Cheers and Jeers for Blair Books

Ender's Game breaks all the rules

Imagine school, only instead of classes, you have battles in zero gravity, and instead of homework, you play video games. And now imagine that you're preparing to go kick some giant space insect butt and you'll have the setting for Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game, one of the best sci-fi novels ever written.
In the future, Earth is attacked by Buggers, a sort of insect version of the Borg from Star Trek. Seventy years after the Buggers' defeat, young children, including genius Ender Wiggin, are sent to Battle School to prep for the next assault.

Card weaves a brilliant tale of survival at Battle School, where teachers don't so much prevent violent student conflict as encourage it. Ultimately, Ender's Game is a tale of exploitation and deceit, leaving the reader to ponder how far is too far in war. Card's futuristic vision is a radical and welcome departure from the dustier books on the reading list.

Long live Rosencrantz and Guildenstern!

For people who find Hamlet one-dimensional, Aristotle simple and reality bogus, Tom Stoppard's play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is the perfect read. It's pretty neat for the rest of humanity, too.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern poses questions about reality, mankind and fate by rewriting William Shakespeare's Hamlet from the point of view of two minor characters, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Summoned by Hamlet, they embark on a journey from which they cannot escape that will ultimately lead to their deaths.

The play addresses its weighty topics with amazing wit. "It's very brilliant, very funny, very profound," says English teacher Judith Smith.

The Lord of literature

William Golding's Lord of the Flies contains violent young lads going bonkers. But unlike Stephen Crane's Red Badge of Courage, Lord won't put you to sleep or give you migraines for a month. It presents its subject matter bluntly and brutally, commanding the reader's undivided attention from start to finish.

A group of English boys being evacuated during World War II is stranded on a deserted island with no adults. They establish two rival governments, a democracy headed by the just Ralph and a dictatorship led by the violent Jack.

Much of Lord's appeal lies in Golding's realistic character portrayals. When the boys are afraid, they don't engage in internal philosophical contemplation; they cry. The characters are easy for teens to connect to and care about.

Gross, a roach!

Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis can be best described in one word: Ewwwwww!

Gregor Samsa awakens to find himself transformed into a cockroach. He seems much more concerned that he is late to work than that he now has six legs and a thorax. While this setup is amusing, the book is actually gross and depressing.
Kafka provides graphic descriptions, including an in-depth look at a festering wound caused by an apple that has lodged into Gregor's back. His family eventually grows completely abusive, shutting him inside his room, pelting him with fruit (thus the apple) and wishing for his death within his earshot. As Gregor spirals downward into misery, you begin to agree that he should hurry up and die just to end the story.

Go home, Ethan Frome

Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome: 100 pages and nothing happens. The book begins with Ethan Frome helplessly bound to a house with one cranky old woman and ends with him exactly the same way, plus another cranky old woman. The entire book might just as well never have happened.

Tragic Literary Figure Ethan Frome is in love with Mattie Silver, his housekeeper and cousin of his hypochondriac wife, Zeena. Then Zeena goes on a trip. Then the cat breaks the pickle dish and all metaphorical heck breaks loose.

Not much else happens. Ethan does an awful lot of reflecting to fill up those 100 pages. He does so much reflecting it's a wonder the townspeople don't start using him as a shaving mirror. The only active character in the book is the cat, but she tragically has no lines, so the story falters.

The Red Badge of Boredom

When the SparkNotes are more interesting than the book itself, you know you're in the presence of some criminally bad writing.

Stephen Crane demonstrates his flair for turning themes of war and soul-searching into snores and bores with The Red Badge of Courage.

Crane's snooze fest is the story of Henry Fleming, an adolescent recruit to the Union Army during the Civil War. Henry, a stale and lackluster character, displays an annoying penchant for talking to himself.

The lack of believable characters is just one of many problems in Red Badge. To Crane, providing spatial context for action is a silly device for lesser mortals. One sentence Henry is sitting peacefully, and the next he's in battle. Headaches galore.