I'm about to start Chapter 17 of Parable of the Sower and it's 11 pm and it just hit me that I'm gonna have to go to sleep soon and, holy crap, this is not some nice, chill before-bed reading. I know it's speculative and all that but the fact it starts out in 2024… damn. Damn, damn, damn. I read Kindred years ago and that wasn't like this. Kindred was some Sci-Fi, never-could-happen kinda weird wacky stuff that allowed Butler to explore a sort of twinned, historical experience of black people in the U.S. which was super informative and introspective, but Parable of the Sower feels so real and it's scary to me that our society could be a stone's throw away from what Lauren has to go through. Even 1984 or Brave New World, while they have similarities, are not as detailed and as contemporary as Parable of the Sower which is really what gets me the most. I feel like I have to go read News From Nowhere to chill out and hope for a better future for our world.
What do you do to chill out when books get too real and start to wind you up? I know the obvious answer is to stop reading for the night, but what else?
by StoneFoundation