By the Most Esteem'd Bard and Playwright William Shakespeare

...
Guess what? I was going to write this entire review in Olde English, but decided not to at the last minute. You're welcome, and there's my random act of kindness for the day.
Now to business.

Hamlet is awesome. Hamlet is funny. Hamlet is tragic. Hamlet's sanity is questionable.
Hamlet is the prince of Denmark, son of Queen Gertrude and the late King Hamlet. He's ticked off for any number of reasons, but mainly because Gertrude married his uncle Claudius far too soon after his dad's funeral, because his dad's ghost keeps showing up demanding revenge and stuff, and because everyone in the castle is determined to spy on him. This is Shakespeare, so some people go crazy, some people act crazy, and some people get stabbed. I'm not sure I dare attempt any more analysis than that, but here's why I like it...

I can't claim to have read more than five or six Shakespeare plays (working on that), but of those I have read this is by far my favorite. The plot is complex for a play; false friendship and true love mingling with murder, deception, and political upheaval, but all these layers work together to form a compelling story line. The characters are interesting and multi-sided, their relationships, plots and counter-plots well developed. The complexity of the play nevertheless leaves room for varied interpretations. And above all, there is Shakespearean sarcasm. <3

Lastly, I have a really hard time not quoting this play to everyone I know.

I refuse to attempt any scholarly commentary on the themes of Hamlet, but you can borrow my copy.

for: Shakespeare and David Tennant fans
Content rating: 3/5 Murder, incest, unfaithfulness, hatred and revenge, deception, poisoning, suicidal themes...you know. Shakespeare.
My enjoyment: 5/5 'Tis a knavish piece of work, but what of that?

by Shea Megale

This is the story of a bunch of Englishmen with rifles. 

Really, how can you go wrong?

You can't. Especially not if you imagine the British accents the whole time. Which I highly recommend.

Anyway, our story begins with a fancy black-tie affair, a grumpy dad and a lovesick half-sister, some raspberry sauce, and a possibly nonexistent---nooo, that would be giving too much away. 
And, of course, the Emporium. The world's last remaining zoo, created after world war was barely staved off by the release of a dreadful poison that nearly destroyed the natural world. The toxin leeched into the world's ecosystems and destroyed nearly all animal life. Youths from all over the world flock to the Emporium to become Hunters, brave and reckless souls who venture into the wild to win fame and fortune by bringing back the world's last animals. And who, often, don't come back.
Tyber has the bad luck of being the son of two of the most famous Hunters of all, the captors of the polar bear. As such, his father expects a good deal more of him than photography, mastery of sign language, and bearing the daily shame of his illegitimate birth.
90 years after the near-annihilation of the natural world, the glory of the Emporium and the Victorian era has all but ground to a halt. But one evening, a deadly new Hunt is announced. And Tyber, as caged as his father's polar bear and burning with resentment, takes destiny into his own hands. 

I had the great pleasure and privilege of reading this book, written by my authorly friend Shea Megale, before almost anyone else, as it is not yet published. That's right, you have to wait. I wrote a CLIFFHANGER book review, for which I must beg your pardon, while giggling evilly inside. Bwa-ha-ha. Anyway. When Emporium comes out, I highly recommend you read it! Well and sensitively written, with an original Victorian-Steampunk-safari (betcha never heard that phrase before) setting and storyline, and a new twist on issues as old as humanity itself. Love the characters, especially Sandy...well, you'll find out. And per Shea's insistence, I must add, Xander is hot. 

for: teens and adults
Content rating: I'm gonna say 3/5. This one is tricky, since one of the book's themes is homosexuality, which many including myself consider erroneous for moral reasons. If you find homosexuality offensive or immoral, this book may not be for you. However, nothing at all of an explicit nature occurs. Aside from that, there are a few swear words and mention of cheating/an affair.
My enjoyment: 4/5 Loved Emporium, but my heart really belongs to Shea's next book series Starborn. Look for the review!

by Rick Riordan

This series follows the adventures of young Percy Jackson, a misfit and a troublemaker even among other "troubled" kids. Some would go so far as to call Percy a juvenile delinquent. Others prefer to think of him as a demigod. I have trouble distinguishing between the two.
Crazy things happen in Percy's life. After he's kicked out of school for the sixth or seventh time, he starts to realize why. He can see things others can't. Scary things. And the monsters aren't there by coincidence. 
After a terrible encounter in which Percy's mother is lost, he is brought to a camp for kids like him, where he learns the truth of his bloodline. He's a half-blood, the son of a mortal and a powerful ancient Greek god. At camp Percy learns to fight, read Greek, and avoid being turned into a dolphin. When Percy is accused of stealing an artifact of immense power, he is sent on a quest with two friends to recover the artifact, reconcile the gods, and save Olympus. 
But a powerful new enemy is rising, and Percy finds himself entangled in a mysterious prophecy that holds the fate of the world in the balance.

Now, before we go on, I'd like to clear up a few misconceptions.

And Percy and Annabeth should be 12.

Not 18. or 20. or however old they were in that movie.

Talk about butchering a storyline.
Percy Jackson does not deserve butchering. Well, maybe he does, some of the time, but his books don't. Well-written, epicly written, as befits a Greek hero. Pretty much the funniest narration ever. *sniff* I do admire good sarcasm. Percy Jackson is a fun twist on ancient mythology. Rick Riordan really did his homework. The characters are funny and each has a unique story. Way entertaining.

for: older kids on up
Content rating: 4/5 There's the whole gods-and-mortals-having-kids thing. And some monsters get skewered.
My enjoyment: 5/5

by Lois Lowry

I first read The Giver in 6th grade. It...it gave me faith in the books teachers choose for their students. (Needless to say, that faith died early in high school). Still, I have long appreciated my middle school teachers' good tastes.
The Giver is about a boy named Jonas living in a utopian community. Everyone is happy, everyone has their place. No pain, no fear, no inconvenience. As one who is just finishing college applications, I've gotta say, that sounds pretttty nice.
But it's only when Jonas comes of age and receives a unique and important task that he realizes, there are other things missing too...

This was a beautiful moment in my childhood. One of those times you always remember, you know? When your teacher actually places a really good book into your hands. And then issues the instruction, "Now we're going to read this as a class. We'll spend this week reading and discussing chapter one."
.
..
...
Yeah, right.
I tried. I really did try, okay? But you don't...you just don't do that. You don't hand me a book and tell me not to read it. I paced myself. I started with only one chapter. Okay, two chapters. I even read it in class, though not exactly with the class. I sort of listened to the discussion, with one ear, but there was a buzzing in the other. That book was crumbling my willpower.
The next day I read to chapter 5. Then a few more. Less than a week in, I cracked. I was gone. Smoke floated up from the frantically flipping pages, which would've made my teacher wonder except she was going over some fascinating symbolism with the class. 

So much for pacing myself. Anyway, Lois Lowry is a fantastic author. The Giver is insightful, entertaining, and sometimes frightening. It's a book that makes you think, and leaves you wondering. The characters are believable and well-developed, the setting and atmosphere of the community so clear that you feel like you're there. It's a great commentary on what we lose when life becomes too perfect.
The companion books, Gathering Blue and The Messenger, are equally insightful in their own ways. This is one of those magical sort-of series in which each book can stand alone but they fit together. There's a newly released fourth book too, called The Son. I'm itching to read it, but hey, look, there's another application essay calling.
Happy reading.

for: older kids on up
Content rating: 4/5  Quite clean, but there are issues brought up that many find disturbing. Apparently this is a challenged book, whodathunkit? Anyway, I don't want to give anything away but there's some sad deaths and some mild sexual attraction. I had no problem reading this as a 6th grader, but parents of aspiring younger readers may want to check it out.
My enjoyment: 5/5 

Recently, I've had the vicariously exciting experience of having a friend of mine visit the Catching Fire filming set and meet the actors as well as the author of Hunger Games. My friend faithfully passed on my message to Suzanne Collins that Gregor the Overlander is still closest to my heart (particularly Ares). I didn't want the Underland Chronicles to be neglected, you see. That said, I feel it would be unjust to neglect mention of Collins's equally amazing, and much more popular, Hunger Games series.
The Hunger Games is pretty awesome. No doubt you know all about it because of the Harry-Potter-and-Twilight-like status it's achieved. I'll run through a quick summary here:

Katniss Everdeen lives in poverty-stricken District 12 with her family, who barely scrape by on what Katniss can shoot and forage in her illegal excursions to the woods. Katniss's world is turned upside down when her little sister, Prim, is chosen as a tribute during the annual Reaping held in each district by the tyrannical Capitol of Panem. Desperately, Katniss volunteers to take her sister's place and becomes a contestant in the 74th Hunger Games: a televised, forced fight to the death between youth from the various districts. Of 24 tributes, only one will leave the arena alive and be showered with wealth and glory. The districts, crushed in the rebellion against the Capitol 74 years before, have long been resigned to this state of affairs. But in the second and third books, the flames of hatred between districts and capitol are fanned, and Katniss Everdeen emerges as the face of a new rebellion.

This series is great, the characters are imaginative and well-developed, the intrigue is intriguing, the plot and love triangle original and captivating. It is extremely violent though. Graphic in parts. I'm just impressed and delighted they kept the movie PG-13. 
Fun to read, and grimly told in Katniss's sarcastic tones. 
Make sure you have Dr. Seuss or something happy to read when you're done.

Genre: futuristic/sci-fi/fantasy/romance
for: teens and adults
Content rating: 2.5/5 For violence, hatred and depression, some nudity (not sexual), and some mentions of forced sexual relationships.
My enjoyment: 5/5

by Suzanne Collins

I have a confession to make. I...I don't feel like I could live with myself if I wasn't completely honest with my loyal inkbound fans about this. It's just...I don't really...don't really know how to...I don't want you to be disappointed in me...
yeah. I guess I'll just say it.

Um, I like Gregor the Overlander...better than the Hunger Games.


I know. That's it. You can all hate me now.

Or you can let me enlighten you. And if you do, while you too may be alternately shunned and attacked by angry, pitchfork-wielding, cosplaying Katniss fans--you will partake of a joy which they can never know.
Gregor the Overlander. A humble little book series, never achieved the Harry-Potter-and-Twilight-level popular-obsession status that the Hunger Games now enjoys. A mere 229 fanart hits on Deviantart, as opposed to the Hunger Games' 75,438. More of a children's than a teen's series, really.

I don't care. It's even better.


Written prior to the Hunger Games and directed at a younger, apparently less bloodthirsty audience, Gregor the Overlander tells of an eleven-year-old boy who falls through a grate in a routine trip to the laundry room and ends up in a place altogether different from New York City. In the Underland, which is peopled by strange humans and hosts of giant rats, bats, cockroaches, and the like, laundry is the least of Gregor and his toddler sister Boots' worries. After a near-disastrous attempt to return to the surface, Gregor learns that to some of the Underlanders, his appearance wasn't entirely unexpected. Directed by a bizarre prophecy, Gregor and the haughty queen Luxa assemble a fantastic alliance of creatures to carry out a search for something Gregor feared lost forever; a quest that may save the Underland from destruction.

In the course of five books and many adventures, Gregor and his family find their destiny inseparably entwined with that of the Underland as Gregor leads the war that will decide the fate of them all.

I think we all ought to pause here and acknowledge that Suzanne Collins has a flair for the epic. The dramatic. Those bits so perfectly timed, so unexpected, so thrilling in their execution that make us want to jump up and shout. "Yes! YES! You wrote that EXACTLY RIGHT! Haha! In your face!"
Now, most of us don't succumb to these urges, (though I won't deny an occasional fist pump or two) but we've all felt them. Collins is the master of writing these moments. She is also the master of complex, unexpected plotlines, new elements, double crosses. And she neglected none of these in writing Gregor the Overlander.
Plus, she didn't make the protagonist a bitter, depressed, mentally disturbed killer. (At least, not usually). 
Don't get me wrong, I love Katniss, her neverending poor attitude, and her jolly District 12 friends. But Gregor seems more real to me. With all the doubts and worries and insights of an eleven-year-old thrown way out of his depth. And Boots. And Luxa and Ares. All so well developed. 
Yes, I'm sorry loyal blog buddies, there will be no disenchanted ranting about this series. But I will leave you with one final smart-alecky remark:
  I was a Collins fan before it was cool.


For: older kids on up
Content rating: 4.5/5 There is much war and violence. Not graphic. 
My enjoyment: Gosh I love this series. 5/5

by James Patterson

Imagine a teenager. Not just any teenager--a really annoying teenager with an attitude. Okay, any teenager. You know what? Better yet, picture yourself as a teenager. (This is easy for me to do). You're annoying. You're probably at about a 7.5 out of 10 annoyingness level, right? So much attitude that you're annoying yourself, right?
Good. Now multiply that number by one thousand six hundred and thirty two point five.
That is Maximum Ride.
A book about possibly the most rebellious teenager in existence (Max), and rife with a bunch of                  
                                                                others contending for the crown.
It's kind of fun to read, actually.

The adventurous, if not too original, plotline, features aforementioned teenager Max and her family, the Flock. Why the avian imagery? Well, the members of this particular family are 2% bird. Born in test tubes of recombinant DNA and raised (held captive) their whole lives by (who else?) mad/evil scientists, our heroes escaped their captors and (here's where the book starts) spend the rest of their lives running (ahem, flying) away to avoid recapture. Pretty crazy existence, right? And yet I suspect that most of us would put up with it if we had wings thrown into the deal.

So Max leads her jolly little band all over the world, and eventually the Internet, in this captivating (you see what I did there?) series.
Yes. All very awesome. And I enjoyed it very much, I daresay I can still enjoy it very much, yet after reading the third or fourth book I realized the following things:

1) It never ends. The story goes around and around and around so much that I lost track of how much tail-kicking of Erasers (the mad scientists' werewolf thugs) actually goes on. It's a lot.

2) It isn't a book. 
I don't recall when I realized this, but when I did there was no going back. James Patterson doesn't write books. He writes action movies. You know those ones where the taking names never ends, and the sound bites that are thrown in between the action sequences are either banter or explosions? This is not a book series. It's a movie script writhing in its paper prison.

3) It's inconsistent. Wait...where did Fang get that laptop? Do we ever actually establish whether Jeb's a good guy, a traitor, a good guy pretending to be a traitor, or a bad guy pretending to be a traitor pretending to be a double agent? How does all this tie in? That sort of thing. Does Patterson even remember what he wrote in the last book?!

4) After the third book it just drags on...and on...saying the same things over and over. What is the Flock trying to accomplish, again? And the action gets less believable.

So. Good book series, but not amazing. Read the first three books if you like teenage sarcasm and action movies and want to fantasize about flying.

for: teenagers. Don't give it to your 10-12 year-olds. It will accelerate the annoyification process.
Content rating: 4/5 Definitely some swearing in there, especially as the series progresses. The teen angst gets more annoying too.
My enjoyment: starting out...probably 4/5

by Neil Gaiman

I do like this book. Neil Gaiman calls it "refreshingly creepy" and "a story that children experienced as an adventure, but which gave adults nightmares." I don't know about the nightmares, but it's certainly creepy and I wouldn't let small children read it...
Coraline is about a girl named Coraline who lives with her loving but disinterested parents in a large house divided into several flats. The neighbors are either fairly odd or certifiably insane, depending on your point of view. 
Coraline is an explorer. But one day, she comes across the dilemma that all explorers encounter: it's raining and she's not allowed out. After Coraline counts all the windows in the flat, visits the crazy neighbors, lists everything blue, and is STILL about to die of boredom, she remembers the door in the drawing room that is said to lead nowhere...
(But come on, I mean, we've all read Narnia.)
Behind the door is a world where everything is better, or at least more interesting. And behind the door is another mother who wants to keep Coraline forever.

One of the things I like most about this book is Coraline herself. She's just a great character. As for the rest, it's certainly imaginative. An adventure. I think it's meant to be a sort of horror fairy tale.
Don't ask me if the movie is better. I haven't seen it. 

       But hey, nice movie poster!
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For: older kids 
Content rating: 4/5 This is sort of hard to say. It isn't that there's bad stuff so much as it...it just isn't entirely benign. The evil is a little too accurate for a childrens' story. Of course, that's my take and I rarely read spooky stories.
My enjoyment: 3.5/5

by Markus Zusak

One of the most beautiful, grim, intriguing, lovable books that I have ever read.
And that, as many of you know, is saying a lot.
Yeah, this book pretty much rocks. It's told in an...original way. And the narrator is now one of my all-time favorite book characters.
The Book Thief takes place (refreshingly, I thought) in Nazi Germany. I've heard a lot of the Allies' side of WWII. I enjoy historical fiction and found it interesting to learn about the life of ordinary German people at this point in history. 

As the story opens, nine-year-old Liesel Meminger is traveling by train with her mother and little brother to Munich, where the siblings will live with a foster family. Liesel's brother never makes it. When the mother and daughter arrives in Munich several days later, Werner is dead from illness and buried in a nameless town's cemetery and Liesel carries a stolen book in her snow-bitten hands.
That book is the first of several, and it is through the books that Liesel's story is told.
Still reeling from grief and plagued by nightmares, Liesel settles into life in her new home on Himmel Street in the poor part of town. Life with the Hubermanns has few luxuries, but she comes to love her kind foster father and even her hard-edged new mother. She befriends the irrepressible Rudy Steiner (who is widely acknowledged by all to be insane), learns to devour books with a passion, and dutifully attends all her Hitler Youth meetings. However, war and Nazi ideals overshadow the lives of all German citizens, and Liesel's happy enough lifestyle is threatened when a promise made years ago brings a Jewish refugee to hide in her home.

One of my favorite things about this book is the excellent job Zuzak does developing the characters into real people with faults, virtues, dreams, and adventures. It's a great, complex plotline and a realistic historical setting where childish escapades can mean playing with life and death.

for: Adults and teens
Content rating: 3/5  There's plenty of death, violence, swearing, and crime. I'll add that I am now more familiar with German profanity than I ever thought I'd be.
My enjoyment: 5/5

Read. It.

by Madeleine L'Engle

Austins, reader. Reader, Austins. Now that we've made the introductions...
This is a good book. This is a sort of life-is-being-lived book. You can't really say that nothing much happens, when in fact a child's life is altered, a potential girlfriend is chased away, and a dog becomes a hero. Let's face it, these things happen in every book. There is a difference though. In this book, shockingly, no one saves the world, however, they do have a few jolly good family sing-alongs.

I like these books. Once in a while, it's nice to read something where the world doesn't get saved, nor in fact does it need saving, at least not in the immediate future. Still, if I had to choose, the dualistic Wrinkle in Time series is a lot better than the Austins series. Both series, however, showcase L'Engle's excellent, friendly characters. Normal people, and what is more, decent people. I like that, because they are easy to empathize with. 
Anyhow, the story is about Vicky Austin and her family. One day they receive the terrible news that their Uncle Hal and his copilot were killed when their experimental aircraft exploded. The copilot's now-orphaned daughter Maggy is sent to live with the Austins while her upper-class grandfather comes to a decision on her future. 12-year-old Vicky tells the story of her family and how Maggy comes to fit in with them despite problems encountered upon the way.
Sometimes humorous, sometimes tragic, always honest. 
A good book. Not a spectacular one. For that, read A Wrinkle In Time.

for: older children on up
Content rating: 5/5
My enjoyment: 3/5