The Bookshelf

The Summer I Turned Pretty (*cough cough* and extremely annoying ) *This review contains some mild spoilers, however, no major plot twists are revealed. When Jenny Han’s, The Summer I Turned Pretty, was first recommended to me I was really excited to read it. I had heard good things about the book and many of my friends had read and enjoyed it. I was expecting a fun YA novel with a cute romance. Little did I know I was also signing up for a 276 page book about a whiny toddler *ahem* teenager mulling over how life’s greatest issue was obviously her boy drama. This book could legitimately be summarized in one sentence: Main character cannot decide which guy she likes best and generally acts like a whiny 3 year old for 99% of this book. The Summer I Turned Pretty is a story about a girl named Belly and her summers at a beach house. Every summer her, her brother Steven, her mom Laurel, her moms best friend Susannah, and Susannah’s two sons Conrad and Jeremiah go to spend the summer at a p

Note: This blog contains several spoilers from the novel and examines the word “ersatz,” which appears repeatedly in the novel. Ersatz means “fake” or “substitute” in German (for example, “Ersatzlehrer” means “substitute teacher”). Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (the basis of the famous 1982 Ridley Scott film, Blade Runner ) is Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel about a bounty hunter named Rick Deckard living in post-apocalyptic Earth, year 2021, where everyone is emigrating to Mars. His job is to kill or “retire” any rogue “androids” that have illegally made their way to Earth. Androids are genetically modified human clones, produced mainly for working in harsh conditions to colonize planets. The most recent “model” of android—the Nexus-6—is so human-like that it is nearly impossible to detect the difference from people. The novel’s main question—how can you tell the difference between humanoid and truly human?—is the same question we are asking today about how to coexist with the in