The Adventures of Amethyst and the Light Brigade

Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet is a wonderful yet sad love story. It also has some funniness to it and is filled with puns and morals. The language may be hard to understand since it is Shakespearean, but it's still a beautiful novel. It is very inspiring. The romance and the connection between Romeo and Juliet shows that they are destined to be together.

It is sad because so many people die and all because of love. See, Romeo's family and Juliet's family hate each other and are fighting, although the reason isn't told and probably not even remembered, they still despise each other. But the argument of their families cannot keep them apart. They are willing to take their lives for one another.

The best moral, in my opinion, is that fighting is useless and love should conquer hate. The families learned a lesson by the love that Romeo and Juliet have. The script is very well written and the characters are very interesting and distinct. Romeo and his friends, Benvolio (cousin) and Mercutio, are all very different from each but they still have each other's back.
Romeo is a loving, brave young man of 16. While Juliet is a sweet girl that is only 13. They meet at Juliet's family's party and fall in complete love. They have to hide and sneak just to see each other and then they have to make their wedding a private one. They get the Friar Lawrence and Juliet's Nurse to help them.

All in all this is probably one of the best romance books ever written. I advise anyone who has never read it to do so. It gives me a different aspect on the idea of love.

I give this book, Romeo and Juliet, 5 stomps.

The Legend of Bear Bryant

Spencer Williams


I have grown up in a family of Alabama Crimson Tide football fans. When you are a Bama fan, you often hear stories about and the name Bear Bryant mentioned. Even the football stadium on campus and buildings have Bryant as part of their name.

Although I had heard of Bryant and how great a football coach he was, I did not know a lot about him. This book, written by Mickey Hersowitz, tells the story about Bryant as a person and as a football coach.

Bryant grew up in Arkansas but played college football at The University of Alabama. During one game against Tennessee, he even played with a broken leg.

After graduation from the University, he went on to coach college teams at Maryland, Kentucky, Texas A& M, before returning to Alabama where he coached for 25 years and won 6 national championships.

Bryant was a tough coach who expected the best from not only his players but from his coaches as well. Even though he was very strict, his players thought of him with the highest respect and admiration. When he retired, he was not only the coach that had won the most football games, he was considered the greatest to ever walk a sideline. Many football fans still consider him the greatest.

I enjoyed reading this book and learning more about the man called Bear Bryant. Even though he has been dead for 25 year, the legend of Bear Bryant continues to be an imprortant part of The University of Alabama football tradition.

I give this book 4 Big Al stomps!

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield

Vida Winter is perhaps the world's most famous author. She is the writer of the Tales of Change and Desperation, also known as The Thirteen Tales, a curiously titled book containing only twelve stories. This mistitled book is only one of the many causes for this eccentric woman's intriguing reputation. Another, is that, no one knows her true story. She has told many tales to the multitudes of biographers who have come knocking on her door, but none of them are true. Now, as she lies on her deathbed, she is ready to reveal the truth.


Margaret Lea is a person of little importance. She writes for her own amusement and has no ambition for writing. But, this low level biographer has attracted the attention of Miss Winter herself and takes up the task of transcribing her strange and painful life story. Margaret finds herself engrossed in this shocking tale of the intensity of being a twin, relating to Miss Winter on a highly personal level. Through the telling of the truth, these two women face their pasts and learn to cope together.


This book was very original and interesting. It is a one of a kind. I loved the mystery and the emotion that it evoked. It showed twins in a whole new light and broadened my understanding of the word. I give it five stars for its originality.

The Warrior Heir

Jack Swift is a sixteen year old boy from the small town of Trinity, Ohio. Besides the dose of heart medicine he has taken from birth, he is completely ordinary. But, the one day he forgets to take his medicine, he feels stronger and more alive than ever before, almost as if he had been taking a suppressant all of his life. When Jack asks his eccentric Aunt Linda about these bizarre changes, she tells him of his true heritage. Jack is a Warrior, a member of one of the guilds of the Weirlind, an underground society of magical people.

There are five magical guilds: Wizards, Enchanters, Sorcerers, Soothsayers, and Warriors. The Wizard Guild has power over all the other, lesser guilds, or the Anawizard Weir. Two prominent Wizard houses, the White Rose and the Red Rose, have been fighting for control of the Wizard Council, the committee of wizards that makes decisions for the guilds, for centuries. The controlling house is decided by the Game. The Game is a tournament in which the two houses each sponsor a Warrior in a fight to the death. But, due to the frequency of the tournaments, there are few Warriors left alive.

The two houses are both looking for Warriors to fight in the tournament but, Jack is untrained and ill prepared to fight in battle. If either of the houses find out that he is a Warrior, they will either kidnap him and play him in the tournament where he will be killed, or they will murder him to keep him from fighting for the other House. It is up to Jack's friends and family to protect him from either of these fates.

This book was a wonderful mix of fantasy and reality. The idea that there are magical people living among us without our knowlege is very interesting. I greatly enjoyed this book and would also recommend the sequel, The Wizard Heir. I give this book four stomps.

"Romeo and Juliet"

Title: "Romeo and Juliet"
Author: William Shakespeare

Reviewed by: Jessica Jia

------------

Romeo and Juliet is the classic tale that has steeped itself in cultural references and is one of the most well known love stories of all time. I was very excited to read the play because I had never read Shakespeare before; I was reluctant to read it though because I already knew how it ended; and I was baffled when I found out that even Shakespeare foretells the ending in the beginning of the play. So, why tell the audience the ending before the story even started? I would think that he just gave away his whole tragedy, but actually the ending is not the most important part, it's the events and emotions that lead up to the ending. Of course anyone who knows anything about English literature knows about Romeo and Juliet, but not everyone has read the whole thing as it was meant to be perceived.

Reading the whole play is so much more fulfilling than just knowing the ending. Also, having a translated text and a teacher to further point out what Shakespeare meant made reading the book a very nice experience. I never knew that the story was so intense and deep. It is a genius work of literature. Shakespeare must have been a genius or, like some suspect, more than one man. How could a single brain possibly churn out something with layers upon layers of meaning and wit?

Even if you thought that you knew the gist of "Romeo and Juliet" I still recommend that you read this book. I cannot begin to explain how much more enjoyable it is to read the tale with deeper perception and meaning. It is so much more than just pretty scenes that we have seen in high school plays and major motion productions. Reading the book gives a more profound meaning to the story and deep insight of the culture of Shakespeare's time. The side-to-side translation is very helpful and I have no regrets whatsoever for buying it. I already had the "Complete Works of Shakespeare" at home, but I tried reading that and I fell asleep. This book however was very interesting and could keep my attention. I definitely give it my full recommendations, and 5 out of 5 stomps.


----

Alice in Wonderland by London chandler

Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.

This has to be my favorite book of all time. It's one i think everyone would enjoy and should defiantly read.
Its a very epic tale about a small girl named Alice. She is very bored and sleepy one day while lazing around the river with her older sister. Her sister was reading a book and Alice pointed out that it had no pictures. "A book with no pictures?" She thought to herself. "How mad." She then lost interest quickly.Suddenly, a white rabbit scampers by yelling that it is very late, and pulls a pocket watch out of its waistcoat.Now Alice doesn't instantly notice the strangeness of a talking rabbit, but when she sees the rabbit's clothes and watch, she becomes very interested. So she follows the rabbit hopping right down a deep rabbit hole. Giving no thought of how she plans to get out again;her curiosity got the best of her. She seems to fall very slowly in the darkness for some time, having enough time to observe the things around her. There were shelves, maps and pictures which hung on pegs. At one point, she picked up a jar of orange marmalade and puts it back into place on another shelf. She seems to fall for a long period of time, and begins to worry that she might fall straight through to the other side of the earth.She worries about missing her cat, Dinah at dinner. Finally, she reaches the bottom of the hole. She lands in a long hallway with a checkered floor, and is just in time to see the frantic white rabbit hurrying away.The hallway is lined with doors, but all of them are locked. On a three legged table made of glass Alice finds a key, but it is far too small for any of the locks. Then, Alice finds a tiny door hidden behind a curtain. The key works, but the door is way too small. Through the door there is a miniature passageway, leading to a lovely garden. The sight of the garden makes Alice more determined than ever to find a way to get through. Alice goes back to the table, where a little bottle has magically appeared. The label read "DRINK ME," and after checking to see if it marked "poison," Alice drinks it all up. She then quickly shrinks to a size small enough for the door, but she soon realizes that she has left the key on top of the now large table. She is now to short to reach it. After realizing once more that she will not be able to climb the table, she begins to cry. But then finds a piece of cake, on which is a little slip of paper that reads "EAT ME." Alice eats, and waits for the results. Growing larger in size her head is now to the ceiling and her foot the size of two doors. Again seeing she cannot shrink she begins to cry even more. Large salty tears splash amongst the now small floor and begin to fill the room. Alice, too upset to realize, began shrinking fast into the ocean of her own tears. Alice gasps for air, and is failing greatly. Just when poor Alice was giving up she spots a mouse bigger than her swimming in her tears. She soon gets the mouse's attention and is pulled to dry land...

Many things happen in this book such as one of the more famous scenes "The Mad Hatter and the Hare". Where Alice is lost in Wonderland and finds herself at a small tea party with a truly mad hatter and his crazy friend the hare. Yelling Happy Birthday, and saying strange riddles Alice tries to make an attempt to leave, but before doing so they move up the large table several times, and Alice never gets one sip of tea.

Another famous scene is the "Advice from a Caterpillar". Alice is very lost and tired. When she comes across the hookah smoking caterpillar he simply asks her "Who are you?". She can give no satisfactory reply, because she has changed so many times in one day that she feels she can no longer answer the question with certainty. The Caterpillar tells her it is not so confusing to change. They have a conversation in which the very mellow Caterpillar gives important advice to the irritable Alice. "You must keep your temper" he repeats. He asks her to recite "You are old, Father William," which Alice does, although afterward they agree that she recited incorrectly. He also tells her that she will grow accustomed to the sensitivity of the animals. Alice expresses that she wants to be larger, but Caterpillar contradicts Alice repeatedly, with absolute composure. After a while he crawls off through the grass, telling her that one side of the mushroom will make her grow taller, and the other side will make her grow shorter.


I thought "Alice in Wonderland" was a very psychedelic tale about really finding yourself through all craziness .


I give this book five out of five stomps!!!