Ajax by Sophocles
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dear pretties,

Who is this Sophocles? What was this about? These were the questions I asked myself while I was reading. I had Sophocles mixed up with Socrates from Plato's The Republic.
This play. This play...

This makes 13 Reasons Why, seem like a walk in the park. I honestly had never even pondered the ramifications. This brought suicide into perspective in a very jarring and callous manner. Just so you know, if you haven't read the The Illiad by Homer; you will be lost. So go read that first!
Lots of Love,
shizuku


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Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dear younger pretties and Veterans' family members,

This was a wonderful story! A lot to learn and consider. I would recommend that if you have a family member coming home after war and subsequent PTSD diagnosis, that this story can be a useful tool to getting to know this mental illness better. Firstly for children, and secondly for the Veterans, themselves. It would also be helpful as counciling material.

Lots of Love,
shizuku

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Scourged by Kevin Hearne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dear Mr. Hearne,
Is this the end? No! I just can't accept that! There must be more sausages with gravy.

Lots of love,
shizuku

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The Constitution of the United States of America by Founding Fathers
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dear patriots,

I first read this in elementary school and didn't grasp it's importance to everything we recognize as America. Then again in high school, to put it mildly, I had a terrible teacher. He was a baseball coach and thought that the perfect teaching style was to tell all students to shut up, sit down, ask no questions, and give the students a packet of worksheets to be turned in at the end of the week. *(All the while student aids graded the packets. He did no teaching, just collected a check!)
I paid attention when I entered college for the second time while taking PSC100 & HY102. My professors made the classes interesting, and I realized that there was a strong passion from our Founding Fathers. Especially James Madison, and the story of the Constitutional Convention itself.
If you are deciding to pursue a degree or minor in Political Science, get to know the U.S. Constitution down to the letter. I would also recommend that you hunt down the Federalist Papers and the collected anti-Federalist papers which are arguments for and against the ratification of the Constitution. I also believe that the best amendments were 1st, 13th, & 19th; though like the some of the Supreme Court justices,  Iagree that it is a living document, yet argue it would be possible to now update to where the 3/5 compromise permanently excluded, with a proper amendment or better yet just drop the subject altogether...
Lots of love pretties,
shizuku


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Persuasion by Jane Austen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To all you classic pretties,

To me, I enjoyed this. It wasn't as humorous as Pride and Prejudice, but I found it more mature and romantic. Though there were many moments that I just wanted to shake Anne.


I had my husband look up how much 25,000 pounds would be equivalent to today's economy; closest he could come up with would be around 1.3 million. That, my pretties, blew my fu#%&ng mind! This country girl could live for a lifetime and longer. Was I speaking about myself or Anne, who knows?

This really focused on the Navel aspect of Britannia, my dad and grandfather were Navy men as well, and I identified with some of the language from the characters little conversation.
There was also a wonderful absence of the clergy and supporting details in this book, which now reflecting on it more seems out of character in Austin's writings. It seems that Persuasion had a lot of room to have been fleshed out, but sadly Austin passed away while writing.

Who knew that she would still be breaking hearts 200 years later? I am now officially done with Jane Austin, unless college makes me read it again.(Finally, getting to go back to school. HOO-Ray! I wonder if 8 years of self-education will be able make it easier to take on that English and History major?) There have been lots of laughs and many tears, but I will never regret the day I first read her works, because I wanted to. Goodbye Jane.
Lots of love,
shizuku

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“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you.”

“My idea of good company...is the company of clever, well-informed people, who have a great deal of conversation; that is what I call good company.' 'You are mistaken,' said he gently, 'that is not good company, that is the best.”

“I walk: I prefer walking.”

Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Oh pretties,

This book is utterly God Damned heartbreaking. There are so many instances of why I think Religion poisons Everything! The pages ripped at my little black soul, and I wept. If you are a fan of Romeo & Juliet, then this is the book for you! One of the most beautifully written tragedies I have ever read, and that's amazing since I'm nearing 4,200 books in my lifetime. I didn't sleep at all for two days after reading this. It threw me into major fits of anxiety and depression, flip floping from one to another.
See you next time.
Lots of love,
shizuku



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“In the ill-judged execution of the well-judged plan of things the call seldom produces the comer, the man to love rarely coincides with the hour for loving. Nature does not often say "See!" to her poor creature at a time when seeing can lead to happy doing; or reply "Here!" to a body's cry of "Where?" till the hide-and-seek has become an irksome, outworn game. We may wonder whether at the acme and summit of the human progress these anachronisms will be corrected by a finer intuition, a close interaction of the social machinery than that which now jolts us round and along; but such completeness is not to be prophesied, or even conceived as possible. Enough that in the present case, as in millions, it was not the two halves of a perfect whole that confronted each other at the perfect moment; a missing counterpart wandered independently about the earth waiting in crass obtuseness till the late time came. Out of which maladroit delay sprang anxieties,disappointments, shocks, catastrophes, and passing-strange destinies.”

“Sometimes I feel I don't want to know anything more about [history] than I know already. [...] Because what's the use of learning that I am one of a long row only--finding out that there is set down in some old book somebody just like me, and to know that I shall only act her part; making me sad, that's all. The best is not to remember that your nature and you past doings have been kist like thousands' and thousands', and that your coming life and doings'll be like thousands' and thousands'. [...] I shouldn't mind learning why--why the sun do shine on the just and the unjust alike, [...] but that's what books will not tell me.”

“Let truth be told - women do as a rule live through such humiliations, and regain their spirits, and again look about them with an interested eye. While there's life there's hope is a connviction not so entirely unknown to the "betrayed" as some amiable theorists would have us believe.”

“Never in her life – she could swear it from the bottom of her soul – had she ever intended to do wrong; yet these hard judgments had come. Whatever her sins, they were not sins of intention, but of inadvertence, and why should she have been punished so persistently?”

“A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”

A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Dear Pretties,

Wow what a start this book gets. I was terribly confused when there was a paranormal twist to this book. I wasn't expecting it at all.

GIFSoup

The plot is a soupy mess, and is really unstructured. One thing I did like was the magical aspect of this book.
That's all for now.
Ta-ta,
shizuku


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Because you don't notice the light without a bit of shadow. Everything has both dark and light. You have to play with it till you get it exactly right.

How I'd love to get away from here and be someone else for a while in a place where no one knows or expects certain things from me.

There's a lot about discovering who you are and how difficult that is. And it never stops.

May I suggest that you all read? And often. Believe me, it's nice to have something to talk about other than the weather and the Queen's health. Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.

The Shadow Queen by C.J. Redwine
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Dear Pretties,

A completely different take on Snow White. The magic system for this world is really well done, as are the settings. Going to finish the series as they come into the library.

It's an enjoyable guilty read to while away the hours. That's all for now.
Ta-ta,
shizuku

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Forgive us, my lord, for you have us at a disadvantage. My sister is frankly deplorable at conducting courtly conversation. The only thing worse than her ability to make appropriate small talk with royalty is her attempt to let a man lead her on the dance floor. Your timely interruption has saved me from the chore of attending dance lessons with her. My feet thank you.

A warrior doesn’t focus on the odds stacked against her. She focuses on her heart, on her will to face the evil in her world and defeat it, and then she finds a way to do it.

You don't go into battle because you're sure of victory. You go into battle because it's the right thing to do.