Rating: 
Summary: as great as the motion picture
Review: when i was around 16 i saw the motion picture after been forbidden several years in my country and i was fascinated. i was shocked with all that mixed violence and sex showed in it.14 years later ( last week ) i read the book and i was very pleased to see the fidelity related between it and the film. i was like i was watching the movie again... and i have to admit just a few books made me feel that way. is a very delightful reading not only for teenagers but adults too. from the Argentine lands
Bertrán
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Summary: This is the computer revolution's cultural backlash
Review: No book has captured the disillusionment and separation resulting from the schizm formed of technological advancement and cultural devolvement like 'A clockwork Orange' has. Quite simply put, it is a not too distant future of ours. As technology breeds increased comfort and increased isolationism, it also breeds racism, hatred and desensitization. This near 40 year old book really captures this feeling, daring to the reader to attempt to define 'free will' in a world in which all images and content are provided for you and have a singular semiotic meaning. In light of our all too common subway shootouts, our random executions and a penal system spiraling out of control (all things happening relatively recently), it is amazing that Burgess could so accurately cast a world of rave clubs, X, random abuse and Ikea furniture.
This version has the 'controversial' 21st chapter, and let me say the controversy really lies on the choice of the idiot editor who removed it in the first place. It sums up so much and adds an interesting twist to the theme of the book.
If you are between the ages of 16 and 45 and consider yourself to have a social conciousness, this is THE must read book.
Rating:
Summary: A Clock Work Orange
Review: I thought that this was an excellent book and would recommend it to anyone. From the beginning I could not put this book down because I got really wrapped up in Alex's character. His character really reminded me of (in an exaggerated way) a lot of modern youth. Obsessed with violence and not caring what happened to other people, so involved in himself/themselvs he didn't even care he was hurting the people who cared for him like his parents and even his "droogs". I think the message in this book is that no matter what happens that people will always eventually grow up and that even people who might seem happy still have dreams that could make them really happy and not just seem happy on the outside. But as we mature we realize what is making us happy might not be what we need in life so we change our ways and look forward to a better tomorrow.
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Summary: THIS IS NOT A HARDCOVER BOOK
Review: The book is excellent. However, at the time that I am writing this, Amazon lists it as a hardcover. I purchased the book. It is NOT a hardcover book. Click on the closeup view of the front-cover and you can see that it ever SAYS that it's a paperback! You've been forewarned!
Rating: 
Summary: Silly Made up Slang
Review: Part of the my 3 star rating is probably due to the lack of a character to identify with in this book. I think that, for one, made the book much more difficult to truly get into. Most obnoxious however is the slang language used by the teens of the book. It was good idea as a device to help take the reader to another time and place, but let's get real...words like bezoomny, slooshy, and klootch may be taking it a bit too far. I found them distracting. On the positive side, the book does a great job of raising a potentially realistic social issue.
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Summary: Alex, a Droog of mine
Review: The Kubrick movie won Best Picture, and it deserved it. But you should read this book because the language-Nadsat-is beautiful, once mastered. Of course, the story is important for us today because much of Burgess' predictions of the "near future" have come to pass.Open your newspaper and you will find Alex's droogs are alive and well in your neighborhood.As a political/morality tale, it is a classic.Kubrick really couldn't explain Alex as well as Alex can, even though there is some necessary narration in the movie, or else the Nadsat spoken would not be understood.
So,buy it and enjoy! Let "Your Humble Narrator"(Alex) explain all!
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Summary: Dark Psychological Journey
Review: The most famous and one of the most brilliant novels writen by English author, Anthony Burgess. A masterpiece of psychological evaluation, linguistics and satire. The work chronicles the "near future" as seen by Burgess, where he creates a new form of slang and language for his characters and masterminds a dark reality in the vain of "1984," "Brave New World" and similar stories. Yet there is not just the forewarnings of doom seen in the writings of other dark future writers, but also a slightly hidden but wonderful sense of wit and humor. In the American re-edition called the intro "A Clockwork Orange Resucked" and complained bitterly about what Kubrick did with the movie. More likely than not he was proud but just angry with Kubrick's leaving out the final chapter of the book, as he mentions. Burgess looks at the darkest impulses of humanity, and the out of control attempts that society goes to in order to rectify and "cure" the social deviants. This is not just a dark future, but also a warning to us about the course that our reform programs seem to be heading towards. Gritty, dark, somber and somehow always cleaver, this mini novel is a must read for everyone. Burgess flourishes with his mastery of how language works and employs his gifts as a linguist to bring out a colorful sub-culture lingo that has evolved (within the context of the book) from the reasonable and normal perversions of every day speech to the language. Burgess said that there were other books that he would rather have been remembered for. "A CLockwork Orange" brings modern readers to the late Burgess' prose and leaves us interested to go on and see some of the wealth that inhabits the rest of his writing.
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Summary: A Good book with some gory details
Review: A Clockwork Orange has been reguarded as one of the best contemporary classics of today. It is the story of Alex, a member of a gang in a future Britain. Alex goes around amassing destruction, robbery, rape, and murder to his criminal record before being betrayed and sent to jail, where he undergoes a controversial treatment. This treatment is a basic exercise of Pavlov's conditioning in which Alex is taught to hate everything he loves, so that he could leave the institute within two weeks of arriving there. Unfortunately, nothing turns out the way Alex wanted. A Clockwork Orange is a very good book on realizing why we are the way we are. Because of Alex's loss of choice, we learn through Burgess a great deal about how being able to do bad things is so important. The only deterrent to reading this book is the amount of violence, drug-taking, rape, and other things that might be found on a FOX tv show, which were banned worldwide at the time it was published, in the 1950's. If you thought Catcher in the Rye was a immoral book, I wouldn't recommend this, but for those who can stomach the violence to realize the point are well worthy of reading this book. This version of A Clockwork Orange is almost the same as the American version, except that it has a foreword written by Burgess himself, as well as the last chapter which was not published in America. This book is a very good read, and a great addition to the avid reader's library. Two thumbs up!
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Summary: why didn't i get my hands on it earlier???
Review: oh, woe is me... i feel really d'oh! for not getting this book earlier! honestly i've been thinking of getting it for years but never actually got around to it until i borrowed it from my college library early this year... what can i say?
the events in this book took place in the near future... and the world is a weird sort of place. the protoganist, alex is a really bad sort and well, he's really, really, and i mean *really* violent. the problem is, it's by choice. to make things interesting, he comes from a normal family (as normal as it goes; no history of violence, neither rich nor poor sort) and he basically has everything just fine... but, he's not fine. he gives a new meaning to the phrase 'bad to the bone'. not many authors write stories in which the main character is the evil one, and burguess does it without stereotyping that evil/bad ppl have no soul blah, blah, blah but he protrayed alex as a person who sees nothing wrong with violence, in fact, he crave it. now herein lies the problem - how to make readers sympathize with the character. that's the normal recipe for most book, but you know this is not just a normal book.
burguess is simply amazing, and i can't seem to stop sayng that. i'm not gonna go in detail on how alex wound up in prison, suffice to say, he was caught, incarcerated, but our clever alex found a way to beat the system and get his ass out from jail. how? by offering himself as a guinea pig for an experiment to eliminate evil from oneself... scary eh?
i don't condone any of alex's excesses, but i tell you, i found myself sympathizing with his dilemma. the experiment worked, amazingly and alex is 'cured'... but at what price? he is in constant pain because he can't even think of doing a bad thing.
the social dilemma here is not about alex, it's about how far society/government should take responsibility on its' youth and members. do we have the right to direct a person's most treasured possession - his mind - eventhough if it's for the greater good? how can we justify it as right? shuld we make the society mindless drones that are dictated by what we think is right? dare we play god?
alex, brave alex, lost his personality, life, loves, *mind* and was brought to the edge of sanity... that, is the most amazing thing about this book. it lets the reader sees things in a totally different way. burguess didn't make it easy for himself, he wrote the book using the worst character he could dish out and make us find some common ground with alex, and *pity* his predicament! incredible.
and many ppl are simply amazed by his invention of nadsat, the amalgation of russian and english that the kids of alex's generation. it was kinda hard to understand, but the book is totally worth the effort... read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Chock full of ultra violence and such...
Review: (...) This book is not just a blob of violence and rape, it is a fascinating narrative into the lives of a teenage gang who find pleasure in the illicit acts of rape and murder. I recommend this book to anyone who can stand the graphic language of this novel. Check out the movie if you get the chance.
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