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Brave New World is supposed be an exciting book about a negative utopia and the corrupt powers of authority. So where’s the big car chase? What's...
Everyone has that happy-go-lucky friend. The one who skips through life with a smile and believes everybody has a beautiful soul. We're guessing th...
You’re one in a million, buddy. Er...actually, more like one meaningless speck in a sea of billions. Makes you feel kind of insignificant, right?...
Kaffir Boy is the story of a young South African tennis player living under the restrictions of apartheid. He ends up going the self-preservation r...
Are humans civilized, or are we just savages waiting to come out? William Golding's novel Lord of the Flies tackles that question.
In this memoir, Eliezer struggles with his relationship with his father during the Holocaust.
A word to the wise: secret marriages don't work out well in Shakespeare plays. Just ask Othello and Desdemona.
Have you ever pretended to be super happy for your BFF when they win an award when, really, you just wanted to rip it out of their undeserving, ung...
Written in Anglo-Saxon, or Old English, sometime between the 8th and 11th centuries, Beowulf is an epic poem that reflects the early medieval warri...
In Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, Death narrates the story of one girl who lived during the Holocaust. Not surprisingly, it's kind of a downer—bu...
She was just a girl who found herself in some unimaginably awful circumstances. If you feel like gaining some valuable perspective on the drama in...
Would would the world be like without books? Ray Bradbury tackles that question—and many more— in Fahrenheit 451. Go ahead; read it on your Kin...
Do we need creative arts to survive, or is logic enough? And how can The House on Mango Street help us decide? Check out this video to find out.
In Julie of the Wolves, a girl is thrown into the wild, far away from civilization. Find out how she fares by watching this video.
This video discusses the important ladies of The Sun Also Rises…make that the one important lady. Brett is the only major female character in the...
This video summarizes the plot of Brave New World from the point of view of John (you know, the “savage”). It covers the escapism, social casts...
Having a fancy title has always been on our to-do list, but somehow being Lord of the Flies doesn't sound all that glamorous.
One minute, we're crying out of sadness; the next thing you know, we're crying out of laughter. Arnold's diary puts ours to shame. Excuse us while we go journal about how terrible that makes us feel.
Dig up your trench coat, grab your magnifying glass, and stick on that fake mustache (we know you have one): it's time to unleash your inner Sherlock Holmes and analyze the ending of The Awakening. Was it suicide? Or was it an accident?
Have you ever read a book and thought, "Whoa, this sounds like my life"? If you feel that way about The Fault in Our Stars, you're in for some major bookception: the main character, Hazel, is reading a book whose protagonist's struggles match her own.
We get it: Jennifer Lawrence is awesome. We think so, too. That being said, we wouldn't actually want to see her killing other kids in a bloodthirsty sociopolitical spectacle, so what makes things different in Panem?
Anne Frank thought of herself as a normal teenage girl, but the legacy she left through her diary was special and powerful.
This novel is all about finding yourself, which hopefully you can accomplish before you find yourself smack dab in the middle of an ocean without a paddle. Or a boat, for that matter.
If you associate "night" with darkness and depression and danger…then maybe you're not the happiest person to be around when the sun goes down. But you are on the right track when it comes to Elie Wiesel's autobiography. Prepare for some serious darkness, Shmoopers.
It's not your everyday teenager that volunteers to enter a fight to the death, but then again not every teenager has a cool name like "Katniss Everdeen" either. Clearly she was destined for greatness.
This video provides a summary of the dystopian novel Divergent. It covers Beatrice Prior’s path from discovering she is Divergent (doesn’t fit neatly into one of the categories of her society) to reinventing herself as Tris in Dauntless, the brave faction, to stopping Erudite from making the Dauntless into Abnegation-killers. Plus, there’s some crazy challenges—what else can you expect from the faction that values bravery?
What happens when Charles Marlow journeys up the Congo River? Who is Mr. Kurtz—is he really amazing or just a crazy weirdo? And what’s up with all the chained up natives and fog and heads on poles? The horror, the horror!
In order to understand Arnold's diary, you'll have to speak his language—cartoons. Huh, now that we say it out loud it doesn't sound too difficult, after all. We've been training every Sunday morning for this.
The house may be bleak, and so will your social life when you take on this epically long novel. Dickens is pretty hip, though, so you'll earn some sweet bragging rights.
Old English is just English, right? Can’t be more difficult than reading Shakespeare, right? Hah. Yeah...no. Click on the video to find why translating Beowulf would give Bard himself a migraine.
Who is it about? Who told it? Who wrote it? Who are we? What’s the meaning of life? Do you know the Muffin Man? All these answers and more can be found in this video.* *Only three of these answers will be found. Please don’t sue us.
The characters in Beowulf knew the importance of bling. Watch the video to learn more about the place of material goods in the wonderful world of Beowulf.
Beowulf is full of Gnomes...and no, not adorable garden gnomes who’re just trying to save you money on vacations. Find out more about what a Gnome is by checking out this video.