The Giver – Lois Lowry – Episode 36

The Buddies feel out the literary classic and 6th grade favorite, the Giver by Lois Lowry. Ever wanted to hear a 10-minute argument about what colors are? Interested in increasing your unit size? Don’t think that brain development is that important? Well if you answered yes to any of those questions, we got the podcast for you. So pop that shirt off and join us as we transmit our memories of The Giver. 

 Intro: (0:00-2:51)
 Stock Up/Down (2:52-28:38)
 Favorite Scene/Character (28:39-32:40)
 Love/Hate (32:41-47:18)
Listener Email (47:19-51:53)
Conclusion (51:54-53:48)

Next Book: THE ALCHEMIST by PAULO COELHO

Transcript for SEO Purposes 🙂

All right. Welcome to Buddy Book Club. I’m Dylan, here with my comfort object, my receiver, Keith. What’s up, buddy? Hello there. You’re the receiver for sure. Take your shirt off, Dylan. I’ll let you see new colors. All right, well, here at the Buddy Book Club, we’ll break it down to best sellers. And this week we’ll be discussing the giver by Louis Lowry. If you’d like to reach out to us to recommend a book for us to read or about any past episodes, you can visit our website but@bookhold.com or slide into our DMs on Twitter or Instagram Body Book Club podcast. You can listen to us on itunes and spotify. So please download and subscribe. Keith, I feel like we just spoke because we did a podcast a couple of days ago, I feel like but just hearing your voice, it gives me the stirring. So I just wanted you to know that I appreciate that I edited it. So I’m talking to you all the time. You don’t realize it, but I’m you’re listening to me, like having conversations with you, it’s a little creepy. It’s fine. I text you and I’m like, yeah, man, good point. You’re like what I’m like? I guess I was on an audio recording. Yeah, that’s fair. All right, so like we said this week, we were talking about The Giver. Most of us read this in I think I was in 6th grade. Just for listeners out there. The next couple of books, we’re going to try to do some back to school reading stuff, considering it is September, but basically give her being like 6th, 7th grade, we’re going to try to stick with that and go like 7th, 8th grade. Eight. 9th grade. We’ll see maybe do two or three. We’ll see how that goes. Granted, like everything we read is pretty much at the 9th grade level. So kicko pass that because then we’ll expose ourselves. 9th grade is a stretch, though. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, we’re reading like Dash daevsky. I was learning as I was reading this about there’s like this reading level, like how many points or something. So this book is probably like 600, 700 points. And then we’re going to read All Quiet on the Western Front, that’s like 800 or whatever, which equates it to like 8th grade level, something like that. So I think that’s probably our wheelhouse and we’re going to stick in there. Okay. Let’s get into the giver, though. The Giver is basically about how if an older man takes you into his dwelling, get your shirt off and puts his hands on you, then you have to escape to elsewhere. No, I don’t think so. I think you finally feel something for the first time. Oh, okay. So we read this totally different. No, it’s subtext. It’s all about subtext. But the community that The Giver is based on is basically a community or civilization which is built to protect people from choice because it’s safer to not have choice. It’s pretty much the gist, right? Yeah. But I choose to move into stock up. Stock down. So let’s just dive right into that. Keith, stock up the giver. What do you got? Astrological science. Astrology. Stock up. Okay. I know you’re a big astrology guy, D man. I know you read your horoscopes. No, the SGF is, but oh, really? Okay. Can I not make fun of it? No, that’s all I do. All right, well, we’re going in on it, actually. No, I’m actually saying stock up. What? So in this society, much like in the real world, you could be born on the first of the year or the last day of the year, and you’re considered a certain age. Eleven. Right. You’re just eleven. And then the next year happened and you’re twelve. But there’s a huge competitive advantage to someone that’s born early. As Malcolm Gladwell. Yes. For economics. Malcolm Gladwell. Apparently, 12% of baseball players are born in the month and July, whereas only 6% are born in August. Because the cut off date in baseball is typically in a certain date in July. So if you’re older, you’re bigger than everyone else that’s in your class. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy. Right. You’re just going to keep on being promoted. You’re going to be pushed towards baseball, push to play for the better teams. You play better competition, you just become better. Yeah. And so the same thing for this society, is like they’re basically killing off people. Unless you’re the strongest. Kind of like the 300 type. Shit. Don’t kill them. They release them. Okay. Don’t put the charge word. Precision of language, please. Yeah. I apologize. They release them. I accept your apology. Yeah. So, astrology, when you’re born, it matters. So stock up to Virgos out there. Stock up to cancers. I only know maybe one more horse. No, that’s another one. Periscopes out there. Terraces. They go with truck names, right? Ford, Terrace. What are you my joke is always people are like, what are you? I say virgin. Oh, no, Virgo. Sorry. I’m used to saying that. You can have that one. Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. But that has nothing to do with the horoscopes or astrology. It’s just you’re talking just when you were born, but you tied it into it. Yeah, same difference. What’s your moon sign? Keith? I haven’t looked at the charts recently. Are they different? I have no idea what that means. You send me the day you were born, where you were born, and the time you were born, and I’ll give you everything. My first stock up is the shitty and painful parts of life. So this stock is definitely down. No one likes that stuff. Those are all difficult, right? Unfortunately, in the words of the famous rapper and nap time without the rain, we can’t appreciate the sun. But that’s a big part of what this whole society is all about, right? It’s trying to get people away from pain and remorse and grief and loss and all that stuff. But if you don’t have any of those things, it doesn’t make any of the good stuff worth it. You go to someone’s work function or we used to do this when we were like kids. You go to a party and some kid would want like a casino night or something like that and I was like, Cool, where’s the money at? It’s like, no, we’re just playing like fake chips. What? You don’t lose anything. There’s no risk. There’s no risk of loss. So you can’t win anything at the same time. And it’s the same with this society and it’s the same with life. Even though we have those furry friends in our life that give us so much joy, eventually there’s some grief with us and it kind of makes you feel better when you have those tough times because then you think about all the good times that led up to it and you feel better. So sameness. I’m not really for you stock up the shitty and painful parts of life. I’m going to have to disagree with you there. The problem with having choices and having that stuff is that there’s a lot of boredom that happens in life, right? You’re just like constantly realizing that you could be doing something better. You have to work 8 hours a day. You have to sleep. You get all these choices that you choose to have to do something that’s not fun, right? Yeah. They’re literally bathing old people and loving it. They’re like, oh man, just such a great society. Just hanging out here, bathing people. What a good day. This is. Like, imagine that bathing. That’d be like my worst nightmare. And they’re like fucking loving it. So I kind of would love that bliss of just like the boredom is great. Every single day is great. Everything is good. I don’t need the highs and lows. Just give me that. I’ll take that. So you’re just saying no spikes, no spikes, just flat. And you’re like being like, I need to feel I need to do something. Gambling, you’re saying something that’s like super up or down, which obviously but 90% of your day consists of flatness. Your example doesn’t make sense. If you’re like, driving to work sucks, but I appreciate that. Now it’s like, no, no one ever likes that. That’s the worst. Well, I listen to audiobooks when I drive. Oh, okay. Well, yeah, that’s true. I see your point. I think it’s fair. I think that’s kind of the point of this book in general is are you cool with the sameness are you not cool with it? There’s definitely advantages in that. No one is necessarily competing with it. There’s no popularity contests, but then we don’t have sports. It doesn’t work. Like that recreation, which I’m going to get into that later because it didn’t really seem to make a ton of sense to me, but the whole idea of everyone is the same. You can’t kind of stand out from anyone else. I like that aspect of it. Like, no bragging and stuff like that. That makes sense to me. But you can’t feel love. You can’t feel intimacy, because the opposite of that. If you loved your wife and then she was released, it’d be terrible. Instead, not in a society. You’d be celebrating it. You’d be like, all right, awesome. Fuck. You got it right. Jump on board. Let’s get him to society. All right. I feel like we’re going to keep talking about it with the other stuff, so let’s just keep going with some more stock ups. What else did you have for stock up? Stock up colors are the same theory. That’s my own theory. Wait, I think I’ve heard this one before. Yeah, I’ve told you before you didn’t like it, so I tried to write it out and make it make sense. It doesn’t make sense, but it makes sense. So here’s my theory. And this is brought to light kind of in this book as well. But you can’t describe the color orange or red, right? You just can’t describe it. You just get to know what it is. Right? I follow. Yeah. You can say something is, like, vibrant or dull. So people, they see a color and they say, that’s appealing to me. That pleases me, that color. Right. And they associate a word with it. They say, that’s blue, that’s red. And everyone says, this is my favorite color. I like this color. That looks good. My theory is that every color that is appealing to people is the same color. It’s just they see it in their eyes differently. So it’s kind of like a language. Right. Hello. Bonjour jumbo jumbo. What? Yeah, that’s Kenyan. Hello. Okay. Jumbo ji. That’s

jumbo. Jumbo. They’re all forms of hello, but they all mean the same thing. That’s what colors are. We all see the exact same colors. So whatever your favorite color is. My favorite color in my eyes, but we call things differently. I’m so confused. No, it didn’t clear. That all right. You see the color red? No. So we’re looking at an orange, like an actual orange? Yes. And is orange your favorite color or color that’s pleasing to you? Sure, it’s pleasing to me. Okay. If orange isn’t my favorite color, I’m seeing what I would consume. I consider a different color than your eyes. Disease. Our eyes are seeing no matter what. It’s always whatever appealing to us. We just see different colors. Does that make sense? You don’t see an orange as the color orange? Yeah. Well, your orange is my orange is something different, but we just associate a word with it. So if we’re looking at a rainbow, right, it has very systematic colors. The rainbow is always the same, different colors in the same order. So you’re telling me if we both looked at the rainbow and I saw the top one and I was like, that’s red, you would say, no, that’s not red. No, I would say that’s red. But red may not be what my eyes perceive as my favorite color, but the colors that we perceive as best are the same color in our eyes. There’s no likes of colors. There’s just so my favorite color, difference of names. My favorite color is red. What’s your favorite color? Turquoise. Blue make it easy. No, turquoise is fine. So when I look at a turquoise stone, which is a real stone turquoise, I’m seeing red and you’re seeing turquoise. You’re seeing a color that you don’t like as much. I’m seeing the same color that you would consider the favorite color. I don’t know what that means. It doesn’t make you have a pair of shorts, turquoise shorts and a pair of red shorts. Yeah, my eyes and your eyes. The colors are the opposite of each other. Like, you’re seeing your favorite color. I’m seeing my favorite color. They’re both the same color. However, I look at mine and I say, that’s turquoise. You look at yours, you say, that’s red. I look at your red, and I say, that’s red. It’s not my favorite color. You look at turquoise, you say, that’s not your favorite color. But they’re reversed. Yeah. Duh. What? Okay,

 

Participant #1:

if you think about it, we are all stupider now for your age. Well, that may be true, but it’s a good theory. I can’t explain it, but I can explain it properly if you just understood it. This needs to be a blog post because I need visual AIDS or something. This is something else. All right, I’m going to get into my next stock up. My brain is just confused. Arranged marriages stock up. So different societies approach us in different ways. Our society being United States, Anglo Saxon people, we frown upon this. We do not like this idea. Things should not be arranged for some reason. We should go out there, go to a bar, get drunk, meet someone, and then decide to marry them. That’s not how it happened with me, but I’m just saying that’s typically in this day and age, but these other countries where they say, hey, you got 20 goats, I got a daughter. Like, let’s make an exchange. Sometimes that can work, especially in this giver culture, because everyone seems to be chill, right? Obviously, there’s no issues of divorce or anything like that. Holy smokes. People be released left and right, but they do it in a way because they’re monitoring these kids from day one. It’s like they can match people up appropriately so that there’s a good relationship between the two. I’m going to say, quote unquote, parents. I mean, obviously they’re parents of children, but it’s a successful relationship. It might not be the most intimate or loving relationship because those things don’t exist, but just in terms of compatibility, it checks out. So I think there’s probably something here where they’re trying to do it with all the dating apps and whatnot you put in all your likes and they match you up with somebody. But unfortunately, most relationships, at least the ones that I’m familiar with, it’s not like, oh, I like skiing and she likes skiing, so we’re both going to be compatible. It’s sometimes like, I like skiing and she thinks skiing is really stupid, so she wants to stay inside and make chile while I ski. That sounds great. So I feel like there’s some algorithm that eharmony and those websites haven’t yet fine tuned. Well, then we can get into a place where in the next few decades we’re really going to be finding these very successful matches based on the sites. And they’ll probably be genetically based as well as interest and whatever you think your future will be. I’m not saying it will be perfect, but I think the success rate will probably be higher. What are your thoughts on that Dystopian future for America? Yeah, I listened to some podcast. I think it’s called Startup Maybe or something like that. And it was basically initially about a guy starting a podcast thing. And then the second season was about these girls that did a dating site and their whole thing was like, you send your pictures and we’re going to rate you and then match you up with someone that’s the same level as you. And that’s what it kind of sounded like. This society, they believe that every single person if you saw someone, every single person would rate them within two points of each other. So like, you see a guy that’s a six, one person might say five, one person might say seven. But within the averages would be there would be between two points of each. So you’re saying every like you’re I’m a two. What does that say about Allie then? Yeah, she’s blind.

Yeah. Well that’s good because my SGF is a ten. So that means I’m at least an eight, right?

 

Yeah, I saved myself. I don’t know about you. It’s okay. They don’t listen. They don’t listen. So their premise is that couples are always within like two points of each other. Like this is just looks based yeah, just based off looks. I’m going to think about that actually, when I walk around, I’m going to think about that. I like this. I like this Dystopian stuff because really we don’t talk about the book. We’re just talking about like weird societal trends and whatnot. So I can dig it. But either way, arranged marriages, stock up. Just make sure you’re within two points of each other. What else did you have for stock up? That was it for stock up. Oh, okay. I had one more, which is a good lozenge. I don’t know if you’re into halls or when your throat is a little itchy or something, whatever your thing is. Maybe those cherry ones that are really just candy. But Ron Rifkin, the guy who does this audiobook, lot of weird throat swallowings. I like the guy. Don’t get me wrong, I like the guy. I thought he was a good narrator. I think he was good in The Negotiator. He’s also in a bunch of other movies. He’s just a good character actor, I think. But throughout this, it was like he didn’t notice that. No, I mean, it’s one of those things. If you pointed it out, I would not be able to hear it. You know what I mean? It was like he had a slightly dry throat and he kept swallowing in a weird way. It totally took me out of it. I hated the fucking music. They thought they were Han Zimmerman. They just start playing music. Han Zimmer, whatever his name is. What did I say? He added a man to it. But I love it. Well, he’s the terrorist from Diehard Hans Gruber. Either way. Yes, but they started doing loud orchestras all of a sudden for no reason. I was like, Wait, what’s happening? There is nothing worse than a tick you hear in an audiobook and you can’t get over it. Yeah. So I think you just need a throat lozenge. Not a big deal. Take one. I can give you throat lozenges. Let’s jump into stock. Down. What do you get? Brain development. Stock down. Please tell me more. This is really for me again. But the whole brain development thing is for the birds. It’s not that really required. I went back and looked at my Facebook profile. It was set up in high school. I haven’t been touched it since then. I like the same music, exact same movies, food, everything. The three books I listed. Vince Flynn, Harry Potter, two that we obviously love and The Giver. And I like this giver likes. It’s a 6th grade read. So, I mean, I just haven’t developed in any way in my brain. And here’s the thing you think about high school. We didn’t have jobs, we didn’t have responsibilities. I have the same exact likes. What’s the point of growing up? There’s no point in developing a brain or getting even smarter. Stay in school, live there forever. Billy Madison said that. Stock down, brain development, no need for it. So I see why you like the sameness, because you also like your culinary interests are cheese it’s, baby carrots. I’ve expanded those a little bit. I like honey mustard. Oh, good for you. Do you ever watch Doug when you were a kid? A little bit. The only thing that really sticks with me is when he’d open up his closet to get closed on for the day. And it was just eight outfits that were exactly the same, which I actually thought was a great joke for cartoons because every cartoon character wears the same clothes every time. But Doug funny at least showed that. Okay, I have the exact same outfit for every single day. And I feel like that’s a little bit of, like, you with your khaki. Wait, Steve Jobs and Einstein did that also, so thank you. Yeah, I’ll take that for sure. No, nothing wrong. I mean, work from home, do you have more than three outfits? Work from home? I don’t. It’s the same mess. Shorts and then rotating a three to four t shirts. That’s it. Yeah, I understand. Actually, my brother in law turned me onto these shirts. And there are these merino wool shirts that you never have to wash. You literally never have to wash. Really? Like some crazy technology. I went to that. They’re $100 a pop, so they’re like not cheap. Okay. But he bought like a three pack for $220 or something like that. And it’s like made by people who work out and hike and stuff like that. And some guy went on like an international business trip, took two shirts, worked out every day, used one when he was sitting in the sauna. And they never smell or anything like that. If it gets wet, you let it air dry and you can put it back on and it just never smells. It’s good for like 45 days. Were you smelling it though? Oh, are you kidding me? I was going right into those pits. I was like, come on, I need the first hand, first hand account. Okay. My stock down is increasing your unit size. So stay with me here, okay? Gambling? Or are we talking about something other units? Yeah, we’re talking about gambling. And because of this football season, I want to discuss this normally. And this happens to me almost every year, is week one of the NFL season starts, and I come in with a very conservative unit size and then I win week one. And I decided to put this Swedish made penis larger pump on and increase my unit size drastically and then lose everything. So it’s really about ratcheting things up in very small degrees. And this is what they didn’t do in the giver. I mean, this kid Jonas is twelve, right? He’s just turned twelve. He’s going into training. I mean, remember you as a twelve year old and then imagine you as a twelve year old that had never seen anything terrible or whatnot, or even like experience pain outside of falling off your bicycle. So the giver decides to give Jonas a sunburn. One time, Jonas was like, yeah, wow, okay. Yeah, that was hot. That was really uncomfortable. But a quick sunburn, no big deal. I got 5 seconds of sunburn. So what is the next level up the giver decides to put into Jonas? He gives them a compound fracture. Like, he goes from sunburn to compound fracture and road rash. He’s like on the sled or whatever going down the hill. Goes too fast, it’s icy, falls off, breaks his leg, his legs poking out sideways. It’s like Gordon Hayward out here. And then on top of that, his face gets absolutely mangled. They started with sunburn and went to that. You should have microdosed in pain. Yeah, go up a little bit. Okay, you started with sunburn. Go to an actual, like, fire burn or something like that. A blistery burn. Yikes. Okay. And then go needles or something along those lines are a real fall. Without the compound fracture aspect, they just seemed way too much. No wonder Rosemary decided to just die, because the giver is terrible at his job. He just keeps going. He’s like, all right, what’s next? Let’s go with warfare. Like, what do we want to go with? Straight up. Let’s go trench warfare. I need to get it off my chest. I actually had as my stock down compliment sandwiches, which I think is similar. I love a good complement sandwich. Well, I was going to tell you basically, you’re a manager now, so you better be employing it. I mean, I have no qualifications in any way to tell someone how to manage or even social skills in any sense. But with that being said, you got to be using the compliment sandwich method, right? The giver did not use it. I think he started to use it at the end. But after you give him a compound fracture, maybe taste birthday cake or something. Give him something, you just like, send them home. He’s like, good luck with that shit. See you later. Yeah. Almost murders him. And he’s like, all right, cool. Go home for your evening meal. It’s like, whoa. What? At least give me my first blowj or something. Yeah, first

 

stock down. My last one was Sunday scaries. Stock down. Stocks way down on Sunday scaries. Well, sometimes people are like, hey, I’m having a tough Sunday scaries. And someone’s like, so Sunday sunday going. Let’s get some bets on the football games. Let’s do something to pick you up from that. There’s no picking up from the giver, who’s just basically constantly having Sunday scaries of the worst memories of all time and just repeating them in his mind all the time. And then the only way to get rid of them is to force them onto someone else. I was like, Jesus Christ. Yeah, it seemed like the society kind of fucked that up. They should have had dumbledore’s pensive or something like that, where you can just take the memories and put them in somewhere, because it seemed way too difficult to have all this on one guy’s shoulders. It also just seemed like, hey, couldn’t you split it up a little bit? Have a triumvirate like the precogs in Minority Report. Have a triumvirate of people that hold these memories so the guy doesn’t have to do all of the terrible things because if he’s holding onto all the memories and even then it was like, oh, wow. That war stuff was terrible. Do you feel better? Givers like no. I have so many more war memories. That was just a piece. My last stock down was feeling rituals, sayinggracegiving, thanks. I’m not here for any of it. If there’s hot food on the table, we eat the hot food. It’s really that simple. What’s your view on the restaurant? Brings your hot food out and everyone else at the table hasn’t got theirs yet? Oh, you go. Yeah, absolutely. 100%. But you go and then you also are inclined to offer everyone a taste, assuming this is like a two person or four person meal. I’ll get in on it. You get we’re eating together, but this food is going to be eating. I really think it’s the job, too, of the people at the table that haven’t gotten food oh, to say to say, hey, eat. And then if I’m that person, I say, hey, and they don’t eat, then I get offended. I’m like, what the fuck do you think you’re too good? 100%. I couldn’t agree with you more, actually. I want to go out to eat sometime and have someone like, they give me my food, I’m about to start eating it, and they’re like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What are you doing? I haven’t got my food yet. It’s like, cool, congratulations. I don’t understand that practice at all. It really makes sense. That makes no sense. Imagine the other way. Like, they’re about to finish their burger, and you’re like, whoa, hold on. I’m not done yet. I’m not done with my chicken sandwich. You have to wait to finish until I’m done with mine. Like, what? It probably comes back to poisoning, right? Everything is backed in the day that my food might be poisoned. So they probably were like, oh, my food doesn’t come out yet. I’m going to wait till mine comes out at the same time. So you didn’t poison me with everything. I don’t know. I think it’s just like someone feels uncomfortable watching someone else eat, right? That’s their problem. Yeah. The idea is that it’s rude to eat while someone else doesn’t have their food yet, but grab a fry, whatever. It’s not a big deal. And I can’t say this too loud because the FGF might hear me, but I went to a party that her friends toasted as a friend’s giving kind of thing, and the food was now out. Tons of food. Thanksgiving tons of food. And there’s 20 people there, so it takes a lot of time for everyone to get their food. And I didn’t want to be rude, so I wasn’t going to eat before everyone else. But then by the time everyone sat down and got their food, I was like, okay, this food has already decreased at least 15 degrees in heat for when it got delivered. So I’m going to sit down now. Everyone’s here. I’m going to start eating. And the host stood up and goes, whoa, hold. On, everybody. We’re going to go around the table, all 25 of us, and talk about what we’re thankful about this year. And I would say it’s like, oh, my God. I’m, like, looking at this turkey, like, start to glaze over, like, dry. The dryness is setting in. And I was just like, this is absolutely terrible. The point here is, if there’s hot food on the table, eat it, all right? If you wanted to give thanks for something, if you want to say grace, if you want to thank all the gods for the food given to you, I appreciate that. Wait till after everyone’s done eating. Then you can sit there and talk about how wonderful it was. Thanks the chicken for dying for you, all that stuff, but not the beginning of favorite scene. What do you get? Finding out what the release was, I think we kind of all knew sorry, them killing the baby. And that was kind of cool, right? I think that’s when the shit got real, right? We realized, oh, this society is kind of fucked up. Because before that, and we already talk about this, but society wasn’t that bad, I didn’t think, right? Until you realize, oh, they’re kind of just killing off people, which I still don’t think it was that bad of a deal, right? They’re killing little babies. They’re not harmed. I saw 300. They’re throwing babies off mountains. Yes. Which is actually true. Spartans, right? Or someone breaks an arm early and they’re like, well, you can’t fight with us. You’re useless. Get the fuck out of here. Right? At least we’re a little bit compassionate about it. They didn’t seem like they were suffering when they were releasing them, quote unquote. Sounds like they just kind of gave them some drugs, they went on a little nice little ride, and they passed away. Sentinel and then you’re done. Yeah. I think we do have a problem where we tend to look at societies outside of our own and think negatively upon them. And this is one of those aspects where I didn’t care. The release thing, I was like, that’s fine with me. They’re trying to have population control in their society, and they can’t have twins, and they don’t want to have people that are going to take down the society in terms of its strength or whatever. I’m not saying I agree with it, but I’m just saying for this society, it works. And okay, do what you got to do. Like you said, it’s not as bad as the Spartan stuff, which is 100% true. Like, you had to show your baby to some elders, and the elders would decide if it lived, or you had to toss it off a cliff. That’s way more messed up. And that was a successful society that people are like super jazzed. About 300 is amazing. Like, look at the warriors society. How do you think they became a warrior society and then on the other end when it’s like the elderly people getting their release. I’m a huge proponent of euthanasia. In the right situations, if someone is suffering, they should have the option to relieve themselves of that suffering. I think it’s so weird that our society doesn’t allow that. My favorite scene, I truthfully, I didn’t really have one, I think when I realized that maybe I’m just stupid, which is mostly true. But I forgot about the whole color thing, that he couldn’t see colors and the colors weren’t real. And then when he was, like, seeing beyond, and it became clear that he was talking about ocean colors, and I didn’t even tie together that, like, the apple and the sled were both red. I mean, I would have failed 6th grade all over again. But holy smokes, this whole book that I had been reading in my mind is black and white. There’s no colors. I mean, there’s shades of gray. I found that to be interesting. Kind of open my eyes to how I was actually seeing this, because I wasn’t seeing it through his eyes, really. I was seeing it through my own eyes and I had to change my perspective. So I like that a little bit. It’s cool, too, because they don’t come out right away and say, like and there’s no colors. Exactly. Which, again, ties back to my point that colors are the same for everyone. But anyway, we’ll go through this quickly. Did you have a favorite character in this one? I mean, there wasn’t many, but Asher. Yeah, his description is a fun loving, hasty boy, which I’ve never heard anyone described as, but I love that. And then who usually speaks too fast, mixing up words, sounds like someone I know. Anyways, and then he becomes the assistant director of Recreation, which, if I’m Asher, given the society and knowing everything about it, I still stay here 100%. It sounds like he’s Leslie nope. Without all the political issues. He’s like, what’s his name’s character from that show? Chris Pratt. But he has Leslie Neil’s job, so he’s just a fun loving guy. And so I agreed with you, and I was with you there. But it actually kind of ties into My Next Love, my First Love, which is the language used in the book, how they explain Asher. It’s so matter of fact. And there’s not like, bubbly adjectives or figurative language to explain him. You know what I mean? They’re saying, like, yeah, he’s bouncing off the planet. He’s so excited all the time, or something like that. None of that language is used in the book. It’s all just very matter of fact, to the point precision of language that along with the idea, once you get the idea of there’s no color in this society, the writing alone gives you the vibe of the culture without her really needing to explain every little detail of the sameness. You kind of get that just through the way that people talk to one another and how everything is just very plain. It was so purposefully done that I thought it was really well done, basically. Does that make sense to you? You could picture the society within 30 minutes of reading it and you knew exactly what it was like. So I thought that was pretty cool about it. What did you love? This is where my love I think I already mentioned earlier, this is where I love her. Like Dystopian stuff came from, and I’ve been chasing that dragon ever since. I think it’s just really cool to think of other societies to think, like, outside the box. Especially when you’re young, you’re kind of taught, oh, first you’re like, My hometown is the best. And then you’re like, My state is the best. And then you’re like, My country is the best. And then eventually you’re like, we’re a small part of the actual world. There could be a million worlds out there that do things differently. There’s a lot of things that we just assume are the best or the way it should be. And the Dystopian thing kind of turns out on its head. And I always love that. I think it’s so cool. I couldn’t agree with you more. I think that not only exposing people, young people, to different cultures in our own world and showing how there are lots of ways for things to be successful, for some reason in America, we think that our society is like peak society, but we forget that we’ve only been around for 250 years and societies don’t last very long. There’s going to be something that fucks it up. And understanding other cultures is super important. But also when you read books and you see movies and stuff like that, people are able to play it’s like a playground where they’re able to play with let’s take this part, this aspect of society, and go all the way with it. You can take communism and go all the way with it in a movie without having to kill 25 million people like the aforementioned Mazda dung or the Russian Gulags and stuff like that. You’re able to kind of use those ideas and play out the society with it. Obviously, those movies and books end up having a point, and they usually end in terrible or interesting ways. But I think it’s fun to expose people to that, to kind of let their brains then take it to the next level. Like, I could see how this book would be a really good book for kids and why it is a good book for kids because it allows teachers to kind of ask questions and explore different ideas about sameness, whether it’s good, whether it’s bad. And it really doesn’t even need to be like good or bad, just like feelings one way or the other. And I think even between me and, you know, we have disagreements about this because we’re just different people, and I think it creates interesting conversation points with people talking about it. So I love the Dystopian stuff, too. My second love is how Larry doesn’t like Hollywood Up the book much. There’s no real love interest, minus a few stirrings for Fiona, leading to some middle of the night oopsies from Jonas, I’m sure, but there’s no bad guy, obviously. The Elders and stuff are made to seem like they’re trying to keep things in control, but there’s, like, bad guy. There’s no love interest. It’s really just a story about the society, about this person’s internal conflict, the relationship between Jonas and the giver, and ultimately the choices we make in life. But with it being that kind of story, it also is entertaining. Like, it also was a good read. It also was a page turner. It wasn’t like, what’s going to happen now is they’re going to attack this person or that, but it drew your interest in other ways that I find. We don’t read a lot of books like that, and especially this book being written for younger children, being able to hold people like that, I think that’s something to be celebrated. Yeah, that’s a good point. It wasn’t Hollywood up at all. It wasn’t like, all right, we got to have the final fight scene now, and did the opposite. Tropes. But she did a great job building a new world building kind of for sure. And I did watch the movie today just because I hadn’t seen it, and I wanted to kind of see how they did it. And it was so bad. It was terrible. It was like the person who just didn’t read the book didn’t get the point. I remember watching it. I think it was that bad, but also, I can’t remember when I did yeah, well, they did the opposite. They made Fiona, like, a serious love interest. He’s like, I’ll come back for you, Fiona. And they made Asher into, like, a drone pilot, and Asher could have chose to kill him or save him. Yeah, I kind of do remember that what I was like that’s exactly the book castle, too. I read it. I’m like, oh, wait, yeah, they made Meryl Streep, like, the Chief Elder, who obviously knew everything that was going on, right? So they just made it very predictable. Okay. All the nuance of the Giver was lost in the movie, unfortunately. Did you have any other loss? I actually liked the ending, too. I usually don’t like the what do you think happened? Ending type thing, but I actually thought I don’t know if it was, like, an analogy or what the ending was, but I don’t know if you took acid in that room and he was just tripping really heavy, and he never left or what. But either way, I thought it was like, him escaping and then getting to that sled and then being like, I made it. I think he died, but obviously you don’t think he took acid in the room. Do you think he actually got out and then died to the elements? Yeah, I think he was freezing and then he was like, look at that illusion in his mind as he died. Yeah, I mean, I agree with you. The author has come out on this and has said, yes, it’s open to interpretation, but hasn’t provided her feelings on where she thought it went, which I appreciate. I love when people do that. They totally committed. You like it? Oh, I usually don’t like it. They’re committed to the cause. No, I love that stuff. I think it’s kind of a cop out, like a dream. You can decide what it means in your own. It’s like, no, you’re the one telling the story. I don’t need but I thought this was cool, that it was full circle. It was like a Seinfeld episode. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. I hate when it’s like, oh, it was all a dream now. That didn’t make it fun for anybody. But this was such a great ending because it’s the point of the book. It’s about choice, and it’s about the unknown. So Jonas embraces the choice. He embraces the unknown. And whether he dies or whether he lives, he decided to do it on his own, like it was his choice that led him there. So whether he died or whether he lived in Gabe, shout out to Gabe. It doesn’t really matter. Obviously we want to know because he’s the guy we’ve been following the whole time. But the point is that he did it on his own terms, and that’s what matters. But I agree with you. I think he died mostly for the fact that who leaves the sled on top of a hill? It’s like a simple step. If there’s a hill with snow on it and there’s a sled, I’m taking it down. Bottom of the hill, totally, but makes sense. But no one climbs up a hill, leads the sled. There goes I’m going in for hot chocolate. Let me walk down. I think he kind of had the starvation freezing hallucinations. I mean, I watched enough of these alpine documentaries to know what that freezing cold and altitude can do to you. So I’m almost certain he was hallucinating that house. So unfortunately, him and Gabe are popsicles somewhere. But at least you have the choice, brother. At least you have the choice. What about hate? What did you get for hate? So I already mentioned I love the Dystopian stuff, but I either like it to be set in the real world or be like Star Wars or Harry Potter, where people have magic because they have magic. There’s some sort of things going on. It’s not here. It’s not in this world where this one book was like, everything is exactly like the world that we live in, except for this one thing. Where I can give memories and memories. There’s no other elements of that, right? Wait, you don’t get a shot of adrenaline when an old man puts hand on you? No, I’ve already said that. That’s how I see color. But I mean, everything else when the memories would be leased into the society, that kind of was like, wait, what? Everyone should have had powers if that was the case. You know what I mean? There should be other elements of fantasy involved other than that one thing because that kind of just makes it kind of be like, well, just write this in. It didn’t seem like there was any real rationale for it. No, I agree with you. And also, how do you know Jonas has the ability to transmit? Like, maybe he can take in the powers because he had like blue eyes, light eyes, which I don’t even know what that means. And they do it differently in the movie too. It’s like you have a birthmark, which doesn’t make any sense, but that fantastical element didn’t make a ton of sense, but it was really the only way for them to do it. Besides him being like sit front of his TV and got all these VHS. Let me show you what was happening in the world. Yes, I guess that’s true. It’s like Clockwork Orange or like Austin Powers when he watches the moon landing. Drink. My only hate really? Oh, besides Lily. Lily, get out of here. I don’t like you. Who is Lily? His sister. Too much. She should be released. My only real hate was that I don’t really understand the rules of the society. How do people not stumble upon the community in the movie? They do. It like it’s almost one of those patagonian plateaus where there’s just like sheer mountain walls on all sides. So it’s just like a standalone community. Which makes more sense to me because they’re like, oh, I saw plane fly overhead. So how are they keeping other people out of here? Because if this is like some future, then people are already interested in isolated societies right now. So imagine if there was more ability to get in there and look at stuff. Like people would be doing everything they could to try to check this community out. So there’s other communities. I didn’t really understand how it doesn’t get stumbled upon. And then I didn’t really understand the rules for the pain. And also the kids, for example, they’re playing like after Jonas gets the war thing, asher and his buddies are playing war. Basically, they have fake weapons and they’re like fake dying. So how do they know that? And why is that in a loud game? What do they think they’re doing? Because they’re like pointing fake guns, like finger guns at each other going like POW POW POW. And someone’s like so what do they think is happening? Because when we play cops and robbers or whatever, we knew the idea of like, okay, I’m shooting you with a gun. Obviously we didn’t know what that felt like or whatnot, but we understood. Although you think about bringing around the rosie, you didn’t know what that meant, right? Yeah. But you had no idea as a kid that’s what that was. So it’s one of those things I think they passed down through generations, but it’s not I guess so, but right around the road, just like we all fall down, which is like we all died. That’s what they’re doing. Yeah, but what about the finger guns? What’s? The finger guns? Like how do you know what a gun is? You’re passing that stuff down, you don’t know necessarily what it is. It seems like the committee would have called that idea out because also in there, there’s winners and losers like, oh, I got you, you’re shot, you’re dead. I won. Now there’s hierarchy. No, it’s a good point. They also didn’t understand jonas didn’t understand what a hill was. I get that. Like the whole place is flat. Sure. But you don’t understand what falling is. There’s structures in this place. Like no one climbs up a structure and falls off of it. Maybe there’s gravity is so heavy that they can’t go up things. Okay. Yeah. I like it. It just didn’t know where the line was. I think that’s the reason why Red Rising is mine and your number one book is because it starts out this microcosm of a society and continues to develop and grow. It becomes like, oh, there’s something outside of this little community. And then there’s like, oh my god, there’s a whole unit. It just continues to get bigger and bigger. That’s what I love, which I would have loved that giver where there was a more explanation for that. But it’s a short story. It is what it is. Yeah. And I’m picking nits here because I really did enjoy it. But the whole time when something would happen be like, oh, I’m angry. It’s like no precision of words. It’s like she’s pissed off. What do you mean? She is angry. What do you mean? People get angry? Yeah. Some of these emotions would be hard to quell even with all the stuff that’s going on. There is school and some kids are smarter than other people. There’s just going to be a natural hierarchy that forms. And I guess if this book was longer, I think they talk about how they quell those ideas. Like how when someone gets ahead, they knock them back down and when someone is below, they push them up to maintain the status quo because they even said when they’re doing the jobs, it’s like, okay, here’s the one day that we’re actually going to recognize what makes you guys different. But I feel like in every day people are understanding the differences already. I didn’t understand, too how you could be good at taking care of kids or have empathy for them if you don’t have any feelings, you know what I mean? For sure they’re like meant not to have feelings. And that’s why it made sense. When his dad was releasing those people, he didn’t know what he was doing, so it wasn’t like a big deal to him. Oh, I’m just like sending him off. I’m giving them this medicine and then I’m putting him in this box and they’ll be good in another place. That’s why I think in his mind was happening. Because he just doesn’t know what death is or has emotions towards them. But then it didn’t make sense why you’d be like super into kids and caring for them at the same time. Yeah, if it was all even, why would even bring Gabriel home? Why would you be like, no, he’s being released. That’s good. That’s just as good as not being released. Yeah, right. Exactly. Why would you care one way or the other? We have listener. Ma’am, you’ve got mail. Jeremy from Atlanta, Georgia. As an eleven plus twelve year old in your own life, if you were to be assigned a job based off of your skill set, then what would you have been assigned based off this society Kleenex integrity tester.

 

Participant #1:

Oh, good for you. Wow. Eleven or twelve, huh? Must be nice. What an answer. That’s the clip right there, kid. Twelve is like 6th grade. What was I into in 6th grade? I don’t know. I like to read books and play sports, but they don’t have professional sports here. So I’d like to think I’d be like Asher, like rec department person. I think I’d probably like to help teach other people. And I’m very easily swayed. Like if I was an occult, I’d be like all in. So I was a teacher and they ingratiated me into this ideas of what we are actually supposed to teach people. I’d be like, right on, that totally works. I think only later in life did I start to actually question things. So if they got me early enough, I’d probably be one of these teachers that’s telling them about precision of language and whatnot. Yeah, I think that makes sense. What about you? Well, I mean I peaked at eight.

 

Participant #1:

Yeah. I had flowing blonde hair back in the day. And I have gray hair barely. I need it. A rocket arm. A rocket arm at eight. That’s when I peak. People are like, wow, you have a really good arm. And then like ten they’re like, you still the same arm that you had now. You’re just normal anyways. But I was probably the smartest mathematician on planet earth by then. I mean, pre algebra wise, I am still in the best of all time. I mean I fucked multiplication tables up. People did not put them in front of me because I fucked them up too much. Did you ever do minute math? I mean, ten second math. That’s what I remember. But that was probably my favorite thing because I was good at the very simple math, too, as a kid. So they used to do, like, the minute math. Well, complicated. They used to do, like, minute math in, like, fourth grade, and it was like, whoever got it first got, like, a lollipop or something like that. And I’d crushed those. It was so good. So with that being said, I’d probably be in that position. Then once I got past free algebra, they would release me because they’d be like, oh, this guy’s an idiot. Like, what is he doesn’t know anything out of this. So I’d be dead. But if I had to choose, like, really? I don’t want to be a judge. I think that’d be cool in that society. We just tell people, yes, you like that. I’d be like, you can’t be fucking talking like that in this society. Release them. So that’d be me. I like it. I also like the idea of you being the mathematician and just like, nothing working. Like, they just like, you did all the math. It’s like, I don’t know. The planes don’t fly. Yeah, the math checks out. I’m good at multiple occasions, though, so I did have some questions. I like the society very much, but because there wasn’t a lot going on in terms of extracurricular activities, I wasn’t really questioning what the parents did when they’re not working right because they don’t have to cook, all the food comes to them. Yeah. What were they eating? Also, I think they were eating, like, commissary meals. So it’s like, very like, what does that mean? Like, when you go, like, prison meals or, like, when you go to college, they didn’t have meat or anything, right? Because they didn’t even know, like, birds. Yeah. So I think they were just eating spaghetti, maybe, like vegetarian gruel, something along those lines. Like, it was just like some sort of nutrient rich mush, but, like, no seasoning whatever. Just like whatever would fit your body. But the point being that they don’t have to cook dinner. There’s no entertainment. There’s nothing to do. You can’t go out and do anything. So outside of sharing your feelings during eating, what else was happening in the evenings at these houses? They’re not boning each other, the parents. They’re not reading books. I’m just confused. They’re just, like, staring at the wall. Can you just let them be happy? See, that’s your problem. They don’t even think about that. They’re just happy all the time, and they don’t even realize that they’re bored. That was my whole argument. Like, that’s the best thing ever. Yeah, I guess so. But they’re not even start thinking of something. They’re just like automatons I don’t know. Weird. I don’t know what that means, but all right, well, that’s the giver. Would you recommend it, Keith, to all the 6th graders listening out there filling their Kleenex? Yeah, I liked it. Again, I already said I haven’t changed much since I read this book. I thought it was good. I think if you’ve read a bunch of Dystopian stuff since then, this might be a little bit elementary for you, but it was a good I don’t know if it’ll be top ten, but yeah, it’s not going to break my top ten, that’s for sure. I liked it a lot. Don’t get me wrong. I rarely feel like I’m too advanced for a book, and this one was just, like it was just very basic. But I do think there’s a lot of subtext there and a ton of stuff that can be talked about that is really interesting. I mean, we just did if someone asked me, hey, my kid is a good reader, and he’s in fifth grade, what should he read as he read The Giver? It’d be a good book when your kids of that age to read together and kind of talk about for sure. Yeah, I think it’s a great book. It just wasn’t, like, the most interesting of all books. But, I mean, with the auto books, like, 4 hours long, and they put a ton of good stuff in there. If we’re talking how good is it per minute kind of thing. 4 hours. Can’t really beat that with a stick. Pound for pound, it’s a great exactly what I was trying to say. Thank you. All right, so we’re going to move on to probably one reading level up. And what’s our next one? The alchemist by Paulo Koello. Sweet. So, yeah, we’re going for The Alchemist next, and we’ll have more to come. I actually have no idea what The Alchemist is, so I’m excited because it’s also short, too, so this will be fun. If you’re trying to it’s the end of the year. You had a goal to get a bunch of books read, and you haven’t met your goal yet. Get The Giver, get the Alchemist, get two under your belt, and you’ll just start going from there there. Oh, yeah. Okay, cool. Well, you enjoy your time off. I’ll start reading The Alchemist, and we’ll talk to you next time. All right, bye.