The Prince is a political treatise written by Niccolo Machiavelli during his time imprisoned, following the wars in Italy in the 1500s. He wrote this book as a gift to his captors: the de’ Medici family. The main purpose of the book is to inform rulers how to gain power and, most importantly, maintain power at any cost. The book covers how to conquer foreign lands, how to maintain control of your lands, how to deal with your army or traitors, how to behave with people of different social statuses, etc.
The Little Prince is a juvenile fiction novel following the story of a young boy dealing with loneliness and struggles with understanding how to grow up, as well as what it truly means to be a child. The unnamed little boy leaves his tiny planet whose only other inhabitant is a singular rose whom he had befriended. He leaves in search of finding out what it means to love.
The Scarlet Letter is a novel that takes place in the 1600s in Boston, Massachusetts. It follows the story of a young woman named Hester Prynne who is being shunned and condemned by the community for committing adultery and has gotten pregnant. An onlooker who had just arrived named Roger Chillingworth asks who Hester is and why she's being publicly shamed, we later learn that it was her husband disguised. The book has much suspense as it follows Hester and how she deals with these hardships with her daughter Pearl.
1984 is a dystopian novel that follows a man named Winston Smith. Winston navigates and eventually attempts to overthrow the "utopia". People aren't allowed to fall in love, they aren't allowed to read, among a variety of other things. The book warns against the dangers of totalitarianism. The government watches people and personifies them as "Big Brother". The police monitor people's thoughts to see if they seem disloyal.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder follows a girl named Pip as she tries to uncover the murder of a girl named Andie Bell for a school project with a boy named Ravi, the brother of the boy suspected of killing Andie. Pip isn't convinced that Ravis's older brother killed Andie, and neither is Ravi. They can't ask him because he was soon dead after her, a “suicide”. Pip and Ravi work hard to find out who did this.
Rich Dad Poor Dad is a financial book that teaches the reader how to be financially independent. It follows the narrative of the narrator showing the financial choices of his poor dad (his real dad), and his rich dad (his best friend's father). It talks about different topics on how to build wealth and gives simplified ways to understand how making money works.
The story itself is a great representation of a person ostracized by society and his attempts to accept his fate. The narrator tries to understand human societies while ultimately being afraid of human’s altogether, not seeing himself as one of them. He sees them as distant from himself, and he can't seem to understand them "I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being", hence the title, No Longer Human.
I give American Psycho 5 stars. It deals with many adult themes not suitable for children under 14. The book tells the story of a rich investment banker on Wall Street (in New York) named Patrick Bateman. What makes this book so interesting is the way the narrator describes things. Judging from the way he acts the reader can infer that he isn't a reliable narrator. Patrick is a serial killer at night and hides his crimes from everyone.
In this book, author, Sonia Nazario, follows a young boy named Enrique on his journey from Honduras to the United States where his mother lives in hopes that all of his problems will get better. While on the journey, Enrique faces many obstacles and hardships but remains determined to meet his mother again.
