The Happy Hippo Readers

KEYWORDS: Sherlock Holmes In the TV series Case Closed, “Conan” became Jimmy Kudo’s alias because he was inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s renowned detective series Sherlock Holmes. As a fan of the series (I only watched the first 100 out of 1000 episodes…ok whatever) and a passionate reader of many contemporary detective novels. I thought it was about time to check out the most classic, paramount series in the detective realm – the Sherlock Holmes series by Arthur Conan Doyle. The full Sherlock Holmes series is composed of 4 main novels and a bundle of short stories.  A Study in Scarlet is the first of the 4 main novels. In short, the story circles around 2 murders that happen in London, and (not unexpectedly) Detective Holmes takes the burden of solving the case.  From the way the story was plotted, I feel like A Study in Scarlet appears to be slightly inferior compared to the other books I’ve read. I was expecting a little bit more plot twist. However, I do find the themes explored i

       I've only read three inherently sad books in my past: Planet Earth is Blue, 13 Reasons Why, and Bridge to Terabithia. All three of these books shared the common theme of an important character dying, but Bridge to Terabithia felt much more personal than the other two.     This review by  Henry Palmquist puts it best: " This book was a punch in the gut as a fifth-grader nearly thirty years ago. As an adult, it's a beating with a padlock in a sock. Just non-stop blow after blow because now after college English classes you know about things like foreshadowing and symbolism and dramatic irony and YOU SEE IT COMING FROM MILES AWAY AND CAN DO NOTHING TO STOP IT....  Because you're an adult now and your adult fears are different than your fears as a kid. This only heightens the contrast between Jesse's juvenile fear of falling into the creek and the reader's more mature fear of losing a loved one and makes the characters' pain stand out in that much more

                As I was surfing the internet a few weeks ago, I stumbled upon a Reddit thread that caught my attention. The reddit post shared an interesting statistic related to   The   Scarlet Letter . I was very amused by this post because we had just started to read   The Scarlet Letter  in our class. But when I looked at the comments, all I found was comments expressing hate towards   The Scarlet Letter .                 While looking through the comments, one in particular caught my attention. This comment was written by a college student, and it expressed the student's deep hate for the book and the effects it's had on his literary journey. The comment said, " Oh man, I was a book fiend before high school. Read all the Harry Potter I could stomach as those books came out, read many different young adult series, read encyclopedias, history books, whatever I could find that was interesting. Then High School, and this piece of sh*t my freshman year. I'm only a yea

(T/W: mention of suicide and murder)      Hello! Welcome to my first blog this semester! I have always heard good reviews about A Good Girl's Guide to Murder either on social media or general people recommending it to me, and I've finally got around to finishing it over winter break. While reading the book, I could understand why people liked it so much.      A Good Girl's Guide to Murder  is a trilogy written by Holly Jackson and published in 2019. The first book, A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (obviously) centers around a 17-year-old girl named Pippa Fitz-Amobi who is researching the death of Andie Bell for her final year project. The police deemed Andrea "Andie" Bell's case as a murder-suicide where Sal Singh, her boyfriend, was framed for the death of Andie. As Pip continues to research this case, she becomes increasingly suspicious of the death, and she doesn't believe what the police say about the deaths. As the book continues, Pip continues to fi

I was originally planning to read The Adventures of Huckelberry Finn over winter break (thank you Mateo for the recommendation!), but after re-reading Mateo’s excellent blog I realized I should read Tom Sawyer first, just for a little background. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is about a young boy named… Tom Sawyer (no way!). He lives with his Aunt Polly and half-brother Sid. Which is unfortunate for Aunt Polly – Tom is probably the most troublesome, self-centered, albeit clever and somewhat kind boy in the neighborhood. For instance, Tom, bored to death when Aunt Polly makes him whitewash a fence, uses reverse psychology to convince his friends that whitewashing is actually really fun, and he tricks his friends into giving him small treasures in exchange for a turn painting the fence. Tom then trades these treasures with other boys for church tickets (earned by memorizing verses of the Bible), and cheerfully exchanges his tickets for a Bible as a prize (which requires 2000 memorized