Guest Post from Trisha Wolfe

Delirium completely took me by surprise! I was expecting a good book, maybe even an enjoyable afternoon entertained by a fast read, but wow, was I wrong. This book moved me. It crept in and ignited my soul. As a society, we are continually looking for ways to downplay love, true love, or commercialize it. People are bombarded with images of sex and lusty couples, being told that it is love. Delirium touched on what love is truly meant to be. I found myself enraptured in the love story, desiring to experience those first moments of falling in love for the first time all over again. The first touch, the first kiss, embrace, but also feeling emotions deep within your being that allows and makes you want to be a better, stronger person. That is what true love is all about.
The idea that our government would someday use our emotions, or take them away, in order to control us was phenomenal! Ms. Oliver I believe completely captured the way we would operate without these emotions. And one could use this as a metaphor for where we are headed in the future. I don’t believe we have to wait for our government to remove this function from our brains, we our allowing media, and other outlets to desensitize us every day. Eventually I fear that we will become close to what Ms. Oliver envisioned; cold and unfeeling toward the people in our lives that are supposed to mean the most to us. They may not go as far as reaching in our brain with tools and lasers to remove it, but as we become ever dependent on technology and media to connect to others and define us, we may be the ones to destroy that within ourselves.
Love is something that should be given freely, and something that should be valued when reciprocated. In Delirium one of the most profound moments is when it touches on sacrifice. It is difficult to give yourself over one hundred percent to another person without wanting something in return. The book compounds on this subject and teaches without preaching just how important it is to give your love freely, and sometimes in doing so we must sacrifice in the process, but without sacrificing that part of ourselves that makes us strong and complete as an individual in love… yet not defined by it. Beautiful. 

Thanks to Trisha for the post!! Go visit her at her website!

Guest Post: Lauren Oliver's Masterpiece

Delirium is so much more than a book. It’s a work of art. The writing conveys so many emotions that I couldn’t help but completely fall into Lena’s world. Lauren Oliver’s Delirium is like the beautiful Mona Lisa by Leonardo Di Vinci. An amazing masterpiece that will forever intrigue millions.

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!

Guest Post: Dystopian Love: The Humanizing Factor

Dystopia:
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 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