New Book

The new book I am reading is The Fall of Five by Pittacus Lore. It is part of the Lorien Legacies series. It's the fourth book in the series. The series is about 10 aliens who have special powers who came to Earth and have to fight their enemies, called Mogodorians. The aliens can only be killed in a certain order, and the first three have died. All of the aliens who are alive are known, except the fifth one. I think that the characters will meet him/her in this book since they have not met him/her yet. I also think that the aliens will think that they have beaten the Mogodorians, when really they haven't. This is one of my favorite series and I am excited to see how the series continues.

Finished A Clockwork Orange

I finally finished A Clockwork Orange! I won't tell the whole ending, but Alex finished his "treatment" and is set off and is a free man, but the "treatment" corrupted him so much that it has to be reversed. I really enjoyed this book and it is now one of my favorites. I think there are a lot of lessons to be learned from this book, and as I said in an earlier post, morality is one of them. I think it puts things in perspective and makes you think "how far is too far?" Alex is one of the most developed characters I have seen in any book I have read and I think the book being told from his point of view changes the whole entire book and it would be a completely different story if it was told from someone else's point of view or if it was told in first person. Alex telling it gives the story a bias, and you start to sympathize with him more and more as the book goes on, but if the reader would sympathize with him if it was told in third person is what makes the book interesting. This is one of my new favorite books and I recommend it to you if you like more mature and difficult books.

Theme

I am getting closer to the end of the book, and I think one of the main themes of this book is morality. How far is it okay to go to stop someone from doing something bad? The "treatment" that they use on Alex is barbaric, and I think the reader has to decide whether they think it's okay to do this to someone just so they stop committing crimes. You really have to weigh things out in your head because Alex did commit serious crimes, like murder and rape, but does anyone deserve the things that they do to him? I honestly don't know. In other words, what is the moral thing to do? I think the book is a little biased, of course, because the book is told from Alex's perspective so you really only see his suffering and not the minds behind the "treatment." I do think the treatment definitely works, but just because something works doesn't make it okay. Morality is a big theme of this book because the reader has to decide for themselves how far we should be going to stop people from committing serious crimes.

Update

Alex was taken to the worst prison because of what he did. The priest at the church there lets him play his music over the church stereo when the prisoners are coming and leaving. He always talks to the priest,so they start to develop a good relationship and the priest tells Alex about this new "treatment" for criminals that will never make them do anything bad or violent ever again. Alex wants to undergo this "treatment," because they let you go right after it's over. Eventually, someone in Alex's cell dies from a heart attack and everyone blames Alex, and they decide that he should be the first to try this "treatment." I won't tell you what they do in case you read the book, but I think the treatment works. All I will say is that it definitely raises some morality issues.

Predictions

My prior prediction that Alex's droogs would once again try to "overthrow" Alex and actually succeed, has come true. They were going to break into a house, and Alex got inside, but everyone else stayed behind. The lady that lived in the house called the police, while her cats attacked Alex and she then threw things at him. Alex told his droogs to help him get away, but Dim said that they had had enough of him and they were leaving him there. The police come and arrest Alex, even though he tries to say that his droogs made him do it. They then tell Alex that they have good news for him, that he's going to be part of an experiment at the city hospital. They don't say what it is but Alex says "And before he told me, I knew what it was... That was everything. I'd done the lot, now. And me still only fifteen." This shows that he know what they are going to do and I think since he says he's only fifteen, it is going to be something really bad. It's porbably something that they only do to the worst criminals, since he's saying he has committed a lot of different crimes when he says "I'd done the lot, now." It's like saying he's committed every crime possible.

A Clockwork Orange Movie

I have just found out that there is a movie version of A Clockwork Orange. It came out in 1971. I would like to watch it when I finish the book. I always read the book before I watch the movie version of it. I think it will be interesting to see how my vision of the setting and characters compare to the ones in the movie. They don't describe the characters a lot in the book, so what I think they look like could be completely wrong. The author does a good job describing the setting, though, so I think I have a good mental image of that. But, sometimes in movies they don't make the settings exactly how they are described in the book. So, I could see the setting the way the author wants to reader to see it, but it could be completely different in the movie. I have also found the IMDb page for A Clockwork Orange and a link to it is on the side of my blog. I also found this movie poster that I think is really cool, which I also put a link to.