Review: Frankenstein

Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Very spooky. Gave me many nightmares. I'm only going to call this book "the modern prometheus" from now on. I liked the framed narrative. I liked how there was a framed narrative inside a framed narrative at some parts when the monster was speaking. I liked all the stuff that was typical of romantic era writers, like descriptions of sublime nature and people from other cultures and the warnings about science going too far. I like how the monster was shown to be so intelligent and persuasive and have superhuman strength and speed. You really felt bad for him because it seems as though he could have done as much good as his creator had caused him to do evil. Even though the story was from Victor's perspective so it was constantly trying to make the monster look bad, you eventually came to the realization that Victor is really in the wrong. He shouldn't have just let his creature loose without becoming like a father to it or something. He didn't even give the monster a name. He really has no one to blame but himself for the death of his entire family.

View all my reviews

Goodreads Review: Sophie's World

Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was beautiful, not only because of all the lessons on philosophy that were embedded into it but because of the awesome mystery of the characters that made you keep turning the pages. The writing style is very different from anything I've ever read before, with all that "romantic irony" plus the fact that it was a story inside a story inside a story sometimes. The ending was really well done as well. I wasn't expecting it to end that way. I love how they became immortal characters in the end.  There were also parts that were really funny, for example whenever Alberto Knox would be explaining a philosophy concept, the interjection of Sophie would always be something really comedic.

So even though this book is awesome, I didn't know whether to give it 5 stars or 4, but I decided on 5. The slight imperfections were that it didn't talk much about philosophy outside of Europe. It did mention Eastern philosophy a bit, but not enough. I won't hold this against the book much though because it was already quite long and I think if the author tried to talk about every type of philosophy it would reach a ridiculous length and cause the plot to move along way too slowly. The cover should say "a novel about the history of WESTERn philosophy" then. The author did spend a long time on certain parts, like Romanticism, and gave other areas a rushed treatment, like the Enlightenment thinkers I guess. The part about Hegel's theory of history and the "world spirit" really stood out to me. I guess it was all necessary for the plot. I like how the author included stuff about feminism, but it was sad that they didn't include much about other cultures. The Native Americans were called "primitive people" :( , and hardly any non-Europeans were mentioned. Once again though, this omission was probably necessary to move the plot along, and the setting of the Nordic countries and the general descriptions of the culture were awesome enough. One more flaw was that at times in got super unrealistic. I don't know how the mother could have been so chill with Sophie always going out to visit a random philosopher.  I don't know how she just allowed her only daughter to do a disappearing act at the garden party. [ I don't know how she just allowed her only daughter to do a disappearing act at the garden party. (hide spoiler)]

I would recommend this book to anyone for its incredibly unique writing style and as an awesome intro to philosophy.

View all my reviews

So Frypania, it seems that my Goodreads account has been linked to my blog and is automatically posting my book reviews for me. Wonderful! 

Book Review: GOG book 1: The Capture by Kathryn Lasky

Series title: Guardians of Ga'Hoole (GOG)

Book Title: The Capture 

Author: Kathryn Lasky 

Genre: Fantasy, Fiction 

I'm still in India and since I haven't done much recently (except for an interview with Hindustan Times and buying four chickens to keep as pets while I'm here), I thought I'd make a somewhat interesting post. My book reviews usually get me some extra views and since I've been reading a lot here I think I should write one. 

 2-star rating 

Time to get to the point. Though I didn't really like the story (the 2 star rating shows that), I would still recommend the series to people who really, really like fantasy (or owlz. I hate owlz.).

The book is about a very young barn owl named Soren who falls out of his tree one day. No one saves him and he can't get back into his tree because he is an owlet and isn't old enough to know how to fly. He is snatched up by a big, evil owl who carries him to St. Aegolius Canyons where there is an academy for owlets. Soren is supposed to get training there to help the evil owlz who run St. Aegolius. Thousands of other captured owlets train there. They have no idea what exactly they are training for. They are forced to call each other by a number instead of a name. Soren is called 12-1. Soon, Soren meets an elf owl named Gylfie. Gylfie and Soren find out that St. Aegolius is trying to brainwash all the owlets with a process called moonblinking. The owlets would all become slaves. The academy is also trying to take over all the owl kingdoms. Gylfie and Soren have to escape the canyons and stop the bad owlz from ruling the world. The two owlets meet lots of other owlz (both evil and good).

My favourite character was Hortense (12-8). I won't say why.... that would give out a major spoiler.

Kathryn Lasky is actually an awesome author. The first book of the GOG series might have sucked but she has actually written many more books. When I first picked up 'The Capture', I thought the author's name sounded familiar. It turned out she had also written 'Jahanara: Princess of princesses' and 'Elizabeth I: Red Rose of the House of Tudor'. Both of these historical fiction books are in the Royal Diaries series, which is a series that attempts to describe the lives of several female historical figures with fiction. 

She has also written a lot of nonfiction and I think I'll read more of her books (I'll post reviews if they're worth posting reviews about). 

Bai. I hope you found this helpful if you were considering reading the GOG series ;D 

Note: I know some of you hate fantasy books D:  I promise I'll do some non-fantasy book reviews. I don't really like fantasy either.

now for the weird gif I put at the end of each book review:

Book review: Aztec by Gary Jennings

Frypania Book Review: Aztec by Gary Jennings 

In my opinion at least 

Ok, so if you've read this blog for some time, you'd probably know that I really like historical fictions books, especially Mesoamerican themed ones. This book was exactly that. It was a narrative of the Aztec empire at its height and of the spanish conquest. Of course, you can't trust a fiction book for facts, but this novel reads like a thriller and even though it's a bit long (754 pages) it's totally worth is, especially if you like history. 

First of all, I'm going to warn you that the book has a LOT of adult content. Not just violence but other stuff too....... just to let you know. If you're not prepared for it you may end up getting: !!!!!!!!

So watch out. 

The book's main character is named Mixtli (how sexylicious) 

He's Mexica and lives in some Mexica town, not in Tenochtitlan, but he does go to Tenochtitlan. 

The book is told from his point of view and he basically narrates his life to some random spanish people. 

He gets to be a pochtecatl (a merchant) and do cool stuff like go to the Mayan lands. It talks about his life during the spanish conquest and colonial time too. It talks about how his people were devastated by smallpox and all those diseases. That was sad...... 

Mixtli gets to meet people that had important roles in the spanish conquest (including cortes himself, you know, that fat guy with no life). He even meant Malintzin. Yes. So now you have to read it because you're dying of suspense. 

Don't forget that this book is part of a series, and that it is very rare of me to post a nice critique about a book instead of a mean one (lol like with this post on the school for good and evil)

Have fun reading it!!

Book Review: The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

Book Review: The School for Good and Evil 
                                         

As you can see from the rating above, I did not like this book. This review will tell you about the book and why I did not like it. 

 Book title: The school for good and evil by Soman Chainani
Genre: Fantasy

The school for good and evil was a fantasy book about two schools, one for good, and one for evil. Every year the school master who ran both of the schools would kidnap pairs of students from villages all over the world. In every pair there would be an evil child and a good child. In this book, a girl who is very pretty named Sophie really wants to go to the good school because all who graduate it get to live happily ever after with a prince and be a princess. Sophie believed she could be a princess and she wanted her best friend, Agatha, to be in the school for evil. This was because Agatha was ugly and wanted to be a witch. However, when the two girls are kidnapped, Sophie ends up in the school for evil with a bunch of freaks and monsters and Agatha ends up in the school for good with princes, princesses, and fairies. They try to make the school master see that there was some kind of mistake but the school master says that there was no mistake. In the book, Sophie and Agatha eventually saw that they were in the right schools as their true nature got revealed.

My dislike of the book begins from the title and the cover. It gives too much of the story away.  

Next, I would like to say that the plot was stupid. It had no plot holes, but it was a really stupid plot. who wants to know about two stupid girls who go to some fantasy schools to becomes witches or princesses?! 

However, I would like to compliment Soman Chainani on the style of writing and the pace of the story. It was very engaging and the description was amazing. 

My favorite character from the book was Agatha because she was nice and smart unlike Sophie who was such a WAD. 

Read this book only if you like fantasies.