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This review can also be found on A Thousand Lives Lived, check it out for more reviews!Let's play a wondrous game of 'Never Have I Ever.' Of course, you've all heard of this game in those cute, cheeky contemporary novels... but many few have played it. Here's a first for me, too. But my main point here is: Never have I ever read a play before. Stepping into a new kind of writing format and learning the basics of the great scripts, The Diary of Anne Frank brought back memories of when I actually read Anne's diary back in the day, and it gave me a whole new experience to love and devour for ages to come.So here's the thing: I have an obsession with Anne's diary. Since I was young and once decided that I might write a speech on the inspirational young girl herself, I've read her diary and researched all about her, continuously. When's Anne's birthday? June 12. And trust me, I did not search that up. *winks* Until reaching the smitten age of 14, I actually had not known that there was an amazing playwright of her story, and that I'll be getting the chance to read it in Grade 9. This was a true memorable experience for me, from start to finish."We don't need the Nazis to destroy us. We're destroying ourselves."All I feel like doing right now, right here, is banging my head on my desk repeatedly and sob. I wish that I could sob for a whole eternity. I feel that with a play like this, readers are more prone to understand Ms. Frank's story even better, and in the end, the actual ending may not be exactly correct when looking at the way her life ended in reality, but you feel everything. The emotions are present, the feels, and throughout the whole two Acts, I felt that I was actually imaging the wonderful real personalities playing these roles. It hadn't been a play all along for me, there were moments when this was realer than ever, and since there was dialogue between the people Anne spent years with in annexation, I have gotten to know their personalities much better than I ever would have if I just reread her diary over and over again for fifteen times. There's a true difference, my friends.For those of you crazy weirdos who don't know Anne's story at all, you must be living under a rock or a shoe and have no access to wonderful books and history novels. But since I'm that much of a nice person, then I'll surely give you a mini-recap, so you can continue to read this review and get what I'm saying. *grins widely* Anne Frank was just a normal girl living in Holland when her life turned upside down... just because she was a Jew. Anne's father, Otto Frank, was a hero to his family, and his decision to bring the Franks into annexation and hiding in a dusty attic hiding spot on top of a warehouse saved their lives... at least for a couple of years. Anne and her family went into hiding in 1942, and the Van Daan family also joined them with a surprise visitor afterwards. All of these people's traditions and ways of living were disrupted to the highest extent, and they spent their days without a peep and no talking or heading to the washroom. It was all about fear, and if the slightest noise was heard, someone ought to find out.I just can't even explain to you how much this play and Anne's story means to me. Yes, it's completely tragic and worrisome for readers, but the fact that Anne and her crush-afterwards Peter Van Daan were just two normal teenagers crushed me even more. I bet that if Anne was put into our modern day society just the way she was, she'd be normal. No one would suspect that she's a historical figure who died in the 1940s because of the Second World War. No one would suspect that she spent years in hiding or that she went into a concentration camp. And this is the aspect that makes this the most memorable: amazing playwrights brought her legacy and story back to life once more. I've never heard of this play actually turning into a production on stage and everything (like Broadway), but just having readers given the chance to see a reenactment of this all brings tears into my heart."I only know it's funny never to be able to go outdoors... never to breathe fresh air... never to run and shout and jump. It's the silence in the night that frightens me most. Every time I hear a creak in the house, or a step on the street outside, I'm sure they're coming for us. The days aren't so bad. At least we know that Miep and Mr. Kraler are down there below us in the office. Our protectors we call them."What the playwright had done perfectly was making sure that the facts weren't 100% correct. This is Anne's story to tell, and as we can tell, she didn't write this play, so they couldn't make sure that everything was left open as her story was and still is today. The ending of the whole play was different than to what actually had happened. In reality, nobody knows who told that the Franks were hiding there. In the play, it was the thief who wandered in the office building and blackmailed Mr. Kraler. The play and the audience had to be left leaving the play with answers. Some are still not complete, but at least you can say that you've seen/read the play and understand it all. And that makes the fixture of the plot perfect.Since I had to read this for school, I read both Acts at separate times. But in a matter of a week, I had the play done, and all of the discussion questions that we had to answer on this were done and scribbled on to with loads of thoughts that got me thinking. I'm telling you, this review wouldn't even be half as long if I didn't have the discussion questions to answer. They really got me thinking, thinking about the characters, the development, the ending, and everything in between.Anne... Well that was a perfect example of her. The diary scenes, her attitude and personality, everything, all of the aspects gotten readers to understand and know her better. It's obvious and easy to tell that there was a lot of research put into writing this play so the writers could get Anne on the dot and know her in and out. Her character just made me realize how young she really was, and all of those playful moments that she shared with her parents, Peter or with Mr. Dussel just shattered me because at the moment when she was taken away by the Germans, it was easy to tell that the world had just lost a great soul. She was optimistic, and she always felt that she would have a great future and would become someone big, but she never thought that something like this would happen to her. Her fame is a legacy, my friends.Some people have argued with me over the romance of Anne and Peter, and I have to tell you that it was adorable, but puppy-love at the same time. I don't care about the difference in ages of them, which was about 3 years. The audience can tell that throughout the play, Anne was seeking for a person to talk to and understand. Margot, her older sister, was completely out of the picture, and I can only wish that her character was brought out more. Thankfully, her mother and father's crazy but funny moments were constantly brought up and we got to know who Anne really came from strongly.Looking at my liking of this dramatized story in an overall matter, I can tell you that I am able to go on forever with how much I enjoyed this. Although this was only 'based' on the real thing, it was done perfectly and it didn't go too far or not hit the exact point of the book. The message was so deep and it made me smile and break out into a sad face continuously, but the most important thing that I saw was that the writing and the descriptions were set to the exact point. And it did. *smiles* This was everything I could ask for and more, and I recommend this TO YOU, whether you've read Anne's diary or not, or even if you haven't heard of my inspiration, her. Just walk into reading this play with a huge smile, because you'll be left quivering and slowly dying of sadness and pathos inside.

The Outsiders is about two weeks in the life of a 14-year-old boy. The novel tells the story of Ponyboy Curtis and his struggles with right and wrong in a society in which he believes that he is an outsider. According to Ponyboy, there are two kinds of people in the world: greasers and socs. A soc (short for "social") has money, can get away with just about anything, and has an attitude longer than a limousine. A greaser, on the other hand, always lives on the outside and needs to watch his back. Ponyboy is a greaser, and he's always been proud of it, even willing to rumble against a gang of socs for the sake of his fellow greasers--until one terrible night when his friend Johnny kills a soc. The murder gets under Ponyboy's skin, causing his bifurcated world to crumble and teaching him that pain feels the same whether a soc or a greaser.Librarian note: This record is for one of the three editions published with different covers and with ISBN 0-140-38572-X / 978-0-14-038572-4. The records are for the 1988 cover (this record), the 1995 cover, and the 2008 cover which is also the current in-print cover.

From the Booker Prize-winning author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, comes an unforgettable edge-of-your-seat mystery that is at once heartbreakingly tender and morally courageous about what it means to be human.Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it.Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is.Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

I hardly know where to begin bashing this book. Do I start with the 9-year-old boy and his 12-year-old sister, who read about 6 and 8, respectively? The imperial measurements (miles, feet) despite the German setting? The German boy, raised in Berlin, who thinks that Der Führer is "The Fury" and Auschwitz is "Out-With," despite being corrected several times and seeing it written down? The other English-language idioms and mis-hearings, despite our being told that he speaks only German? And that he believes that "Heil Hitler!" is a fancy word for hello, because he understands neither "Heil" nor "Hitler"?So maybe these are fussy issues, and I shouldn't trash the book on these minor linguistic flaws. Instead, I can start with the plot holes big enough to drive a truck through: that Bruno, whose father is a high-ranking official in "The Fury"'s regime, doesn't know what a Jew is, or that he's living next door to a concentration camp. Or that the people wearing the "striped pajamas" are being killed, and THAT's why they don't get up after the soldiers stand close to them and there are sounds "like gunshots." Or that there's a section of fence that is (a) unpatrolled and (b) can be lifted from the ground high enough to pass food and, eventually, a small boy through, AND that nobody would try to get OUT through this hole. Or that Bruno's friend Shmuel, a frail 9-year-old boy, would survive over a year in a Nazi camp. Or even the author's refusal to ever use the word "Auschwitz," in an effort to "make this book about any camp, to add a universality to Bruno's experience."That last is from an interview with the author that appears at the end of the audio version. I can't speak to most of what he said, because it was a lot of "here are all the places that are hyping my book," but the worst part of it, to me, was where he was addressing criticisms: "there are people who complain that Bruno is too innocent, too naive, and they are trivializing the message of this book." Um, no. I'm not trivializing the message; I'm objecting to his trivializing of the Holocaust. I find his treatment of the Holocaust to be superficial, misleading, and even offensive.As an audio recording, I'm pretty neutral. The narrator did the best he could with the material and there was some differentiation between the characters' voices, but the music that was added... some chapters ended with appropriately-somber music. Other chapters had no music at all. Sometimes the music appeared in the middle of a chapter. Two other incidental notes: first, normally you can't say anything negative about a Holocaust-themed book without being an asshole, because the books are so tied in with the Holocaust itself. In this case, though, I feel like, due to the fictionalizing of it, the book is far enough removed from Auschwitz that it's okay to be negative about the book without being insensitive about the Holocaust. Second, this doesn't land on my "run away! Save yourself!" shelf, because that's more for books that are comically bad--books that I can bash with glee and mock with abandon. I can't find anything funny about what makes this book so bad; it's just plain offensive and shallow.

A searing, postapocalyptic novel destined to become Cormac McCarthy’s masterpiece.A father and his son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. It is cold enough to crack stones, and when the snow falls it is gray. The sky is dark. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing; just a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road, the clothes they are wearing, a cart of scavenged food—and each other.The Road is the profoundly moving story of a journey. It boldly imagines a future in which no hope remains, but in which the father and his son, “each the other’s world entire,” are sustained by love. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation.(front flap)

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Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, inhabited by genetically modified citizens and an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by only a single individual: the story's protagonist.

A tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that, despite its profound flaws, gave the author the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms.Jeannette Walls grew up with parents whose ideals and stubborn nonconformity were both their curse and their salvation. Rex and Rose Mary Walls had four children. In the beginning, they lived like nomads, moving among Southwest desert towns, camping in the mountains. Rex was a charismatic, brilliant man who, when sober, captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and above all, how to embrace life fearlessly. Rose Mary, who painted and wrote and couldn't stand the responsibility of providing for her family, called herself an "excitement addict." Cooking a meal that would be consumed in fifteen minutes had no appeal when she could make a painting that might last forever. Later, when the money ran out, or the romance of the wandering life faded, the Walls retreated to the dismal West Virginia mining town -- and the family -- Rex Walls had done everything he could to escape. He drank. He stole the grocery money and disappeared for days. As the dysfunction of the family escalated, Jeannette and her brother and sisters had to fend for themselves, supporting one another as they weathered their parents' betrayals and, finally, found the resources and will to leave home. What is so astonishing about Jeannette Walls is not just that she had the guts and tenacity and intelligence to get out, but that she describes her parents with such deep affection and generosity. Hers is a story of triumph against all odds, but also a tender, moving tale of unconditional love in a family that despite its profound flaws gave her the fiery determination to carve out a successful life on her own terms. For two decades, Jeannette Walls hid her roots. Now she tells her own story.

Does growing up have to mean growing apart?Since childhood, Bryon and Mark have been as close as brothers. Now things are changing. Bryon's growing up, spending a lot of time with girls, and thinking seriously about who he wants to be. Mark still just lives for the thrill of the moment. The two are growing apart - until Bryon makes a shocking discovery about Mark. Then Bryon faces a terrible decision - one that will change both of their lives forever.

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