Delirium is out TODAY!!!
7:04 PM Posted by Lori
Aren't you excited!? Are you petting it and calling it 'my precious' right now? I hope you are! Because today is that day! Delirium is out in the world and I get excited just thinking about the readers that will get to experience it for the first time!
If you don't have it yet....WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!
Less Than a Week!!!
6:46 PM Posted by Lori
Its less than a week until Delirium hits shelves (ahhhhh!!) (squee!!!) here are a few things you can do to keep yourself busy until it is in your hands:
The Official Delirium Blog Tour is going on now!
You can find links to all the stops and all the info at Books Complete Me.
Since its getting so close reviews are popping up everywhere! Here are some great ones:
If you have a review or fun Delirium related post, please let us know!
(deliriouslyfalling@hotmail.com)
If you haven't heard yet, Lauren will be out on tour after the book's release! Here are the dates:
Tuesday, March 2nd
CARLE PLACE, NY
Barnes & Noble – 91 Country Place – 7:00 pm
Thursday, March 4th
MADISON, CT
RJ Julia – 786 Boston Post Road – 4:30 pm
Friday, March 5th
MT. KISCO, NY
Borders – 162 E. Main Street – 7:00 pm
Saturday, March 6th
KINGSTON, NY
Barnes & Noble – 1177 Ulster Avenue Mall – 2:00 pm
Sunday, March 7th
ANN ARBOR, MI
Borders – 3140 Lohr Road – 2:00 pm
Monday, March 8th
NAPERVILLE, IL
Anderson’s Bookshop – 123 West Jefferson – 7:00 pm
Tuesday, March 9th
SKOKIE, IL
Barnes & Noble – 55 Old Orchard Center – 7:00 pm
Wednesday, March 10th
PETALUMA, CA
Copperfield’s Books – 140 Kentucky Street – 7:00 pm
If you see Lauren on one of the stops please send us pictures/link to posts/videos anything you have!
A Delirium Review..!
6:18 PM Posted by Lori
I don't even know where to begin. I know I have said it in many reviews, but it has never been more true than right now: Whatever I say in this review will not do this book justice. It is an experience that you just have to have on your own. I don't have enough words to explain to you how this book made me feel, but I'm going to try to use the ones I've got.
I love dystopia. It's hands down my favorite genre. When I heard that Lauren Oliver was releasing a dystopian book I knew I had to read it as soon as possible. I loved Before I Fall, so I knew this book would have to be great, but I didn't know it was going to be incredible. Oliver has not only created a dystopian world but she has executed it flawlessly. It has elements of Orwell's 1984, but in a much more updated and realistic way. The society in Delirium has deemed Love a disease. All the troubles of the past can be attributed to this disease. To Amor Deliria Nervosa. So, when you turn 18 you are cured. Lena has looked forward to getting her cure her entire life. Until she meets Alex.
This book is not simply just a romance or just a dystopian. It's so much more. Lena and Alex consumed me, consumed my life for the short time that I was reading about theirs. I didn't want to let them go after the book was over. Their emotions and thoughts were so well evoked on the page that it was like they were my emotions and thoughts.
The writing was fantastic. A book rarely ever makes me miss sleep, this one did. It was completely impossible to put down and impossible to lounge on the couch will reading. I was literally sitting on the edge of my seat. This book devastated me, but I loved every minute of it. It was beautiful and frightening.
You might think it sounds a little dramatic, but this book changed me in some small way. I don't think I will look at life and love in the same way anymore. It's powerful. It's the best book I have ever read. And I don't throw that phrase around easily. Buy it! Pre-order it! Read it! Maybe it will change your life too.
Guest Post: Lauren Oliver's Masterpiece
8:23 AM Posted by Lori
Of course Lena is Mona Lisa. Sitting strong and courageously for all to see. Keeping her secrets close to her heart and out of harms way. Alex is in the eyes that hold Mona Lisa’s secret, her burning fire. The knowing that everything will be okay in the end. Then the Cure takes its form as the darkness that extends its spidery fingers into the portrait taking away the joyful glow. Hanna’s the smirk playing on Mona Lisa’s lips. The beautiful youth of knowing that the future belongs to you. Amor Deliria Nervosa is the pure white canvas, the backbone to the masterpiece. Without it, this would be nothing more than a heap of muddy colors mixing together on the floorboards.
The paint stands out so magnificently, just like Lena’s voice. Oliver’s descriptions are each of the microscopic brush strokes that weave together to create true beauty. Lastly Lauren Oliver is none other than the mastermind Leonardo da Vinci. Without the artist this beautiful idea would be nonexistent. No one’s lives would have ever had the pleasure of knowing such pure perfection if it wasn’t for the creator.
Decades from now people will still be talking about this book, this masterpiece. Lauren Oliver’s writing will be studied in schools with thousands of students trying to gain the amazingly rare talent to express themselves through words, just like Lauren was able to do so flawlessly. She’s touched so many hearts already that the future can be nothing but filled with Deliria.
Thanks to Katie at Call Me Crazy for this beautiful post!
Interview with Erin Fitzsimmons, DELIRIUM's Cover Artist
12:33 AM Posted by Ella Preuss
Find out how was the process of making such a wonderful cover!
What is Love?
11:13 PM Posted by Ella Preuss
The girls from Girls in the Stacks made an awesome video for the Countdown!
Trust me when I say it's ah-mazing! Check it out!
Thanks girls!
Come back tomorrow for an awesome giveaway, and check out the one Lauren's holding in her blog.
Also, the girls from Fallen Archangel are having their Live Chat with Lauren next Monday 17th, 9PM EST! Don't miss it!
Before I Fall...Notes!
7:35 AM Posted by Lori
I--covertly as possible--then placed the notes in copies of Before I Fall and books similar to both BIF and Delirium. Now they are waiting for some unsuspecting book lover to find them and discover new books they love.
We would love for you to take part in this too! For all the details go to the Before I Fall Giveaway!
Guest Post: Dystopian Love: The Humanizing Factor
7:21 AM Posted by Lori
1: an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives
2: anti-utopia
(Source: Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dystopia)
Dystopian literature has made a comeback in recent years. It never truly went away, but it seems like everywhere you look today a new dystopian title is on the market. For those of us who love dystopias of all forms, this is a great thing. We have a well spring of new dystopian titles that we can read and enjoy, one of the newest being Lauren Oliver’s Delirium.
Delirium Book Summary:
All her life, Lena, has been warned of the dangers of amor deliria nervosa, the most dangerous disease in the world; a disease that has the power to rip society apart, a disease that must be prevented and eliminated at all costs. Amor Deliria Nervosa, otherwise known as love, is forbidden in Lena’s world. People are constantly on guard against this horrible disease. At the age of eighteen, teens undergo the procedure that cures amor delirium nervosa. After the tragic death of her mother because of the disease Lena has done everything in her power to avoid the horrors of the disease and counts the days until she can receive the cure. Until one day, she meets someone and with only days to go until her procedure, falls in love.
Delirium is a tale of dystopian love or anti-love as the case may be. You see, in the dystopian world Oliver has created, love is a disease called amor deliria nervosa, a disease that must be eradicated and cured. Unfortunately, you must wait until your eighteenth birthday to receive the cure.
In Delirium, the people are dehumanized by losing the ability to love. While people no longer die pining away for a lost love, they also lose the ability to love their children; merely acting as stewards to raise them in a cold society.
The society in Delirium, seeks to control their population by curing/eliminating love. Without love, they believe that people will do what they are told to make the society function. If you look at many of the dystopian novels, you find that it is love or humanity that leads the characters to question their environments, to rebel, or even try to fight the system. So looking at those examples, their reasoning seems sound. Ironically, in Delirium their own attempts to eradicate love result in another type of rebellion.
You can find love in many other dystopian novels. Here are a few that come to mind:
In Matched by Ally Condie, love is controlled by arranged marriages. When Cassia, the main character, sees a face other than the one she is matched to on her microcard, she begins to question society. What if her true match was Ky not Xander? As she gets to know Ky, she begins to fall in love with him, thus beginning her resistance against the rules of her dystopian society.
In Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, the real love of Katniss’s life is not Peeta or Gale. Her love is devoted to her younger sister Prim. For Prim, and for Prim alone, Katniss enters the arena and battles those who would have slaughtered her sister. Every action Katniss takes is for the love of her sister, and when Prim tells Katniss to do her best and to win the games, that is what Katniss sets out to do. Katniss sets out to defy the odds and later her very society, all for the love of her sister.
There are more examples where those came from. In Birthmarked by Caragh O’Brien, it is Gaia’s love for her parents that leads her to enter the enclave to try and save them. In Joëlle Anthony’s Restoring Harmony, it is Molly’s love for her family that motivates her journey across the border to find her grandparents and bring them to her home in Canada. Even in Orwell’s classic dystopia 1984 we see how love can motivate Winston when he has an illicit affair with Julia.
Love is the hope that exists in all dystopias. Love is the cause for rebellion against the society that seeks to dehumanize the population. As we see in Oliver’s Delirium while you can try to suppress love, you can never destroy it. As she says in the introduction of chapter two, “We must be constantly on guard against the Disease [love]; the health of our nation, our people, our families, and our minds depends on constant vigilance” (pg. 5 from the ARC). Love is what can bring a dystopia to its knees, without love there is no hope of changing the world for the better. That is what I love about dystopian fiction!
This awesome post was by Melissa at Mel's Books and Info! Go check her blog out!
If I Lived in the World of Delirium, by Kailia Sage
11:00 PM Posted by Ella Preuss
No love. At all. In the world that Delirium is set in, love is a disease. At eighteen, you get an operation that makes it impossible to fall in love. You answer a questionnaire before this operation and after that, they match you with a guy or girl with whom your answers are compatible to.
Though I loved this book, I would never survive in a world without love. Sure there’s motherly love and all, but I like the whole falling in love bit, too! I’m a diehard romantic. I love the whole cheesy moments, roses, chocolates, all that stuff. Of course, sometimes I feel that it’s too much, but I still love it. So, in a world without that? Ugh. I’d hate it. Seriously hate it. I’d probably live in the Wilds.
People say opposites attract. Science, religion, and almost everyone says that opposites attract. It would be weird to take a questionnaire and get matched with someone compatible to us. Sure we have a few things that are different, but that’s not the same thing. Like Lena and Alex. Lena is afraid of the consequences of listening to unauthorized music and going to parties. Alex, thought, does it all. And he loves it. They’re different, yet they work so well together. Again, opposites attract! It’s like the whole bad-boy-good-girl-fall-for-each-other. No matter how old it is, it does happen!
After you take the questionnaire and you get your matches, you choose who you want to be with. That’s a little freedom, but not much...at all. First of all, I want to fall in love...not take a questionnaire and have other decide for me who’s the one. It’s just weird and wrong. I want to meet him, become friends, hope for something more. Date him, him ask me to marry him and so on. Basically, I want to have all of the control over my life. Who I meet and marry and all that.
The people even regulate the kind of music you listen to. First love and then music? Uh, no, I don’t think so! Most of the time, I’m a really hyper person so I like to listen to music I can dance to and sing along with. Sure when I’m sad or really mad, I like to listen to slow songs that sooth me, but not always. Along with music, come parties. Seriously, who in their right mind would not allow people to have parties with loud music and guys and girls dancing together? Another two reasons why I wouldn’t survive in that world.
In noticed while reading the book that the people who had gotten the operation were like robots. The mother doing motherly thing; the father doing whatever they do. They had such proper, unenthusiastic ways of speaking. I liked how Lauren wrote these characters because to me, that showed what the loss of love did to people: made us gloomy, boring, and well...unhappy. Sure they say that they’re happy and are completely satisfied...but are they really? Can’t anyone lie like that? I guess a thousand people lying about how they feel is kind of out there, but think about it.
Lauren Oliver did an exceptional job with Delirium. I really liked Lena and how she changed over the course of the book. She’s afraid of love, something I never thought of happening. I mean, it’s love! So, after reading this book, I began to think a lot about it. What would it be like if America (or the entire world for that matter) considered love to be a disease in real life. Maybe even tomorrow or the next week. What would happen then? Would there be less divorces? A smaller population? So much could happen in a world like that but exactly what is so uncertain. Of course, there’s a low chance of that happening in real life but still, we have questions and thoughts!
So, what do you think? Would you like to live in this world? Why or why not?
Though I loved this book, I would never survive in a world without love. Sure there’s motherly love and all, but I like the whole falling in love bit, too! I’m a diehard romantic. I love the whole cheesy moments, roses, chocolates, all that stuff. Of course, sometimes I feel that it’s too much, but I still love it. So, in a world without that? Ugh. I’d hate it. Seriously hate it. I’d probably live in the Wilds.
People say opposites attract. Science, religion, and almost everyone says that opposites attract. It would be weird to take a questionnaire and get matched with someone compatible to us. Sure we have a few things that are different, but that’s not the same thing. Like Lena and Alex. Lena is afraid of the consequences of listening to unauthorized music and going to parties. Alex, thought, does it all. And he loves it. They’re different, yet they work so well together. Again, opposites attract! It’s like the whole bad-boy-good-girl-fall-for-each-other. No matter how old it is, it does happen!
After you take the questionnaire and you get your matches, you choose who you want to be with. That’s a little freedom, but not much...at all. First of all, I want to fall in love...not take a questionnaire and have other decide for me who’s the one. It’s just weird and wrong. I want to meet him, become friends, hope for something more. Date him, him ask me to marry him and so on. Basically, I want to have all of the control over my life. Who I meet and marry and all that.
The people even regulate the kind of music you listen to. First love and then music? Uh, no, I don’t think so! Most of the time, I’m a really hyper person so I like to listen to music I can dance to and sing along with. Sure when I’m sad or really mad, I like to listen to slow songs that sooth me, but not always. Along with music, come parties. Seriously, who in their right mind would not allow people to have parties with loud music and guys and girls dancing together? Another two reasons why I wouldn’t survive in that world.
In noticed while reading the book that the people who had gotten the operation were like robots. The mother doing motherly thing; the father doing whatever they do. They had such proper, unenthusiastic ways of speaking. I liked how Lauren wrote these characters because to me, that showed what the loss of love did to people: made us gloomy, boring, and well...unhappy. Sure they say that they’re happy and are completely satisfied...but are they really? Can’t anyone lie like that? I guess a thousand people lying about how they feel is kind of out there, but think about it.
Lauren Oliver did an exceptional job with Delirium. I really liked Lena and how she changed over the course of the book. She’s afraid of love, something I never thought of happening. I mean, it’s love! So, after reading this book, I began to think a lot about it. What would it be like if America (or the entire world for that matter) considered love to be a disease in real life. Maybe even tomorrow or the next week. What would happen then? Would there be less divorces? A smaller population? So much could happen in a world like that but exactly what is so uncertain. Of course, there’s a low chance of that happening in real life but still, we have questions and thoughts!
So, what do you think? Would you like to live in this world? Why or why not?
Kailia, from Reading the Best of the Best.
Lauren's Books' Different Covers
7:42 AM Posted by Ella Preuss
Lauren's books are not only out in English. They're also published in Spanish and German, and it wouldn't surprise me to hear that they'll be translated into many more languages.
Just today I heard that Delirium will be out in Spain in March!
Here are the different covers for these books. Some are the official covers, while others are fan made. Take a look: which ones do you prefer?
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| First Covers |
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| Fan Made Cover |
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| Fan Made Cover |
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| Photographer's Cover |
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| Final Covers: US, Spanish and German |
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| Lauren and Delirium! |
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| Delirium's First Cover! |
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| Delirium's Official UK Cover |
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| Delirium's Final Covers: US and Spain |
So, which ones do you like? Personally, I like the American and Spanish BIF covers. At first, I was against the Spanish one, but it's grown on me.
And for Delirium, I like the American one. The UK one looks good, but the swirlies in the American cover are what I love. The birds you can see there, among the swirlies, are perfect, representing freedom, while the grey, Spanish one has barbed wire on it. It fits, I think, the grey and the barbed wire, but I like the message on the American one the best: freedom one the blue one against emprisonment on the grey one.
Delirium Blurbs From Around the Blogosphere
7:13 AM Posted by Lori
Are you excited for Delirium yet? Of course you are, because its probably going to change your life!! To get you even more excited, here are some blurbs from other book bloggers:
Lauren Oliver's writing is magnetic and powerful. I remember when I read Before I Fall, I thought it was beautiful and it provoked such a strong emotional reaction out of me and Delirium did the same. - Nic at Irresistible Reads
This book absolutely blew me away. Right from the start I was fascinated with this society and the cure against love. Love as a disease was named, amor deliria nervosa. The secret affair between Lena and Alex kept my heart thumping with anticipation. The constant surveillance of citizens always kept them looking over their shoulders but it did not keep them away from each other. These two were perfect together and I yearned for each moment where they would meet again.
I think this book is a must-read for dystopian YA fans. It was gritty, thoughtful, and engaging. And it begs the question: is it better to feel love and lose it than to never have loved at all? - Kate at I Just Wanna Sit Here and Read
Countdown to Delirium is on!!!
8:34 AM Posted by Lori
It's January 1, 2011 and to some that means New Year's Resolutions, football, and a long weekend, but to us that means the countdown to Delirium is on!! 30 days to be exact and we have some fun things planned to make the wait a little easier.
Stay tuned all month long for giveaways, interviews, guest posts and lots of other fun!!
