The Brothers Karamazov was the last novel written by Fyodor Dostoevsky.  The story is set in 19th-century Russia, and it revolves around a wicked old man named Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov and his three adult sons.  From oldest to youngest, the brothers are named Dmitri, Ivan and Alyosha.  Dmitri is similar to his father in that he is impulsive and immoral.  Ivan is more of a thoughtful and intellectual person.  Alyosha is kind-hearted and religious.  He has joined a local monastery, and he strives to maintain peace in his family amid growing tensions between his father and his brothers.

As the story unfolds, a terrible crime is committed, and one of the Karamazov brothers is the primary suspect.  This leads to a dramatic series of events, with many surprising outcomes.  Overall, this novel is quite dark, as it explores the thoughts and behavior of various evil and immoral people.  At the same time, characters such as Alyosha strive to maintain virtue and goodness.

This novel was extremely well-written.  I read an English translation by Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, which flowed very well, even though this novel was originally written in Russian.  Each character seems to have a unique voice, which makes the story feel very realistic.  I was deeply impressed by the interactions between the father and the three Karamazov brothers.  The ending of the story was particularly satisfying.

This is a gripping novel and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  It is no wonder that Fyodor Dostoevsky is considered one of the greatest authors in history.  The characters have so much depth, and the storytelling is so realistic, that I almost found it hard to believe this was fictional.  I consider this one of the greatest novels I have ever read, and it deserves to be considered one of the great masterpieces of literature.

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

This year in my English class, we had to read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, a classic book written by Mark Twain. As you can imagine, we had to analyze it and do all the work alongside reading the book. Although the reading came with work, I ended up enjoying the overall story. Many times, people seem to lose interest in a book when reading it comes with work to complete along with it, but I try not to let that get the better of me and try to do the work after I’ve enjoyed the book. So far, my strategy has worked out well, from The Outsiders, The Giver, and now The Adventures of Tom Sawyer being all books I have now happily completed. 

The book features the fictional main character Tom Sawyer introducing his character as a very mischievous character with a big imagination. He often gets in trouble and loves to make his own fun. I had my own fun reading about his adventures with his friends, mostly Huckleberry Finn. Each of the characters had their own feeling to them that felt familiar to me, almost like I knew them personally. Twain depicts society and people quite well in this book and often satirizes things that happen in the world throughout the story. He creates lifelike characters, those that would act in a way real kids would, while still having parts that would seem unbelievable and unreal in the real world to make the story interesting. The way Twain words things about society shows his views and also the truth about society. 

Tom and Huckleberry Finn are both young boys that come from different parts of society and different lifestyles that yet, love to play and hang out with each other while trying out their superstitions and beliefs. On many of Tom’s adventures, Huckleberry Finn or Huck, is always the one who seems to stick with Tom and his ideas and beliefs. Both go on different adventures throughout the book and work together often. Each adventure leads to another and it all connects together by the end of the story. Despite their adventures starting off childish, it still managed to pull me in, wanting to find out what happens next. 

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer is a great classic that I definitely enjoyed. However, this book does feature a certain dialect and language that would not be acceptable today, so if you ever get the chance to read this book, please keep this in mind. Otherwise, this is a great book and I would recommend it to anyone who is interested. 

-Nicole R.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

When Kyle Straker volunteers to be hypnotized at the annual Millgrove talent show, he expected the usual amateur act – perhaps slight embarrassment from being made to act like a chicken, but nothing more than that. What he wakes up to, though, is a nightmare. Cars and televisions no longer work, townspeople communicate in a strange language, but worst of all, people simply pass by Kyle as if he does not exist.

In an attempt to discover what caused this monumental shift, Kyle teams up with the three other hapless volunteers in order to survive the strange new world they have found themselves in. However, the more they investigate, the more danger they find themselves in as they eventually realize that there is more than just their lives at stake, but also their way of life.

The novel is told through a series of cassette tapes that have subsequently become a historical artifact called the Straker Tapes. Mike Lancaster assumes the position of the historian with editor’s notes to explain parts of the story that would not make sense to the evolved human, which adds both humor and horror to the story. For example, he goes into great detail describing mouths, which, though amusing to the reader, inevitably implies that the future humans depicted in the novel do not have any and are therefore superior, emphasizing the oddness of the new world Kyle and his friends find themselves in.

Overall, I enjoyed Human.4 by Mike Lancaster because it was a unique premise I had never read or considered before. While it is not a conventional dystopian novel, I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys them for a new take on the genre.

– Mahak M.

Sophie Foster is an elf who lives in the Lost Cities and has gone through many particular adventures. In the Lodestar, she feels very betrayed. Her friend Keefe had run away in the previous book. Her parents (Grady and Edaline) don’t trust him, but she still tries to keep her hopes up.

Pretince, a wrongly accused criminal, had just woken up. Sophie’s job was to get into his head and find out what happened. While there, she finds a projection of Jolie, Grady, and Edaline’s biological kid that had died in a fire. Jolie then begins to explain what had happened to Pretince and how he feels. Sophie doesn’t find much, but what she does recover is a symbol. This symbol is later found to be the lodestar symbol, hence the name of the book.

Later on, Sophie and her friends discover that Keefe’s mother had used Lodestar as a plan for his “Legacy” (we still haven’t found out what it is yet and it’s been 8.5 books). Dex, their technopath, also discovers that each piece of the symbol can be used to teleport to a hideout, so they end up visiting one. Nothing eventful happens, so they headed back.
This book is really good and anyone who has read books like The Hobbit, Harry Potter, or Percy Jackson would like it. Just be sure to read the other books first, or you will be lost with the concept of this one.

-Izzy W.

Keeper of the Lost Cities – Lodestar by Shannon Messenger is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.

Lily Bart: fashionable, socially-adept, and absolutely beautiful. Born and raised in the upper echelons of New York society, she seems the type of woman to immediately wed a wealthy man and secure her position as a rich socialite. However, due to her own warring nature between her material desires and her yearning for true love, Lily finds herself caught in a malicious web of jealousy and deceit that causes her fall from grace and social affluence to poverty and loneliness on the margins of society.

It is this unfortunate journey that Edith Wharton chronicles in her novel The House of Mirth. Although Lily is the protagonist of the novel, Wharton explores the events from other perspectives, notably Laurence Selden, Lily’s true love interest. The greatest irony of the novel is that although Selden openly despises the superficial and gossip-driven high society, when push comes to shove and Lily’s reputation is tarnished by forces outside of her control, Selden has the same prejudices against her, and it is these biases that keep Lily and Selden from their happy ending until it is too late to reach it.

Outside of Lily Bart herself, Wharton uses the novel to criticize the society of which she was a part. The most obvious of these is the disparity between what is expected out of men and women during this time. As Lily herself notes, while men could get away with shabbiness or not marrying, women were forced to always look beautiful and presentable, and had to marry in order to keep this up. Ultimately, Lily’s inability to cope with the demands her society made of her caused her decline into the fringes of society.

Overall, The House of Mirth is in no way a light or funny read as the title suggests. Instead, it represents the depressing struggle between what society has determined for people to be and what those people actually are through Lily Bart’s equally tragic story arc. In the end, The House of Mirth is an interesting read if only to understand the similarities between early twentieth century society and modern life.

– Mahak M.

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton is available to checkout from the Mission Viejo Library. It is also available to download for free from Libby.