Leave it to the Prose

Overview: Numbers  by Rachel Ward is a fictional book set in London, England, and follows the 17 year old main character named Jem. Since her birth, Jem has the ability to see the exact date in which people die, via the numbers floating above their head. As you can imagine, knowing exactly when someone will die can inhibit your ability to make friends, so Jem is fairly lonely, Until she meets a guy named Spider. But things take a turn when Jem sees that Spider only has about 3 months to live. My opinion (spoilers) I found this book to be fairly entertaining. The pacing was fairly ok and the plot was enjoyable, if a bit overshadowed by the more thematic focuses of the story. I did like the interactions between Jem and spider as I feel like their personalities really worked well together. Some of the moments of the story however, seem to feel rushed or make not a lot of sense however, as there is one point of the story where Jem and Spider go from being normal citizens to being w...

Hi everyone! After writing a few reviews of screenplays, I have gotten some comments from people who have never read a screenplay or wonder how they compare to books, so I thought I would do my best to answer that question rather than do a traditional book review. First of all, it is important to remember that with books, the entire story is on the page. Anything the author wants you to know, any movements or expressions the characters make, are all written out or alluded to. With a screenplay, settings, important camera angles, and occasionally reactions will be given. The rest - inflections, gestures, etc. - are left to the readers' imaginations. This can be fun if you watch the movie or show after reading the script and can compare how you imagined a scene with the director's and actors' takes. It can be confusing, though, if the story is non-linear or if characters' tones aren't obvious. I also personally find that scenes can sometimes get boring if there are ...

I hate to admit it, but I have yet to complete a book from start to finish this quarantine. For the most part, it’s my own laziness, but it may in small part be due to the lack of books in my house that I am curious to read. I know that most people have plenty of books at their homes and many of you will already know about some of the resources on this list, but hopefully at least a few of them are new and helpful. All of the sources below are free and provide full versions of all genres of books. These sources include a wide variety of writing, but I excluded those whose primary focus was poetry, fanfictions, video storytimes, or other non-professional texts. I also excluded more limited resources like Instagram pages or smaller databases. Lastly, while researching for this post I found a lot of websites that host writing contests which I chose not to include in this list but may include in a future post. Starting off the list, The Uni Library provides tons of useful infor...