There are certain books that are always on our periphery. They live at the edges of our consciousness, going “Hey, read me sometime, will ya?” The ones we always think we should get around to, but there’s always something newer and edgier and shiny-er that’s grabbing our attention. For me, one of those books has always been The Handmaid’s Tale, which did dystopia before it was cool. The other night, I gave in and started a 30-day free trial of Kindle Unlimited, just to see if it was worth it. This was the first book I saw and the time was finally right. The ability to seamlessly go from reading to listening didn’t hurt, either, as I was able to finish it on my drive to see a friend this weekend. As the book ended, I couldn’t help but wonder what took me so long to read it.
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So glad you got around to reading it. It remains one of my favorite books and I’m always tempted to get that lovely Latin phrase tattooed on me. I haven’t yet, but I’m sure I will.
That was one of my first thoughts! I looked it up the first time I read it in the book, before it was explained, and thought it was just perfect. I vote we go for tattoos!
I had a similar experience with this book — it seems like everyone I know read it in high school for class, but somehow I never did. When I finally did read it, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t do so 15 years ago!
It just sticks with you so much. I don’t think this was an assigned reading for us in high school (not that I would have read it if it was…) but I can see how it should be. It’s one of those books that seems really important.
Hmm. The Handmaid’s Tale was on my TBR list for a long time but I kind of took it off after reading the Oryx and Crake trilogy, my first Margaret Atwood experience, which was largely a negative one. I thought the books were well written but there were also kind of relentlessly bleak, which did not go over well for me at the time. It sounds like The Handmaid’s Tale of more of the same, but I’m in a better place to deal with it now, so I will give it a try!
Oh, it’s fairly relentless in it’s bleakness, but I did find a thread of hope that found it’s way through the book. It’s not much, but it’s enough to keep it from tipping over into really dark territory.