100 Books Like The Gods Are Athirst

When I was younger, I wanted to read all the classic dystopies that are there, and this is, of course, one of them.

So I did expect a dystopie—what I didn‘t expect was the emotional impact this book would have on me. I absolutely fell in love with Guy Montag, one of the best protagonists, in my opinion, telling us his story; and there‘s a whole range of side characters that will stick with you long after the ending.

And the ending—don‘t worry, no spoilers here—is something that really stuck with me. Unlike other dystopian stories, this novel leaves the reader on a hopeful note. It might be a dark and bad world, but it‘s not the end, and there is hope.

Such a powerful note to end the book.

I used this book to relieve the boredom of a long daily commute.

Instead of looking out of a train window at the same old scenery I'd passed a thousand times before, I was now taken to a dystopian society in which everything which I had taken for granted about family life was turned upside down. Where humans are manufactured to a specification instead of being born. A new pseudo religion where everyone makes the sign of the ‘T’, to signify their devotion to the original Ford Model T, which was the first vehicle to be manufactured on an assembly line.

I was very young when I first read this book. Many years later I took it back from the shelf and went through its pages with older eyes.

The reality portrayed by Émile Zola in the 19th Century is quite brutal. The coal miners back then – with their struggle for life, excess work, permanent fatigue, lack of knowledge and understanding, contrasted by the careful calculations and comfort of their masters – mirror miners and other workers today.

Greed on one side, poverty on the other regarded as normal. The very few with enough wit to overthrow the injustice were silenced, as it happens today at the productive facilities of the capital.

Social unrest? No wonder.

This book is an unfinished work, hard to follow, because it is a draft never reviewed by the author and published posthumously.

However, it is a must-read, so please do not be discouraged as I was, for the ideas that it encloses picture a more equalized society practically based on the changing of our economic road, nothing else than ending capitalism as we know it.

Two subjects are of particular interest: first, how to correctly retribute people for the wealth they generate through their work; and second, a demonstration of how excess production and money amassing do not amount to wealth. An interesting lesson in economics.

Blanc discovered in the National Archives in Paris a remarkable cache of letters kept in an old tin labelled as the property of Fouquier-Tinville, the Public Prosecutor of the French revolutionary Tribunal. He was a man who in sending off the last batch of victims to be beheaded, even after hearing that Robespierre was dead and with him, the Terror, said ‘justice must run its course’

The letters, written by prisoners on the eve of their own execution, to wife, family, plangent pleas to be remembered – some containing a little keepsake: a shirt stud, maybe – were never delivered, but, on Fouquier’s order, impounded as possible evidence. Post mortem? What was the point? The letters are heart-rending, sad, pathetic, drained of hope, but as poignant a souvenir of the effect of the vicious law which was sending their authors to the scaffold as any you will read. Fouquier, whose… show more.

No discussion of global history and politics would not be complete without some mention of the French Revolution. Clarke’s book was a wonderful romp into French history, providing an elegant and insightful discussion of what went wrong with the revolution – or why the outcome in la Belle France ended up in the Terror, Republican government and Napoleon Bonaparte, while England became a constitutional monarchy. Clarke offers up considerable food for thought. We would expect nothing less from the same man who wrote 1000 Years of Annoying the French and Talk to the Snail. 

“This enthralling biography and detective story convincingly identifies the real-life model for Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel. It delves into the politics and espionage of Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras.” The real Scarlet Pimpernel, Louis Bayard was an amazing person. Baroness Orczy knew him in her childhood as Lewis Duval, a London-based French lawyer. The story of his exploits in Orczy’s novels is just a shadow of all he accomplished, which Sparrow brings to glittering life. His allies and enemies, how he influenced Napoleon and Pitt, as well as other leaders of the time, and accomplished the impossible many times over, comes alive in this story that begins in his childhood. The boy and man for whom “seeking danger was a compulsion”. It’s how real heroes, ever hidden in the shadows, are made.

I’m using this “thundering good read” now while writing my own YA series. Sent back to 1793 Lyon, Xandra… show more.

This new collection of essays by an international team of cutting-edge scholars allows readers to see how the French Revolution affected ordinary men and women, in Paris, the French provinces, and the French empire overseas.  Treating a broad range of topics—from female activism to property, justice, medicine, food, material culture, childhood, religion, and war—these essays collectively paint a vivid picture of everyday life during this tumultuous period.  Each essay is accompanied by a primary document from the time, which enables readers to see for themselves the kinds of sources on which historians rely in their work.  Inspired by innovative historiographical approaches to spaces, emotions, and artifacts, Life in Revolutionary France paves the way for new research into the everyday experience of revolution.

No artist exists in a vacuum. Certainly, Vigée Le Brun had little interest in politics, but political events shaped her life and the world she inhabited. It is, therefore, essential to understand the times in which Vigée Le Brun lived.  

History and art history professor, documentarian, and cultural essayist, award-winning author Simon Schama’s Citizens: A Chronicle of the French Revolution presents Louis XVI’s France as vibrant, dynamic, and innovative, its people fascinated by novelty and technology. Schama’s gripping style combines entertainment and scholarship to make this book a convincing social, cultural, and narrative account of the French Revolution.

This book perfectly showcases how, for centuries, people have been fascinated by the seediness that potentially lurks behind the rich and powerful. And wow, is this book saturated with seediness?

While the complete disregard for another human’s existence and happiness is at the forefront of it and is presented as the focus of the story itself, I found myself understanding that it is also a cautionary tale on why these heinous behaviors cannot be allowed to become commonplace. The fact that these characters remain to be considered heinous gives me hope for the future!