Leave it to the Prose

**may contain potential spoilers** As some of you may remember, I had previously posted a review on Throne of Glass on the series as a whole even though I had one book left in the series to read. I have finally gotten around to reading Kingdom of Ash  and will be laying out my opinions on this book. In the grand finale of the Throne of Glass  series, Sarah J. Maas doesn't hesitate and throws out truckloads of drama and violence. With Aelin captured and locked away by the evil Queen of the Fae, Maeve, Aelin endures countless months of suffering alone and away from her friends. Aelin will not yield to Maeve knowing that her friends would die if she did but with every passing minute, Aelin feels herself breaking from the agony. As Aelin and her friends fight for their lives in different places, they each must find the ones they can trust and fight alongside each other to fight both Maeve and Erawen, the King of the Valg in order to protect their kingdom, Erilea. P...

Easy A, rated PG-13, starring Emma Stone and directed by Will Gluck, follows Olive Penderghast, a 17 year old high school student as she narrates the account of her pretending to loose her virginity. The movie begins with Olive lying to her best friend Rhiannon to avoid going camping with her family. Her lies escalate to the point of her lying about loosing her virginity to a college student. While Olive says this, Marianne, a prissy baptist, overhears her and begins to spread nasty rumors about her. What follows are some wacky hi-jinks, skeptical accounts of prostitution, and a lot of 80s references. My opinion: It was pretty good. If you suffer from second-hand embarrassment don't watch this movie because my gosh are the parents in this movie cringy. From the father asking his own adopted child "so where are you from originally" and the mother, when her daughter confided in her the awful bullying she had been going through, proceeded to discuss how much she got aroun...

by Aditi Adve Whiplash  is a story of passion. Of what happens when your passion takes over everything in your life: your relationships, your health, every thought you have and every action you take. It is a discussion of where the line should be between working hard to achieve your dreams and your own health, and whether their should be a line at all. It is powerful, gripping, and thought provoking (plus it has a great soundtrack). The movie Whiplash  was written and directed by Damien Chazelle and scored by Justin Hurwitz. The pair are best known for creating La La land  and First Man . Whiplash  was released in 2014 and won many accolades, including multiple Academy Award wins and nominations and a Grammy nomination for Best Score. I have only seen a few clips from the movie, but when I was reading the screenplay I could not put it down. Here's a summary... Andrew Neiman is a 19-year-old jazz drummer enrolled in the best music school in the country, the (fic...

** potential spoilers ahead** T he Lunar Chronicles, written by Marissa Meyer, is a series that I have been re-reading lately. Before the summary, there is some basic information that one has to know.  In this story, people are able to live on the moon and these people are called Lunars and they possess a special ability called glamour which allows them to alter the bio electricity of those around them to make them see something that is not actually there (similar to an illusion). However, some Lunars are born without this skill and are deemed as shells or useless. Shells are often sent away from their families to be killed or become slaves. There is also a deadly plague called letumosis that is known to only affect Earthans. It is later revealed that letumosis was created by the Lunars to weaken Earth so that the Lunars could take it over and that the cure for letumosis was in the blood of the shells.  The story follows a young girl called Cinder, a cyborg (ha...

Zev McManus-Mendelowitz Though I am generally disdainful of book reviews, I feel that one is warranted for the book I am currently reading. Here’s looking at Euclid , by Alex Bellos is a nonfiction book about the wonders of math. Though none of the math is particularly complex or difficult to understand, the book is surprisingly varied and interesting. Some highlights include looking at the history of our counting system and the evolution of calculators. The book was easy to read and my only complaint was that some sections lacked depth and were over-simplistic. The most exciting aspect of this book, in my opinion, was mentioned for only a brief paragraph. Pi poems, poems in which each word has a number of letters that equals the corresponding digit of pi (the first word has 3 letters, the next has 1, the next has 4, etc…), are an interesting type of poetry that I feel are under-appreciated. Though initially I was excited at the prospect of writing my own pi poem, once I started t...

The  Arc of a Scythe  series by Neil Shusterman is a sci-fi, utopian, philosophical young-adult trilogy. It is set far in the future, on an Earth where famine, poverty, illness, discrimination, natural disasters, and impactful crimes are unheard of. Even death has been conquered. A digital being called the Thunderhead (like the ultimate cloud, get it?) controls everything - it regulates the weather, acts as a government, enforces the law with cameras everywhere, and most importantly, is available to communicate with any person who needs it, acting as a best friend or parental figure. In this world, every person has enough money to survive, so they work simply for pleasure or to keep busy. Healing nanites in the bloodstream rapidly mend all injuries and pain nanites prevent any discomfort from said injuries. When a person grows old enough, they can reset their age to whatever they want. If a person somehow dies, revival centers placed all around the world will return them goo...

Zev McManus-Mendelowitz Below is my personal ranking of the best places to read at Uni. Though campus is full of libraries, restaurants, and outdoor seating, I decided to limit this list to locations within Uni and Kenny. The order is based on comfort, distractions, and ambiance. In your comments, feel free to suggest any changes you would make to the order of the list, or if there are any places I forgot.  10. Kenney Locker room Good for satanic lunatics who enjoy cockroaches, B.O., and 100-degree heat. 9. Bathroom Why? Please never read here, especially if the book you’re reading is from a library. Set the book down somewhere away from the toilet, take care of your business, and continue reading later.  8. Kitchen While better than the bathroom, the kitchen doesn’t have much going for it. With uncomfortable wooden benches, nauseating scents, and the fact that it’s almost always crowded, the only redeeming quality is the occasional free snack. 7. Fi...