only reading audiobooks with black protagonists, and a small number of those, which I think is a gross under-appreciation of her talents.
On its face, there’s nothing that extraordinary about the plot—it’s a classic dystopian/post-apocalyptic future story, in which a band of survivors travels a ruined country, fending off bandits and natural disasters, searching for a safe haven in which to build a secure new home. If any of it seems clichéd, bear in mind it was first published in 1993, before dystopia became trendy and the genre became so glutted.
Butler first sets the scene, in a grim near-future that’s all too easy to imagine- America’s (and perhaps the world’s--that is left purposely vague) economy and government have become moribund, leaving thousands unemployed, homeless and desperate. While familiar institutions like police and fire departments and federal and state governments still exist, they are ineffectual, and violence and vigilante justice have become the law of the land in most places. Lauren Olamina is one of the relatively lucky ones—a member of a shrinking middle class, living in an armed, walled neighborhood in the outskirts of Los Angeles, drifting closer to poverty every year as the times grow leaner, the climate grows drier, and the thieves outside grow more desperate. Blessed with a dream and a gift for oratory, Lauren leaves the smoking ruins of her home and sets forth with a gun, a few hundred dollars, two traveling companions, and little else but her own determination to survive. Adventure ensues.
It’s Lauren’s philosophical ideas, not the plot, that captivated me. Lauren, a young woman of passing vision and resolve, daughter of the neighborhood’s Baptist minister, has been observing the decline of society her whole life, and concluded at the tender age of 15 that the religion of her father has no place in this tempestuous new world. The idea of God as a sort of super-person in the sky who cares individually about every soul and patiently waits to hear and answer humanity’s prayers is patently false to her… and more importantly, of no real use in this world. Her parents’ generation are doggedly waiting and praying for the good old days to return, but Lauren knows praying to the old gods won’t help – any good times which may lie ahead will have to be seized and built anew by those of her own generation. She invents—or discovers, depending on your point of view—a new religion for the new world she is determined to build, and calls it EarthSeed.
The principles of EarthSeed are simple, but profound. Its most basic, most often repeated tenet is,
“All that you touch, you Change.
All that you Change, Changes you.
The only lasting truth is Change.
God is Change.”
This may seem strange to those who are used to thinking of God as a person, or at least a consciousness. But if one defines God as simply that ultimate, most pervasive truth in the universe over which no higher power or truth can be found to hold sway, it makes perfect sense. When Lauren was questioned by her traveling companions, she answered simply, “Then show me another force that is more pervasive than change.” Everything changes, even the universe itself. Nothing is immune.
Like some of the characters in the book, I question whether Lauren’s ideas are truly a religion—after all, her philosophy doesn’t attempt to answer any of those fundamentally unanswerable questions that are the unique province of religion, such as, “Where do we come from?” “Where are we going?” or “Why are we here?” And it doesn’t appear to facially impose a moral code of behavior, at least not as it’s developed in this book. However, at least one verse from the Book of the Living hints at a moral code:
“Any Change may bear seeds of benefit. Seek them out.
Any Change may bear seeds of harm. Beware.
God is infinitely malleable. God is Change.”
Lauren’s character and ideas appeal to me on many levels. At the age of 15, she had the strength of will to challenge and reject as false and useless the religion practiced by the person she loved and respected most in the world. That’s not an easy thing, and it takes some very deep convictions. Her religion, such as it is, appeals to me as an atheist because it doesn’t require belief in or worship of anything supernatural or mystical—it is quite simply an acknowledgment of and respect for a natural truth of the universe. It is immanent rather than transcendent. Most importantly, it’s useful and helpful both in Lauren’s world and ours. It recognizes the spark of divinity in each of us—we can all be agents of Change. We can all be mini-deities and alter reality to create better or worse outcomes for ourselves and those around us. And we are all subject to the power of Change, and we must be prepared to face the consequences of our behavior and our environment. In EarthSeed’s credo, to plan, build, work, support your community and be supported by it, prepare for change and be ready for it, are sacred acts, or as close to sacred as Lauren is willing to offer. I suspect I’ll be thinking about these ideas for a long time to come and pondering how they apply to everyday life in this world rather than Lauren’s.
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131 people found this helpful
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- David
- 03-18-11
A dystopian vision of collapsed America
Lauren Olamina, a minister's daughter, lives in a gated community that falls prey to the violence and anarchy that's been eating away at the edges of civilization for years. It's a brutal novel, as everyone Lauren loves dies, and the deaths are often gruesome. Lauren herself suffers from a condition called hyper-empathy, which causes her to feel what people around her feel... a very bad thing when people around her are being attacked, raped, and killed.
But Lauren is anything but a fragile helpless character. She carries the seeds of a new religion, and she's been planning for the collapse since she was a child. This novel has a lot in common with similarly-themed SF where the protagonist is a "chosen one" destined to lead his or her people out of chaos and barbarism, except that no one has "chosen" Lauren. She's decided for herself that this is something she has to do.
The story takes us on Lauren's journey up the coast of California, as its highways are flooded with refugees and its cities burn (thanks in large part to a drug which turns people into psychotic pyromaniacs). What is most interesting is not Lauren's "adventures" (which are mostly just a series of tense encounters fraught with dangers, as she constantly has to weigh the need for allies against the hazards of trusting unknown people on the road) but the brutal laying bare of certain truths beneath our capitalist society. Lauren's father foresaw the coming collapse and tried to keep his family from being lured into company towns that were economic traps, but even he didn't foresee how bad things would really become. Lauren discovers that slavery is real, and has been real and common, right here in the U.S., for quite some time.
It's a cynical and pessimistic view of the future, but it's not far from how many people live today. Ultimately, the book gives some hope for the future, but there is certainly going to be more blood and tears along the way.
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52 people found this helpful
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- Daniel Ward
- 01-02-15
Best Distopian Future Novel
What did you love best about Parable of the Sower?
Much of what Butler says about the world in this book, you can clearly see coming towards us in our times now. This book may, border on prophetic. LOL
What about Lynne Thigpen’s performance did you like?
Probably one of the best, if not THE best reading I've heard.
Perfect presentation of the story.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
I wanted to listen to it all at once but, spread it out to make it last longer.
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34 people found this helpful
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- Peregrine
- 10-24-09
A good story, a little preachy
I can't decide if the author intends us to take seriously the religion developed by the main character. It's pretty lightweight stuff. But the tale of survival in 2025 California is entertaining. It's not America in the post-apocalypse, exactly, but in the middle of new Great Depression as it is becoming a corrupt violent dangerous capitalist country like Brazil or India.
Some of the dialogue is embarrassingly stilted--audio books bring that out, and the reader is very, very slow--I listened on my iPhone in 2x speed, and I do believe that helped the pace.
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28 people found this helpful
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- David S. Mathew
- 01-17-17
Seeds among the Bitter Earth
This is the first half of Octavia Butler's Earthseed series. It is a coming of age story of a young girl surviving in a rapidly deteriorating world ravaged by unchecked corporate greed, open government corruption, and rampant crime. Rape, torture, and mutilation fairly common outside of walled communities. But not content to simply survive, our heroine grows a new religion, known as "Earthseed," to give hope to an almost hopeless world. Fair warning, this is the grimmest vision of the future I've read since The Road and this actually might be worse.
Also, special praise must be reserved for Lynne Thigpen. She is absolutely flawless in this production and I can't wait to listen to her again. Very highly recommended!
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26 people found this helpful
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- Alysia
- 02-26-13
A Bit Dark but Beautiful
This is the second book I have read by Octavia Butler. And I have to say that this one was darker than Kindred. This book was dark yet gripping.
This book is was written in a journal style of a teenager named Lauren Olamina. The only daughter of a neighborhood preacher in 2024, California. The world has changed and violence, poverty, hunger is everywhere. Did I say violence? Wheww! I had to take a minute and stop here and there due to the graphic nature of the violence in this book. I think I am kinda ok with a bad guy (character) getting murdered, raped, or burned but when it happens to children in a book it seems to take my breath away. And not in a good way. The violence in 2024 does not discriminate at all. Young, old, men and woman are victims in this book.
But for some reason I was hooked to find out what happens to Lauren in this desperate landscape. Lauren's dream of creating an Earthseed community builds up as she travels from her home to a new Northern community. This is the backbone and the silver lining in the book that keeps the reader interested. I found myself worrying for Lauren and the people she meets along the way.
I really enjoyed the thoughtfulness of Octiavia Butler's writing. As I was listening to the book I could sense Octavia was giving us a glimpse of the future with a dose of the extreme terrible on top. What would happen if the $4.00 a gallon gas jumped to $40.00 a gallon? I for one would have to quite my job. Then what?
If you have a strong constitution and can handle violence in all forms then you might find this a great read.
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- Maria Williams
- 10-21-15
AMAZING Read!!!
This storyline was so enchanting and hypnotizing. I couldn't stop until I reached the end, and then grew upset because I wanted more, I went through every emotion, my eyes swelled up with tears more than once and despite the horrid conditions, there were moments I smiled in joy for Laura. This book makes you go into deep thought of social and environmental problems of today and what our future will look like if we continue. Amazing, amazing book. I must read more by Octavia Butler.
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14 people found this helpful
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- Krymson
- 10-09-15
The Road meets the Celestine Prophesy
A lovely book and performance. Duskilly read and occasionally soft and tough to hear on a drive, but entrancing and worth stretching to listen.
I now want to read a Book Of The Living, and this book is responsible for that.
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- Tanya Twombly
- 08-05-15
Wonderful, terrifying, riveting
A bleak and so very plausible vision of what our future might hold. Yet, hope is never lost. we can change. Change is everything. Wonderfully read.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Sarah C
- 10-29-14
Compelling, Inspirational, Smart Dystopian Tale
I loved the pacing of the performance, the narrator seemed to embody the character of Lauren Olamina. The imagery was engaging, and the geography tested my mental map of California (I've lived in both L.A. and the Bay Area). The theology of Earth Seed had me thinking of the Process Theology I've studied in classes.
Highly recommended Spec Fic!
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