The Happy Hippo Readers

    Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury, is one of most famous dystopian books ever, and not without good reason. I read this book a year or two ago, and was immensely pleased by the choice I made to purchase it.     The book follows protagonist Guy Montag in a futurist American city. In this dystopian  world, books are forbidden, and people who are found with books are to have their collections burned. Guy, is a firefighter, but he doesn't put fires out. He is the one who burns the books. People in this world are entertained by giant TV's mounted in their houses, or by the Seashells  they wear in their ears, like hearing aids. When I imagine this setting, I imagine a gray scale world, devoid of passion and liveliness. As the book progresses though, Guy becomes disillusioned with his job and the world he lives in, after his wife attempts suicide and a girl who he became friends with dies from a car accident. He becomes even more distraught when he arriv...

  My last blog talked about the dissatisfaction high schoolers expressed to  The Scarlet Letter . On that blog, I also expressed my personal opinion on the book too. I said that I hated the book and that I was dissatisfied with the book. Since we've recently finished  The Scarlet Letter , I think it's a perfect time to reevaluate my feelings on the book.                When I posted my previous blog, our class had just finished reading chapter 3. We had finished the Custom House reading, and we were starting to get into the actual story. I was very frustrated with how confusing the book was. The Custom House sketch was gruesome to read. I remember that there was a part where Hawthorne took a whole page just to describe a minor detail, but it didn't even make sense to me. The whole Custom house sketch was confusing, written in an interesting prose, and was just boring. When we started to read chapters 1-...

Ernest Hemingway was not exaggerating when he said that “all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called ‘Huckleberry Finn’.” The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn picks up in the aftermath of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer . Huck has finally become a functioning member of society – but not for long, since Huck’s perpetually drunk and abusive father kidnaps him because Huck has been too civilized. Eventually, Huck can’t take it anymore, and fakes his death and runs away. By sheer luck, he comes across Jim, a runaway slave, and they set off down the Mississippi River on a raft. Much of the novel tells of their journey, and their encounters with various characters, including a “duke” and a French “king” – and in addition, a very special Tom Sawyer makes an appearance near the end. One of the various qualities of this novel that make it unique is the contrast between the characters. Some were really entertaining, and some were extremely infuriating, yet still enter...

TW/ mention of drugs (only once)        As I have said in my previous blog, I always loved mystery books. I typically like listening to a podcast while doing my chores or homework, so when the podcast host covered the book,  One of Us is Lying  by Karen M. McManus, I knew I had to immediately read it.     The book takes place in a detention room with 5 students because they had their phones in class. They were vastly different.  Bronwyn Rojas was your typical straight-A student with the hopes of following in her family's footsteps to attend Yale University. In contrast to Bronwyn, there was Nate McAuley, who was the school's "bad boy" that does drugs and sells them. Then, there was Cooper Clay, who is the jock and loved baseball, and his best friend's girlfriend, Addy Prentiss, who always ends up in second place in anything she does. Lastly, there was the outlier, Simon Kelleher, who terrorized the students at his school for ex...