Books. I like to think that I am a reader, meaning I like to sit down and read. Genre of choice, fantasy and Sci-fi. Garth Nix introduced me to fantasy with "Sabriel". AAAhhh Sabriel. That book was one that changed me, it opened this whole new realm of possibilities!! Magic, love, defeat, treachery, dragons and all that follows. Another great writer, the great and late Terry Pratchett. Man, he really got me hooked. Not only can you have fantasy, you can have humour, and death and birth and all that on the back of a giant turtle world!
My point... My girlfriend is an avid reader, as in, finishes a book in a day! she is also in the literature industry, and she has a very extensive library at her house. So the other day, when I ignorantly asked: "Who is Margerat Atwood, and why do you have so many of her books?" she almost fell off her chair. It's little reactions like that in a person that makes you know they are passionate about something. I instantly recognized this reaction in her, because I too have that reaction when people don't know what a pangolin is, or "Rhino's are being poached?"...let's not go there, yet. Anyways, i digress. She immediately gave me two books of Margaret Atwood, insisting that I will like it. And low and behold... I love it.
Oryx and Crake takes place after an apocalypse of sorts (I am a sucker for a good apocalypse). The human race basically drove themselves to extinction, and they played the creator by making new animals. You have things like the wolvog (wolf and a dog), a cunning creature that lures you in by acting like a puppy and then the pack attacks, or a rakunk, skunk and racoon (adorable apparently). What is most striking about the book is that it would seem we, as a race, are heading in that direction. They found a way to grow human organs with in pigoons (pigs). People can give stem-cells, and then any organ can be grown within the pig, in case you might need it one day. They also talk about cloning as an every day thing. There are disturbing bits in it, like the fact that, before the apocalypse, people took part in very questionable activities. There are all these different sites on the internet where you can watch people being beheaded, or being legally injected, websites where people assist and film people committing suicide, or eating life animals for prices. The most disturbing are the pornography sites they describe, I won't go into it but, the problem is, some of these things are out there. Messed up things.
The point of this blog, books can change you. Books can change your mind about the world, people around you, and most importantly, it changes your thoughts, ideas, and you. It changes you in such small ways that it isn't even noticeable at first, then you read more, and then one day, you just know you are different, something in you just clicks.
