Tag: Kazuo Ishiguro

Online Reading Challenge – October Wrap-Up

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Hello Fellow Challenge Readers!

How did your reading go this month? Did you read something set in the future that you enjoyed? Share in the comments!

I read our main title: Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Klara stole my heart from the start and had me rooting for her to find her family.

Klara is an Artificial Friend anxiously awaiting a customer to choose her. Readers are introduced to Klara as she sits in a store full of other Artificial Friends. What marks Klara as different and ultimately helps decide her fate is her keen observational skills. She spends her days watching the people who come in to browse as well as the people who pass outside the store. Klara is highly intelligent, but misses the abilities to pick up on some nuances and cues that humans have. This book highlights relationships between humans and artificial intelligence, and the impact that artificial intelligence would have on society. As the world changes, Klara is there to see it all, but does she understand what is happening around her? That’s a whole other story.

I listened to the audiobook version of Klara and the Sun, which I felt lent more of an insight into Klara’s world as hearing her voice highlighted how much she wanted to adjust and do everything right. (I did try reading the print book first, but had a hard time engaging with the text). While I found Klara’s story and her interpretations of the lives of everyone around her intriguing, I was left wanting more. I felt dropped into a new world with little to no explanation of what was happening with hardly any world building. As I was reading, I was able to figure some issues out myself, but not others. With time away from the book, I realize that the way I felt mirrored how Klara felt when she changed environments. The author scattered tidbits of information throughout the book that you had to weave together. He writes scenes that surface level seemed pretty self-explanatory, but once you thought about them, they were actually quite complex. I think this is a book that I will appreciate more as time passes.

Next month, we will be spanning decades and time!

Online Reading Challenge – October

- Stephanie Leave a comment

Welcome Readers!

This month the Online Reading Challenge travels to the Future. Our main title for October is Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro. Here’s a quick summary from the publisher:

Here is the story of Klara, an Artificial Friend with outstanding observational qualities, who, from her place in the store, watches carefully the behavior of those who come in to browse, and of those who pass on the street outside. She remains hopeful that a customer will soon choose her. Klara and the Sun is a thrilling book that offers a look at our changing world through the eyes of an unforgettable narrator, and one that explores the fundamental question: what does it mean to love? (Vintage)

This title is also available in large print.

Looking for some other books set in the future? Try any of the following.

As always, check each of our locations for displays with lots more titles to choose from!