The Radish

                    I have expressed my interest toward science fiction many times before, and for the last blog post of the schoolyear I have settled on To Hold Up the Sky  by one of my favorite science fiction authors, Cixin Liu (you thought it was going to be Michael Crichton again). This book is also unique among the books I have reviewed in that its not an actual book, but more of a collection of several short stories written in Chinese by Liu and later translated to English. Unlike several popular superficial "science fiction" movies and books all involving aliens attacking the earth with laser guns and whatever, every single work by Cixin Liu is extremely profound and insightful in its content, and it is clear that lots of thought and creativity have gone into the stories. Although I read nearly all of the stories in the book, I will focus on one for this blog post.         ...

  Instead of doing a standard blog I decided to use one of the prompts and redesigned the cover for a book, but instead of doing my blog on a normal book I read a couple short stories by the same author. The 3 short stories I read were Landlady, Lamb to the Slaughter, and Way up to Heaven which were all written by Roald Dahl. They are all relatively short, about 8 or so pages. While I did say they were scary stories they aren’t really; they are all relatively normal stories but all have some weird or creepy twist at the end. Because of this it's going to be a struggle to explain the cover without giving away spoilers. I recommend just reading the stories as it takes about an hour and if you only have 15 minutes just read Lamb to the Slaughter as it's definitely my favorite of the bunch.  The reason I chose the dark building as the background is because every single one of the stories takes place in unnamed cities. The table and everything on it is a reference to Lamb to Slaugh...

  They Both Die at the End by Adam Silvera follows Mateo Torrez and Rufus Emeterio, two strangers who have both been told they’re going to die sometime in the next 24 hours by a company called Death-Cast. Without knowing when or how they’ll die, Mateo and Rufus attempt to spend their last day doing all the things they never got a chance to do. For my blog post, I chose to make a playlist of songs that I feel best describe this book. I Know The End - Phoebe Bridgers “I Know The End” is about making the most out of your time if the world was ending. The chorus, “But you had to go, I know, I know, I know,” is very similar to Mateo and Rufus’ feelings about only having a day left. A few chapters in, they’ve both accepted their fate and decide to make the most out of it. This also relates to the verse, “When the sirens sound you’ll hide under the floor, but I’m not gonna go down with my hometown in a tornado, I’m gonna chase it, I know, I know, I know.” Rose Parade - Elliott Smith Th...

  - Aya Surheyao

    Well, I apparently do not have that many kinds of books, so I am going back on my word and doing another fairy tale blog. However, as a plus, I am once again swapping my fairy tale authors to bring variety. After starting off from the lands of Germany and heading north to Denmark, why not head back south to Germany. Then after that pit stop look West, to a little-known country called France. This time the author is Charles Perrault, who is behind a couple fairy tales you have probably heard of. The main famous fairy tales I could find from Perrault were Puss in Boots, debatably Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Sleeping Beauty. I will be covering Puss in Boots  which actually seems to be Italian, and like the Grimms, it seems Perrault chronicles more than writes these fairy tales. Anyway without anything further to say let us get into the summary.     The story begins with a father dying and his will giving three things to three brothers. One gets a m...

                      In this blog post I will be reviewing the book Timeline  by (yes him again) Michael Crichton. This is the third book that I have read by the same author, and given the quality of the other two books I had no doubt that this one (although not from the same series) would not disappoint. I'm slightly more than halfway through the book and it definitely seems like something I look forward to finishing.                         The book is about a group of graduate students at Yale studying medieval history, specifically that of England and France in the fourteenth century. They discover a bifocal lens buried in the ground, but quickly dismiss it as contamination from their own backpacks and move on. Then they find a mysterious note with a date, 4/7/1357, and only two words: HELP ME (Crichton, 91). The handwriting looks exa...

      If I were to give you one reason to read Night by Elie Wiesel I would tell you this, it was good enough to receive a Nobel prize so it must be good enough for 100 pages of your time. Night is an autobiographical tale of a Holocaust survivor as he recalls his journey from Auschwitz to freedom.         The book begins in 1945 where we find out about  Eliezer (Elie) who is only 15 at the time. Not even 5 pages in and Elie as well as everyone else in his community is deported, and no-one knows where they'll be going. At first many people are optimistic and tell each other that they are being sent to work in factories as the fighting draws closer. Soon they are crammed into cattle cars and begin a long journey without food and water. Along the way one of the people in his car begins screaming for days on end that she can see flames.      Once they arrive at the concentration camp the story goes from day to day m...

Kathryn Phillips Sixteen-year-old Hetty’s life at Raxter School for Girls, a boarding school on a small island off the coast of Maine, hasn’t been the same since a deadly virus called the Tox has reigned terror on the school and put the island under strict quarantine. A year in, most of the girls are used to their new life. But when her best friend, Byatt, disappears from the infirmary after a flare up of the Tox, Hetty knows something isn’t right. Along with her classmate Reese, Hetty launches a secret investigation into who took Byatt, where the Tox really came from, and who on the island is hiding ulterior motives. The reason I loved Wilder Girls by Rory Power was the world building. The interesting concept combined with Power’s frank, thoughtful descriptions pull you into the world of the Tox. One example of this is the wildlife on the island, which has become vicious and deadly since the Tox. On the first page, a coyote is described as, “Something. Way out in the white-dark. Betw...

      So, as the title implies this will hopefully be my last blog about fairy tales, or at least I have run out of fairy tale books at this point. The story today is truly an odd one, with seemingly nothing to say to the reader. The tale is The Tinderbox, a slightly horrifying and pointless tale about knights, dogs, and the fairy tale staple, marriage. The story begins with a soldier returning from a war, and while walking encounters a witch. The witch tells the knight "'You are a real soldier! You shall have as much money as you want" (335 Andersen). The witch informs him of the riches to be found under a hollow tree that the witch points to. Inside is a dog with saucepan-sized eyes over a box with copper riches, then one with a dog with millstone-sized eyes over silver riches, and the final dog with eyes as big as the round tower over gold riches. To obtain these riches the dogs must be placed on the witch's apron and then he can gather the riches. In exchange, the...

  Aya Surheyao "The infinite tapestry of life is but a semblance with a black hole at its heart" (Lane 193).        Today, we often assume that most scientific exploration has already happened. We know that mysteries still exist and yet we fail to grasp their scale. In  The Vital Question , Nick Lane explores the unknowns of evolutionary biology. He describes the chasm between eukaryotes (like us) and prokaryotes (bacteria and archaea). With amusing anecdotes and the input of many other experts, Lane lays out the origins of complex life from itty bitty compounds in ocean vents to full-fledged eukaryotes with nuclei, distinct sexes, and some with bio homework of their own. Keep in mind that this book leans towards the denser side of nonfiction, and for the sake of this post, I won't go too in-depth.       Throughout the book, Lane bursts with enthusiasm for the concepts he describes and engages meaningfully with the reader. From the first...

               For this blog post, I will be reviewing the book Relativity: The Special and General Theory  by none other than Albert Einstein. This is different from the previous books I have reviewed, as they have all been science fiction but fiction nevertheless. This is a nonfiction book detailing the special and general theory of relativity, the most accurate descriptions of the workings of space, time and gravitation that we have today. Developed by Einstein himself in the early twentieth century, the theories are summarized in this book translated from German by Robert W. Lawson. This book is enjoyable due to many reasons, one of which are its clear methodical approach which allows the reader to fully comprehend the content.               Einstein uses a rigorous approach in this book, starting off with the basics of geometry and coordinate systems. He then introduces the principles of class...

“The one thing she still had was the freedom to follow the narrative that suited her best.” Kathryn Phillips 26-year-old black babysitter Emira Tucker’s life is thrown into a confusing spiral when a police officer wrongly accuses her of kidnapping the white child she’s looking after. The child’s mother is Alix Chamberlain, a feminist author who reluctantly moved away from the hustle of New York to start a family with her news reporter husband, Peter. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid tackles themes of racism, classism, and privilege as it follows the complicated lives of the two women and their relationship with each other. The thing that makes this book so good, in my opinion, is the format it’s written in and how that enhances the message. Specifically the fact that each chapter alternates between Emira and Alix’s perspective. I have seen this in a lot of books, but I think it’s especially powerful in Such a Fun Age because it not only gives you information about the characters, but...

  I believe everyone should read the "Time Machine," not because of any narrative reasons (even though it was a decent book) but because it was one of the first Science Fiction books to ever be written. Being written in the 1800's it was extremely interesting to see where he though the future would lead, and while the the "Time Machine" takes place several hundred years in the future even now; I can confidently say it won't be accurate. We only know the main character by the name The Time Traveler. He builds a time machine in his workshop, using all sorts of Victorian era materials like ivory and gems. After a lengthy talk trying to convince his friends that he really did create a time machine. He travels to the year 2800 and finds no humans as we recognize them. Instead he finds a bunch of short and dumb people with no one doing any work in sight.  The structure of the time machine is surprisingly easy to understand for a book as old as it is, and with it b...

Aya Surheyao " Nishat can be anything she wants to be, except herself " (Jaigirdar 204)   In 2021 I’m making an effort to branch out from sci-fi/fantasy books and read more realistic fiction. Full of love, laughter, and tears, The Henna Wars does not disappoint. This novel, by Adiba Jaigirdar, tells the story of a Bangladeshi teenager who moved to Ireland with her family when she was young. At home, Nishat grapples with her new family dynamic when she comes out to her parents. At school, she’s used to the occasional rumors flying around about her culture and her parent’s Bengali restaurant. She’s shocked when in a school business competition, two of her classmates (including the starter of the rumors) decide to start selling henna designs, just like her. Furious, Nishat becomes determined to beat them. Throughout the story, Nishat displays great strength and persistence. She refuses to break down after her mother essentially gives her ultimatum saying, “Your Abbu and I love v...

     Although I am going to continue blogging about fairy tales for the time being this will not be a continuation of the Grimms' Fairy Tales blog. The stories do come from about the same time from an author just a country away from the Brother's Grimm. This blog will of course be about Hans Christian Andersen's Fairy Tales . Hans Christian Andersen is of course best known for writing The Little Mermaid and The Ugly Duckling . And although The Ugly Duckling is in this book, unless it was renamed The Little Mermaid is sadly not. Other than The Ugly Duckling the book includes 28 other stories The specific fairy tale the blog will be about this time around is The Garden of Paradise . It is a rather strange story about a prince's search for the namesake garden. So without delay let us start the synopsis.     The story begins with an explanation by the narrator of the prince's grandmother explaining the Garden of Paradise to him. The Prince is utterly absorbed b...

                         The Andromeda Evolution  is the second part of the book I did my last blog post on, The Andromeda Strain  by Michael Crichton .  It is set several generations after the original book, and discusses a potential re-emergence of the mysterious hexagonal shaped microorganisms that nearly caused a global crisis in the previous book (Disclaimer: as this book is the second part in one that I've already done a post on, so it will contain spoilers). Like its predecessor, this book hooks the reader on the first page and makes it difficult to put the book down. Before finding this book, I didn't think it would be possible to create one better than its prequel. I haven't finished the book yet, but from what I've read it seems like this book will not disappoint. It is exciting and enjoyable to read for many of the same reasons as The Andromeda Strain. Michael Crichton introduced ma...

  Kathryn Phillips “Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” Seventeen-year-old Alice Prosepine and her mother, Ella, have been living on the road their entire lives in an attempt to escape the terrible luck that seems to follow them around wherever they go. But when Alice receives a letter telling her that Alice’s estranged grandmother Althea Prosepine, the author of a famous cult-classic collection of dark fantasy stories called The Hinterland has died alone on her estate, Alice learns how bad her luck can get. After her mother mysteriously disappears, leaving behind nothing but an excerpt from The Hinterland , Alice must reluctantly team up with an Althea Prosepine superfan, Ellery Finch, and travel to her grandmother’s estate to find Ella. The two soon realize that Althea’s fairy tales might be more fact than fantasy. The main reason I loved The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert was the characters. They’re extremely well-written, with realistic aspirations, personalities, ...