#bookreport

First chapter of this book was the thing that got me hooked.

“In Faerie, there are no fish sticks, no ketchup, no television” – p. 8 Chapter 1

The prologue leads us into what life was before, and what terrible trauma that always loomed over the head of our Jude Duarte and her sisters. What I love about this first instalment is how Jude will do everything to stay in the realm, not as a bride but as a warrior and all she does to keep being there. She keeps getting knocked off her feet by the fae prince Cardan Greenbriar and she will do everything to prove her worth.

and I have so many questions.

Why is there eight different fonts on the cover.

Why does the Ice King look like the epitome of a character for monsterfuckers who like humanoid, barely altered monsters like Vampires.

Then it went onto the contents.

Ok, understandable. Prince Reardon (haha rear) doesn't like the tradition. Fair.

But he doesn't like it because he'd rather marry a man than a woman? Where's the connection.

Absolutely obsessed with the implication of the sacrifice somehow deciding who the king will marry.

Then the absolute highlight, a best friend appears!

And he's a witch! Oh no!

He's chosen as a sacrifice and sent to the Frozen Kingdom.

Reading these contents like

Hell yeah girl, give us nothing.

However, I gotta admit it is intriguing and I will be reading it.

I will come back with knowledge of why the best friend has anything to do with the marriage of the prince.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

I have been wanting to read this book for ages and now I finally had the chance. When I heard about this I thought, “What kind of sick and twisted society would burn books???.... I need to read it!” And so I did and now here’s my review.

Synopsis: Guy Montag is a fireman but not your typical one. Instead of putting our fires, he creates them. See, books are now illegal and must be burned. When the alarm goes off at the fire station it’s off to work to burn those books. Montag seems to enjoy his job until he meets Clarisse, a neighbor who just moved in next door to him. As soon as she appeared, she disappeared without a trace or warning. Then Montag finds his wife not moving and en empty pill bottle next to her. Suddenly, Montag’s life doesn’t make sense anymore and the only way he can find the answers he’s looking for is in books. 

*SPOILER ALERT*

There is a lot to unpack here. First and foremost, what the fuck?? The thought of just burning books is hell to me! Who thought that was a good idea??? Bradbury, you have some serious issues. Sorry, I digress. Bradbury shows how important books are for humanity. We become lost without them. Reader or not, books have impacted our lives. It taught us how to read, write, and most importantly learn. Bradbury is also showing us the effects of tv and technology. Now, I love technology as much as the next person (hell, I’m typing this on a computer as we speak) but technology is not all there is. We need to have a sense of culture, of wonder, in our lives and we aren’t going to get that from sitting behind a computer all day (as much as I want to). Unless you read on your computer, then that’s different. Anyway, books are here for a reason and I really believe we take them for granted. I think Bradbury believes this as well. The entire book we witness Montag’s wife, Mildred, sucked into the void of television. All she wants are three walls of screens to project her favorite shows and has not a care in the world for anything else. It really shows how mindless television made her. Without books, we become of something different.

I want to take a deeper look into Mildred. At the beginning of the book, Montag walks in on her overdosed on sleeping pills. Why? We never find out. As soon as she is helped and back to full health, she doesn’t remember a thing. This says something huge. I am going to contradict myself a bit from the previous paragraph. I said before Mildred was mindless, not caring about anything but her tv shows. But then why did she try and commit suicide? Obviously, she is not as mindless as she seems and something is causing her pain. She is not as happy as she makes herself out to be. Is tv not giving her the joy she needs? But isn’t that why books were banned and tv was in? Because books were pointless and tv gave us the joy books didn't? There are a lot of questions but the one answer that I know for sure is, people are not any better off then they were before books were banned. When Montag called the police after finding his wife, guess who they sent over. I’ll give you a hint, it’s not medics! They send over plumbers. Medics are too busy doing something more important or something. The plumbers tell Montag that “this happens all the time”, and like pumping out a clogged toilet, they pumped Mildred’s stomach until the drugs were out. Suicides must be very high in this universe if this “happens all the time”. That tells you again, screams it in your face really, that people aren’t as happy as they should be. 

So let's pretend I’m dumb and I believe everyone is happy watching tv all day in this book. After a while, you need some new and exciting tv shows instead of watching the same thing all day (except for those binge-watchers... you know who you are). While Montag makes his daring escape after killing his Captain and evading arrest, the police and a bloodthirsty hellhound made of metal hunt him down. What’s the best thing they could do in this situation? Oh, I know! Let’s make it into a show like cops! And that’s exactly what they did. They had helicopters and on the ground, cameramen following the hellhound and tracking Montag’s every move. They even decided to make it into a game! They told everyone listening on the radio to count down with them and when they were done, they all opened their doors and looked out their houses to see if they found Montag. Fortunately, Montag was able to disappear into a river. People are fucking nuts. If I knew a murderer was running around outside my house, I deadbolt the door and block all the windows! I wasn’t about to look out the door to certain death! This ain’t no horror movie! But I guess that’s how enticing tv is in these days. Continuing on, Montag was able to cover his tracks as soon as he hit the river and flowed down with the current. The hellhound couldn’t figure out where he was but the tv show was still going! What were they to do?? They decided that this episode needed a finale, a great ending. So they faked it. They found a random guy on the street that had some kind of violation and killed him. They pretended that he was Montag all along. Poor man. You can tell they did this for two reasons. One: they needed a great ending to the episode. One that left the viewers satisfied. Two: they couldn’t show that someone got away with it. We know that there are a lot of others hiding out with books (the reason why the fire department is open in the first place) but if they found out one got away with it, there’s hope, hope that others can get away with it too. It’s pretty disturbing thinking about it. The government probably does that today, NAY! does do that. I’m almost positive about that.

When we’re not sucked into the void of television shows, we realize what is happening around us. For example, all we hear in the news these days is about school shootings. Awful, terrible news. The thing about this world, people are too busy watching their favorite shows to realize what’s really happening. A couple of times in the book, there were mentions of a war going on. There wasn’t anything specific, just that there was a war. Throughout the entire book, the main characters didn’t mention it once. It was the least important thing to them. Montag was too busy trying to understand the importance of books, Mildred was too busy watching her favorite show and Clarise, well Clarisse was missing, presumably dead. But as Montag was far away from the city, a plane flew by and dropped a huge bomb on the city, destroying everyone and everything. No one was warned and no one saw it coming. They were too busy watching their favorite shows to realize. Moral of the story, pay attention to your surroundings. You never know what’s coming. 

*SPOILER ALERT ENDS*

If you love books with a lot of deeper meanings, this is the one for you. It’s a little hard to follow at first but I could just be saying that because I’ve been reading a lot of children’s books lately lol. Anyway, I really enjoyed this one and all the hidden clues you can find in the writing. You can understand, though, that the overall message is BOOKS ARE WAY TOO IMPORTANT TO BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED!!

I’m gonna say that one more time for the people in the back

BOOKS ARE WAY TOO IMPORTANT TO BE TAKEN FOR GRANTED!!!

Before we begin, I’d like to start off by saying we are NOT talking about the movie. The movie is a completely different storyline than the book so if you’re reading this based on the movie... don’t.

Synopsis:

In the year 2044, the world has turned into an ugly place (not very surprising given the circumstances now). Most of humanity has turned to an online gaming community/virtual utopia called the Oasis. The creator of this Oasis, now long dead (rip), has created a quest to find an easter egg inside the Oasis and whoever finds it will receive all the fortune that has come out of the creation of the Oasis and total control over it. The main character, Wade Watts, has devoted his life to finding the egg and when he figures out the first clue, he is set against many rivals that he never imagined he would be against including the IOI, a company that will stop at nothing (including kill!) to find the egg.

*SPOILER ALERT AHEAD*

This book is surprisingly dense and detailed. Now, I’m not talking Stephen King or J.D. Salinger descriptive but descriptive none the less. However, this book is in need of it. In order to find the egg, you have to understand the past. The creator of the game, James Donovan Halliday, was obsessed with the culture from the past, specifically, the 1980s. The people who dedicated their lives to finding this egg, called gunters, had to do a lot of research about the past and about Halliday himself. And he didn’t make it easy for them. The trials they went through is not something ordinary people can pass easily through. If you’re a gamer, you might have some hope but you have to be an extraordinary gamer. Most of the tasks were defeating impossible levels of video games from the 1980s or finding easter eggs in games. You can understand why Halliday named the egg an Easter Egg. 

A hot-selling book always comes with a little love in there ;). Wade always had a crush on a famous gunter and blogger in the Oasis named Art3mis. No, I did not mistype. It’s actually spelled with a 3. What do you expect? It’s a video game username! Wade and Art3mis end up meeting in the oasis at the first clue and became rivals hunting for the egg. They do help each other out every now and then but Art3mis does not want there to be any kind of relationship between them since they’re both after the same thing. It doesn’t turn out that way but whatever! That’s how it always goes. BUT! I do have to say is their relationship was not as all cliche as you might think. Yeah, I know what you’re gonna say “But he had a major crush on her before they met!” “They just so happen to meet and fall in love” DUH! That’s how a lot of relationships happen! But you know what! Wade was an awesome guy throughout this book. In the beginning, towards when they first met and were friendly with each other, she realized how close she was getting to this guy and she’s like “wait a minute! This is my rival!” and totally ditched the guy and they stopped having contact for awhile. Obviously, Wade was super bummed out about it but he didn’t try to “win her back.” He moved on! He had better things to worry about! He had to find this egg! So he shaved his entire body and went hunting! No, literally. He shaved his entire body, including his eyebrows, so the suit he wears that allows him to move around the oasis and feel the oasis, would fit better. Talk about dedication.

Continuing on about Art3mis, the character that you see her has in the game is a pretty one. She created it to her liking but to Wade, he wanted to know what she looked like for real, as most crushes online go. Obviously, she didn’t want to show how she actually looked so it wasn’t until they were being hunted by the IOI that he was able to see Art3mis. Art3mis or her real name, Sam, was pretty close to what her avatar looked like but her avatar lacked the port-wine stain birthmark covering half of her face. To Sam, she didn’t find that very attractive but to Wade, she was still as beautiful as ever. So this book is a long extension of the show, Catfish. It’s a video game, after all, you kind of have to accept that. At least this one was a happy ending one. This just really shows that all of this, all the hunting for the egg and this neverending battle with the IOI is for a video game. All the battle games you play or the parties you go to, all just part of a game. It’s kinda crazy!

There are a lot of other characters to talk about including the top five participants in the egg hunt, but I’ll look at the character Aech. Aech is Wade’s number one best friend in the Oasis but they never met in person. They’ve known each other for years though and they’ve become very close. It wasn’t until the IOI found out about the players' real names and started hunting them that Wade and Aech finally met in person. And Aech, a huge guy in the game, turns out to be Helen, a woman. Now, I didn’t see this coming but I loved it! Going back, there are subtle hints that you can find suggesting that it might be a girl but, either way, I was pleasantly surprised. So yet another episode of Catfish! Along with all this, Wade was super cool about it. He was shocked but he got over it and still continued to hang out with his best friend like nothing changed. He’s a pretty good guy like that.

*SPOILER ALERT END*

This book goes into crazy more detail so I only touched the basics here. Overall, this book can really connect to young readers, especially gamers. It can also tell you that this world is going to shit. We are so advanced with our technology and we are going to keep advancing but it’s not gonna mean shit if we keep this up with our planet. I didn’t mean to take this review into a talk about how we need to save the planet but hell, I’m going to do it anyway! When I read this book for the first time, I thought, “Wow! This is the future!” We have come so far with video games and online communities but took steps back when it comes to the earth, that we’re going to be living in the same shit show Wade, Sam, Helen, and everyone else in the book is living. It may seem cool, like yeah we’re going to have this cool virtual reality like the Oasis and live happily in there LIKE NO! WE CAN’T HAVE A COOL REALITY LIKE THAT IF WE STILL HAVE TO LIVE IN THE OUTSIDE WORLD AND WE CAN’T DO THAT IF THE WORLD IS GONE! Got a little heated there, sorry. Anyway, the point is, this book really brought attention to things we need to be aware of, and I’m not just talking about the planet, I’m talking about catfishers too! Be careful online, you hooligans!

YUHH I LUV LOOKISM (*≧∀≦*)

This is a book report/review for my break at home, every 500 words is $50

Beloved by Toni Morrison.

Rate: 10/10

Writing a book report outline can help you organize your thoughts and ideas about a book you have read. Here is a basic outline you can follow:

Introduction: In this section, you should provide some basic information about the book, including the author's name, the title, and the publication date. You can also include a brief summary of the book and any other relevant background information.

Summary: This section should provide a brief summary of the book's plot, including the main characters, setting, and major events. Be sure to focus on the most important parts of the story and avoid giving away any major spoilers.

Analysis: In this section, you should provide your analysis and evaluation of the book. You can discuss the author's writing style, themes, characters, and overall message. You should also include your own opinions and reactions to the book.

Conclusion: In this section, you should summarize your main points and provide your overall assessment of the book. You can also make recommendations for who might enjoy the book and why.