Dead Poets Society

Book: Dead Poets Society

Author: N.H. Kleinbaum

Review: Kleinbaum is a master of the short novel following academics, poetry, love and tragedy. Dead Poets Society is a book based on the adventures of college students who are all boys taught at Welton who defy their college standards, their expectations and their rules with their experiences when an enthusiastic professor gives them the perspective of following their dreams and teaches them to seize the moment (carpe diem). The class is a poetry class where rules are defied and tragedy coincides with the dead poets in their lives as well as their society including their college. A very different take on free thought and society’s expectations ..

Star Rating : 5 of 5

Spice rating : 1 of 5

Book Recommendation : Yes/To those who love free thought and poetry

Thoughts:

• A beautiful short novel.
• Something different and light besides Tartt and Rio.
• Must be one of those old classics that touch your heart.
• Based on a film in the 1980’s.

If We Were Villains

Book: If We Were Villains

Author: M. L. Rio

Review: Rio explores a different approach than Tartt in her book which is about how seven students who are friends from within their college manage to get themselves into trouble. Rio starts us off with a simple friendship that grows sour by the time one of their friends end up dead in a lake near a boathouse. What seems like a murder mystery becomes a tale of sacrifice and death as the student makes a final decision to sacrifice his life for his best friend into college. Rio gives us a collective of his memories after he comes out of prison and in between parts gives us his testimony of how much had happened at his local college which makes it a Tartt-esque reading experience.

Star Rating : 5 of 5

Spice rating : 1 of 5

Book Recommendation : Yes/To those who love mysteries and college conspiracies.

Thoughts:

• A mysterious death.
• Something a little different yet Tartt-esque.
• The perfect cliffhanger.
• Crime and sacrifice.

A Curse for True Love

Book: A Curse for True Love

Author : Stephanie Garber

Review: The Valory Arch is open and Evangeline had fallen under a curse that had erased her memories from the previous two books in the trilogy. What had seemed like a happy ending with a prince turns into a nightmare and Evangeline searches her memories that the prince had taken. On Jacks’s search for true love he finally finds a happily ever after and so does Evangeline.

Star Rating : 5 of 5

Spice rating : 1 of 5

Book Recommendation : Yes/To those who love fairytales, true love, and romance.

Thoughts:

• A beautiful fairytale.
• True love always wins!!
• Looking forward to more fates, curses, apples and kisses for true love.
• #TeamJacks

The Ballad of Never After

Book: The Ballad of Never After

Author : Stephanie Garber

Review: Garber weaves a fairytale of forbidden love, secrets and a wanted conclusion to this trilogy. The second book to the Once Upon a Broken Heart series gives us the villain who has become the hero to Evangeline Fox. Unexpectedly, the prince is under a curse and Evangeline is saved from ferocious vampires and accursed princes by the unlikely cold and uncaring Jacks. She faces the magick of the Magnificent North as she looks for the stones to open the arch. An enemies to star-crossed lovers fairytale, it will leave the reader enchanted and charmed and deliberately left to wait for the third book within the trilogy.

Star Rating : 5 of 5

Spice rating : 1 of 5

Book Recommendation : Yes/To those who love fairytales, beloved villains and romance.

Thoughts:

• A twistingly stunning fairytale.
• Certainly, a beautiful ballad.
• Leaves the reader waiting to hear more.
• Leaves the reader to question about the third book and how the fairytale will end.

On the Discussion of Literature and the Banned

As we read banned books, we as scholars should be able to discuss banned books after reading them because when they make an educated person uncomfortable, we have to think about the subject and consider the content matter on why banned books make us feel more aware of what we as a community and a group or a society of scholars should feel uncomfortable about before being faced with these kinds of issues.

The curriculum that starts banning books is wrong because these books are a red flag to be aware of.

When I read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, I felt that these college issues talked about the dangers and causes and effects that come from strangers who have the intelligence to do such dreadful and Satanic rituals such as the rituals mentioned within the book.

We should ask ourselves what the protagonist of the story should have done because it talks about elitism and what some people could get away with in college in Tartt’s book.

We should think about these experiences and examples of deliberate acceptance of the literature and not be limited to excess amounts of academic bias.

A banned book is everyone’s worst nightmare in content and context and yet the literature is all the things we should and shouldn’t do.

It is a test of time for some people who read banned books and who feel uncomfortable such as myself and others who read banned books.

It makes the person think about why we feel uncomfortable with subjects like these. Why do we write banned books about delinquency, domestic violence, abuse, torture and race? It’s because we feel uncomfortable about these things and write it down and then we challenge the reader to think about the possibilities of what we should an de shouldn’t do in life.

Read a banned book and discuss it!

Once Upon a Broken Heart

Book: Once Upon a Broken Heart

Author : Stephanie Garber

Review: Garber drives us through a compelling fairytale that has two more books within it. Garber makes the protagonist of the story seem like the antagonist. Evangeline Fox is a character who is both heroine and villain where her stepsister Marisol seems innocent and makes the reader wonder who the character of the villain is within the story. Jacks, who is the Prince of Hearts is a Fate who has been exiled from the South by Princess Donatella and Empress Scarlett from the Caraval Series. Evangeline and Jacks have a deal and then everything becomes awry from there. They send Evangeline from Valenda which is South of The Magnificent North where fairytales are history and prophecies come true. Evangeline takes her stepsister, Marisol with her and is in for a sinister surprise as she meets Prince Apollo at Nocte Neverending where Evangeline seems to be in a neverending fairytale adventure.

Star Rating : 5 of 5

Spice rating : 1 of 5

Book Recommendation : Yes/To those who love fairytales in volumes with cliffhangers..

Thoughts:

• Vampires, witches and fates! Oh My!
• A prophetic fairytale
• A book of all the things a fairytale should encounter within its pages
• The best conclusion to a sequel in a trilogy..