Bee, Bernadette, and Elgin are three idiosyncratically named family members of a very idiosyncratic family. Bee is arguably precocious, arguably angsty, certainly adolescent, and well beyond her years. She’s a brilliant child with a bright future and a good heart. Elgin is incredibly busy, rather aloof, and growing more and more tired of his wife. But he’s brilliant, and behind Samantha 2, one of the most hyped (fictional) Microsoft products that allows you to control robots with your brain. Bernadette is agoraphobic, misanthropic, neurotic, but […]
Finding a Needle in a Stack of Needles
When reading this book, I could not help but think about torture techniques that use water in drastically different ways. There’s the act of waterboarding, where you place a towel over a person’s face and then pour water on top of them. This mimics the sensation of drowning. Then there’s the Chinese water torture, where someone is strapped to a chair and a solitary drip of water falls upon a person’s forehead taking nearly hours between each drop. The drops become a stab into the […]
It Deserves a Better Description than “Nigerian Harry Potter”
When I saw Akata Witch in Overdrive, it was dubbed the “Nigerian Harry Potter“. I had always been a fan of the Harry Potter movies, but didn’t care enough about the writing in the actual books. So I never truly appreciated what this could really mean to a fan of the series. But I knew enough about it to be intrigued and gave it a try. The book is very similar to Harry Potter in a couple of ways. The main character is Sunny, an albino African-American who is bright […]
A Book about Teenagers (who Happen to Have Cancer)
The Fault in our Stars is not a book I ever expected to read. I knew so much about it peripherally. I knew the author John Green through his Mental Floss videos (not discovering the equally educational and more interesting Crash Course videos until later). I had known Shailene Woodley would play Hazel and was utterly confused as I saw her act next to her film brother and future film lover Ansel Elgort in Divergent. Out of sheer curiosity, I read the Wiki page for the movie […]
“It’s All in the Past, so Who Gives a Sh!t?”
At first glance, the quote I referenced in the title seems counterintuitive. I quite loved Carrie Fisher’s anecdote/diary/book about her time on the first Star Wars set, but the quote seems to brush the past aside. Who cares about how Carrie Fisher didn’t really want to be in show business? Who cares that she was not only Princess Leia, but also a young adult still trying to find her footing in the world? Who cares that Carrie Fisher was one of the few women on the […]
Stay Gold Ponyboy
[There are some spoilers to The Outsiders, so be forewarned. I’d definitely recommend reading this book as it is an enjoyable and quick read] I never read The Outsiders in middle school or high school, even though I know many people who had to, and quite frankly, knowing how rarely I actually read or digested my assignments during that time, I’m glad I did not. The Outsiders to a younger me would’ve been a great bore, even though now it is an easy and gripping read. […]