"Lord of the Flies" by William Golding

When a group of young boys are left to survive on a desert island, one of the older boys, Ralph, takes hold of the situation. If everyone works together for the greater good, gathering food, building shelters, and keeping the fire alive to signal to passing ships (courtesy of pariah Piggy’s glasses), they might stand a chance! And this productive mini-society works…for a while. Then hedonism takes over, most of the boys want to play around and hunt, bringing forth another leader, Jack. Soon the island is wrapped up in a war between the two sides: the realistic and rational Ralph, and the harsh and savage Jack.

While this is classified as an “adventure” novel, I was reeeeeally bored with this book until the last 20 pages or so (fortunately, it’s a short book!) The reader is walloped against the head with the underlying theme of the book (good v. eeeeevil!), and I like my themes a little more hidden than explained out loud by Piggy. “’Which is better, to have rules and agree, or to hunt and kill?’” Yes, most of the main characters are completely one-dimensional, I think that was the point, to take any fallen society and match up what went wrong. I would recommend this book to lovers of the show “Lost”, since those writers have lifted that show directly from this book. There’s even a monster on the island too!