Comments on: All Tomorrows: Parable of the Sower

By: Thivai

Thivai — Fri, 01 May 2009 23:22:50 +0000

Thanks for recommending this book... I have taught it twice in my courses. I highly recommend her Xenogenesis trilogy.

By: cloke

cloke — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:47:54 +0000

just read bloodchild a few weeks ago and was disgusted with myself for not having read any of butler’s stuff earlier. I got Parable soon after but have not gotten around to it yet. Looks like todays the day. thanks for smacking me back to my senses..

By: ryan

ryan — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 06:56:11 +0000

I absolutely loved Parable too… It’s such a good portrait of America turning into a 3rd world nation quickly and stunningly.

A similarly great (maybe even better?) novel that attacks similar ground is Jack Womack’s RANDOM ACTS OF SENSELESS VIOLENCE. It’s America unwound as told through a girl’s journals… One of my alltime favorite novels (up there with Cruddy by Lynda Barry… wait, I am starting to see a pattern here! )

Ryan!

By: Jerem Morrow

Jerem Morrow — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 01:59:34 +0000

Hers are some of those books I told you keep following me. Suppose this should be the final nudge.

By: Nadya

Nadya — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:41:13 +0000

I love Octavia Butler! I loved Parable of the Sower! She spoke at my college, but for whatever reason I missed her. I will regret that forever.

My favorite work of hers, however, her collection of short stories, Bloodchild. She’s got some stories in there that are really sci-fi, and some that are not sci-fi at all (like that weird story about incest). My favorite two stories in there were “Speech Sounds” and “The Evening, the Morning and the Night.” The latter is one of my favorite short stories of ALL TIME. I could not find the entire story online, but here’s the first page:

http://www.jstor.org/pss/2931653

I recently re-read it for the first time in 5 years, and it scared me just as much as the first time. Just the words “Duryea-Gode Disease” send a chill down my spine.

By: Glossolalia Black

Glossolalia Black — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:44:48 +0000

I am glad that I got to meet her before she died, back in 2005. What a loss. I think I might have to read her books again.

Thank you for this.

By: kai

kai — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:10:18 +0000

Awesome review! I’m so glad to see Butler on Coilhouse.
I agree that both Sower and Talents are incredible, disturbing, enigmatic. I have a thing for dystopian novels and these are some of the best I have read. Like, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (and possibly also Blood Meridian), they are also books about a character’s journey- one that occurs inside and out.

I discovered this book through my first literature class I took in college, one taught by Prof. Chude-Sokei, a very young professor with dreads to his waist who LOVED Sci-fi. He saw Sci-fi as a perfect way to introduce kids to the idea of the Outsider or Other in literature. To him sci-fi was the encoded truth about our cultural fears. His reading list had Parable of the Sower on it as well as some other notables- The Loves of the Monster Dogs by Bakis and The Calcutta Chromosome by Amitav Ghosh. It may have been the best lit. class I ever took.

Also- I recently read the last book Butler ever wrote, called Fledgling. It is her take on the vampire novel (YAY!). It is good- disturbing and challenging, and is essentially about the myriad variety of human relationships.