A similar novel to "Matched," "Delirium" follows a heroine who is paired with her future partner, only to fall in love with someone else. But the stakes are raised in this dystopian society. The government runs an operation that surgically removes the section of the brain responsible for falling in love, and requires that all its citizens have this operation when they turn 18, thus turning everyone into perfect citizens who willingly accept the laws that they are told are for their own benefit. Ninety-five days before her scheduled operation, Lena Holoway, who had eagerly anticipated the day when she would no longer suffer the pain of love, falls in love and suddenly she is not so sure she wants to give it up. She and her new love, Alex, decide to escape their society and make out for the "Wilds." But as we all know, dystopian societies do not take free thinkers lightly.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
