Snap Shot by Ben

This book is about a boy who gets a camera for his birthday. He ends up taking a photo of a robbery and nearly gets shot. It has a great twist to it which it doesn't tell us until the end.

I think it is a very good book for people that like action. I recommend it to everyone that can read, of all ages.

I enjoyed this book because it was very easy to read and doesn't use complex words but mainly because it keeps you reading because it has a great story.

It is written in informal language and the first person. I say it is informal because he uses words like 'bill' meaning the police.

I am very happy with this choice of book and would like to read more like it.

Sons of Destiny by Rebecca

The book I am reviewing is 'Sons of Destiny' by Darren Shan. It is the last of its series. It is a horror book and I would highly recommend it to people who have to be stuck in books to keep them reading. It is abook that has something exciting round every corner. In fact I would highly recommend any of Darren Shan's books because he, in my opinion, is an extremely excellent author whose books are exciting and entertaining.

This particular book is about vampires and the living dead. Darren Shan includes himself in this series.

The Death Worm by Donald

The Death Worm by Rachel Smith is a thriller for teenagers or above.

It is about a family with social issues who are being pursued by a small creature, similar in appearance to a strip of wet leather.

The book covers awide variety of locations across the world. I found it very scary. Some of the gory scenes make your skin crawl. Very few books are as chilling and gripping as this.

My advice is don't read this book before bed!

This book, although containing gratuitous violence, has a clever plot and is a good read for those who like the action/horror book genre!

Fudge-a-mania by Brittany

I have recently been reading Fudge-a-mania be Judy Blume. I really enjoyed it as I don't normally read unless I have to. I had been reading it in my english lessons and whilst on the bus home and at home i'd pick it up. I think it is a really good book as it has humour and real life things included in it.

It is a really good book because it isn't too long and you don't want to put it down. It is about a boy named peter. He and his family are going on holiday to Maine. He invites his friend to come along but his worst enemy Sheila Tubman and her family are sharing the house with them. How will he survive? You'll have to read the book! Good luck findung the right book for you.

A Brave New World by Claire Dewberry

A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley in 1932 falls into the same 'category' (if you will) of fiction as 1984 and Clockwork Orange, discussing the flaws within our current society and the flaws of a possible future society. Set a few hundred years into the future and primarily within London, a new world is created which is based upon stripping away natural humanity and replacing it with clones of people who believe that 'everyone belongs to everyone else'. Feotuses are conditioned in a factory - before being 'decanted' out of bottles instead of born - to be content within the 'caste' that they are born into (alpha, beta, gamma or delta) and the work that they have to do as a result. Thus those who are born as deltas have their intellectual growth stunted and 'hypnopedia' (repeating government slogans in their sleep) is used to condition them into loving their position in life.

Ofcourse within this new world there are some exceptional people who do not fit within this 'Utopia' and it follows primarily Bernard Marx who finds that even though he was conditioned to be an 'alpha plus' is in fact inferior to the others of his caste. Huxley's choice of name for Bernard is unfortunately obvious in its reference towards Karl Marx and Marxism of the time (a framework of thinking that lead to communism) which is off putting when reading the book. The same can also be said for the main female within the book Lenina Crowne (who shares her name with Russian communist and revolutionist Valdimir Lenin) and indeed many of the other characters. However I feel that their names are not the only problem. These two characters are decidedly unlikeable as main characters go. Bernard Marx offers the reader no confidence within his thoughts and actions as they seem to be simply and inexorably to try and prove himself. But to who? This is also highlighted by another character Helmholtz Watson who is strong, also isolated and more intellectual insitive it seems. Perhaps this is to gain more sympathy from the reader towards Marx or is for some unseen plot device or twist. Lenina is also disappointing, particularly from a feminist point of view, as being one of the few main women she offers no strong character to latch on to and to make you think. Personally she is rather infuriating in her conformity to society and merely tries to tantalize the reader with her potential for being revelutionary.

Having not yet finished the book I realise that the views that I have may well change depending on how Huxley puts across his views of this society, however I feel it brings up some interesting questions about society. To me it is most certainly a dystopian society. Even though all intentions are to create a contented and efficient society the sacrifice is too great: humanity extinct; emotions extinct; the individual extinct. Additionally, although the people are kept 'happy' is happiness not the flip side to unhappiness? Therefore, with the absence of unhappiness would happiness not just become obselete as well? No longer happiness but a 'nothingness'? Could we sacrafice our emotions (and consequently our life experiences) to rid the world of suffering?

Despite some prejudices I am enjoying the book for its explorative ideas, but wonder if it isn't as successful as 1984 as it is further from the contemporary society and therefore loses its shock value.

The Odyssey- a post by Matthew Mordue, Y12

The Odyssey was 'written' by Homer in Classical Greece. It is actually debatable who wrote the Odyssey, after all nobody can know for sure with many people thinking that Homer did not even exist and that the Odyssey is a compilation of short stories that were put together by an unknown person. While I can see why people could think this I personally feel that Homer did exist and indeed did write it. The Odyssey is also not really a novel although it does read as prose. The Odyssey is actually a epic poem.The Odyssey is without question a supreme masterpiece of not only literature but of anything ever. At first glance it appears to be difficult to get into but the more you read into it the easier it becomes. As a matter of fact I would personally say that the Odyssey is quite simple to get into. The Odyssey also has highly memorable characters with, in particular, Odysseus, Telemachus and Athena who stand out.The Odyssey's main story is about Odysseus's adventures as he returns to Ithaca (which he is king of) back from the Trojan War. Unknown to Odysseus the evil suitors have been causing trouble to his ‘polis’ of Ithaca and are trying to gain control of it by pressurising his wife Penelope into marrying one of them. However Penelope being the highly virtuous wife that she is she is always able to find ways to get out of marrying one of the suitors in the hope that Odysseus will one day return. This is however highly doubtful to the citizens of Ithaca who all think that Odysseus is dead after all he has been lost for many years

The storyline shows Odysseus’s journey back to Ithaca were he encounters Cyclopes, nymphs, sirens and a monster Scylla and Charybdis. These journeys are highly dramatic and exciting and are one of the greatest strengths of the epic poem.

When you read The Odyssey you then comprehend just how many works of literature have copied off it. The idea that Odysseus is a king and has to reclaim his throne under a disguise is most noticeably copied off the Lord Of The Rings' character Aragorn. The Odyssey also invented:
- Invention. Funnily enough before this epic poem was composed characters that were used were in literature were based on old legends (such as Achilles). While most of the characters in the Odyssey are based on old legends (Odysseus for example) a swineherd Eumaeus was invented and Homer does seem to ‘brag’ about this in the narrative.
- The idea of a young character maturing through the storyline and becoming a ‘man’. This happens for the first time with Telemachus.
- A king who is having to use a disguise to get his throne back (LOTR) or checking out his hometown he is king of (Measure for Measure).
- The idea of a perfect woman who is completely chaste. Penelope was actually hugely significant in Ancient Greece.
While the Odyssey is a great work there are some elements that would put some people off it:

Some terms such as xenia and kleos really do need to be understood for the story to make complete sense. Without it the way Odysseus treats the suitors at the end and the maids seem very cruel.
it is quite a hard work to get into because the Ancient Greek world is so far detached form ours that it starts off feeling quite alien.

Despite these points The Odyssey is a spectacular work that has greatly inspired many works of literature. The point I ask is: is there any work that is more influential than Homer’s Odyssey?

Why is it called 'A Clockwork Orange' then? by Mr D

My students have been nagging me to start a post about Anthony Burgess' novel, A Clockwork Orange, so here it is. The novel (novella if you like, I'm not bothered) was published in 1962 and personally I have no problem calling it science-fiction, in the same way I call Frankenstein science fiction (in the gothic mode) and 1984 science fiction (in the allegorical mode). CO is science fiction in the psychological mode- it explores questions of free will, and it's also richly comic and satirical. Why do people always slag off genre fiction? Jane Eyre is romantic fiction, Dracula's horror. They're just very good examples of those genres. Call a spade a spade, everyone. If it's a really good spade, it doesn't become a 'personal excavatory device', does it? No. A Clockwork Orange is very good science fiction, thank-you.

Having said that, a lot of people don't rate it that highly in literary terms. Including Burgess himself- "It is not, in my view, a very good novel," Burgess wrote, "but it sincerely presented my abhorrence of the view that some people were criminal and others not. A denial of the universal inheritance of sin is characteristic of Pelagian societies like that of Britain, and it was in Britain, about 1960, that respectable people began to murmur about the growth of juvenile delinquency and suggest [that the young criminals] were a somehow inhuman breed and required inhuman treatment... There were irresponsible people who spoke of aversion therapy... Society, as ever, was put first." In other words, not an especially good novel, but an important statement. You can say the same about George Orwell's 1984- with more justification, I reckon, I think Burgess did a better job with plot and character than Orwell, but that's just my opinion.

A Clockwork Orange is set in a future London. 15-year-old Alex, the main character, and his three friends are devoted to ultra-violence and 'horrorshow'. They beat up old men, torture and murder, with no qualms. Despite this diabolical orgy of criminality, they are merry and spirited and horribly, horrilby likeable. Alex is the only one in his gang who has fully conscience of what he's doing; on the contrary, his 'droogs' arrange horrorshow in a rather childish way, without knowing why. While committing ruthless acts of violence, Alex mantains an 'elevated' attitude. He doesn't listen to pop, but only to classic music. After the government decides to brainwash him by the 'Ludovico therapy', he'll be no more able to appreciate his favorite composers. (The name 'Ludovico' alludes to Ludwig van Beethoven.) That's the big question of the novel- can we, should we, protect humnity as a whole by destroying the individual humanity of the individual? How happy would we be to be obedient robots in paradise? More happy than rugged individuals in a violent anarchy? Or, put it another way, if a man has to do good, has no option to be bad, then he's not good at all, is he?

So why is it called A Clockwork Orange, then?

1. When Alex is treated to become sick at the thought of violence, he turns into 'A Clockwork Orange'. Or as the prison chaplain says, "When a man ceases to choose, he ceases to be a man." A clockwork orange is not an orange, in the same was as a man who can make no decisions is not a man.

2. It's something to do with the contradiction and jarring tragedies involved in trying to force soemthing organic, complex and natural (an orange) into a mechanistic, deterministic, Newtonian (you know- like Isaac- he was big on fruit in all kinds of ways and not just oranges...) and ordered (clockwork).

3. Burgess says there's a Cockney phrase, 'weird as a clockwork orange' that he just liked. I'm not sure- I asked my dad once (who was a card-carrying Cockney of Burgess's generation) and he said he's never heard of the phrase- the phrase he used for something odd was much ruder (email me and I'll tell you what it was- if you're over 18...)

4. Burgess knew some Malay, and the word for 'man' is 'orang' or 'orange' (as in 'orang utang'- which means 'man of the forest'. Honest!) So, in a way 'a clockwork orange' is 'a mechanical man'.

5. It's a really cool title. I can only think of five titles that are cooler. Write me a comment and I'll tell you what they are!