Hamlet's father is killed by his uncle, Claudius, who takes the throne and marries the widowed queen. The ghost of his father asks him to avenge his death by killing Claudius. Hamlet kills Polonius, Claudius' counselor, accidentally. Claudius sends Hamlet to England where he is to be killed, but he gets back to Denmark safe. Claudius and Laertes, Polonius' son, plot to kill him by poisoning a rapier and wine. Ophelia, Polonius' daughter and Hamlet's love, drowns after going mad.The queen, Gertrude, drinks the poisoned wine while watching Hamlet and Laertes duel. She falls, and while distracted, Hamlet is wounded slightly by Laertes. They have a scuffle and switch swords and Hamlet wounds Laertes. Laertes dies and Hamlet stabs Claudius when he finds out he was behind everything. Hamlet, dying, leaves his crown to Fortinbras of Norway.

This play was alright. Wasn't very easy to read, but there was a lot of action to keep one slightly interested. My sister tells me that Lion King was based on this (which makes sense).

"Give thy thoughts no tongue, nor any
unproportioned thought his act."
-Act I, Scene III, Lines 65-6

"To be honest, as this world goes, is to be one man picked out of ten thousand."
-Act II, Scene II, Lines 194-5

"Madness in great ones must not unwatched go."
-Act III, Scene I, Line 203

What can I say? This is my favorite of WS's plays. Although I'm not a big reader of his, I appreciate his work.

Hamlet is a young prince who sees the ghost of his dead father, telling him that the new king, Hamlet's uncle, killed him. He is told to kill his uncle to avenge his father. Those around Hamlet see him descend into madness, though whether it is feigned is of some debate.

I have had the opportunity to love Shakespeare from an actor's, reader's, and audience's point of view. This play achieves magnificence at all levels. It is my favorite work by a true genius who wrote the world as no one had even thought of doing.

Reread for class on Heroes in Literature

What can one say about Hamlet that has not already been said? I am not Harold Bloom.

Hamlet is the most convoluted character ever! But his story is interesting. I love how everything wraps up nicely in the end.

BONUS: The Simpsons' parody of this is hilarious!

Shakespeare's exploration of the human conscience - the meaning of "madness" - is what made this play so revolutionary and it is what has kept the play so popular for over 300 years. Hamlet breaks tradition from previous revenge tragedies of the jacobean, elizabethan, and classical tragedies in that Shakespeare provides a "method" for the madness. The purpose of the "ghost" of Hamlet's father remains debated today. The discussion of protestant vs catholic vs pagan beliefs is exciting.

The Arden edition is especially beneficial to students of literature or of Shakespeare because it provides excellent explanatory notes, appendices, introductions, etc.

I quite enjoyed this book, this was second time to read it.
It tells the story of Hester Prynne, a woman in New England who becomes pregnant by an unknown man. The problem is, that her husband sent her ahead of him, to make a home for them, but he never followed. In the puritan society she lives in, becoming pregnant like this is a serious crime, and so Hester must spend her life being scorned by her fellow townspeople and wearing a symbol of her shame, which is a Scarlet Letter A on her chest.

This is very enjoyable, and interesting. Well worth reading!

The story of a young boy called Kim orphaned in India who goes on an adventure with a Lama who is looking for the healing river.

It is a time in the future in which 76% of Americans have implants in their brains called “feeds.” These feeds are much like the internet—they provide virtually instant access to information, entertainment, and communication. Those without access to the feed are severely handicapped in society. A man who protests the feed damages the feeds of Titus and his friends. This damage causes Titus to consider the consequences of feeds for the first time. His girlfriend Violet is unable to recover from the damage.
I loved this book—it started out funny (the opening line: “We went to the moon to have fun, but the moon turned out to completely suck.”) and progressed to genuine poignancy (an advertisement translated into a death knell “Everything must go.”). I had some difficulty with the language at first, it is breezy and conversational—a style I often find exasperating—but even this was an effective device showing that the shorthand of the feed (read internet) causes a breakdown in complex communication.

Taking place in a futuristic dystopia, this story revolves around the theme of a capitalist controlled society. From a small age, people are implanted with brain chips that give them access to the internet and everything that comes with it computer free, After a group of teens' feeds are hacked into on a trip to the moon, two become friends. Another theme running through the novel, more so at the end, does the person who stood by and did nothing deserve blame as well as the one who caused harm?

Pretty standard sci-fi. I felt like a lot wasn't explored that could have been, but it was good in all the ways that I expect science fiction to be good. Standard story, standard conflicts, etc.

BLURB

Pierson's puppeteers, strange, three-legged, two-headed aliens, have discovered an immense structure in a hitherto unexplored part of the universe. Frightened of meeting the builders of such a structure, the puppeteers set about assembling a team consisting of two humans, a puppeteer and a kzin, an alien not unlike an eight-foot-tall, red-furred cat, to explore it. The artefact is a vast circular ribbon of matter, some 180 million miles across, with a sun at its centre - the Ringworld. But the expedition goes disastrously wrong when the ship crashlands and its motley crew faces a trek across thousands of miles of the Ringworld's surface.

REVIEW

Its a fun little adventure to be sure, a story that makes you think; the characters are all pretty shallow and one dimensional, but its the concepts on space that make this book more of a 'mental playground' than anything else.

Hmmm....Sounded so promising, but took me an age to get through, could not get the will up to pick up this book, but finally finished it about an hour ago, and was never so glad to finish a book.

It tells the story of The House of the Seven Gables....funnily enough! This house is occupied by Hepzibah, an old scowling woman who came from much wealth but is now reduced to opening a penny shop at the side of her house. Also living here is a young man named Holgrave who is an artist, Hepzibah's relation Phoebe, a young girl from the country and her brother Clifford.

A mystery surrounds this house, and the family is believed to be cursed ever since they stole land belonging to a supposed Wizard.

Sounds good? Yeah well the horror part doesn't arise until the last 20 pages or so, where you just get a slightly creepy feeling, but thats about it. Not worth the read at all, and if I hadn't gotten to the point of no return, I would have abandoned this book a long time ago.