Book Review: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Book: The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Genre: Childrens classic
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★

This was the other choice for our KPOP book club this time around. The Happy Prince (see review here) and this one, The Little Prince. Fun, eh? I'd read it already quite awhile back, but of course it's an easy read, so I read it again this past week.

It's a simple story of a guy who has a plane crash in the African desert, and while he's trying to fix his plane, a "little prince" shows up for a visit. And in their conversations, the guy learns that the prince has visited several other "planets" and learned things from all the people he sees. His last visit is on Earth, and he recalls the people and things he's come across there too. In the end, he has to return to his planet and it makes our airplane guy sad, but he feels like he is better and learned a lot from the little prince.

Last time I remember thinking.. wow. I'm sure something is trying to be said, I just don't know what! But this time, I tried a little harder to figure out what I thought was the lessons to be learned. Here's what I'm coming up with:

1. Take time to slow down in life and smell the roses and look at the the stars and enjoy sunsets.
2. Go out and appreciate the lives of others. Learn and explore.
3. Be loyal and dependable. Take care of things.
4. Open up yourself to be "tamed" or loved and vulnerable.
5. Grown ups are strange!

I don't know... what else do you think there is to be learned from this little tale? I looked it up to see what others thought. Some other ideas are:

1. Don't be too fond of numbers.
2. Don't judge others by what they say, but by what they do.
3. Relationships make life worth living.
4. The important things aren't seen with your eyes, but with your heart.
5. The time you give makes the thing precious.

The book is also full of TONS of quotes. Here's some favorites:

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”

“What a queer planet!" he thought. "It is altogether dry, and altogether pointed, and altogether harsh and forbidding. And the people have no imagination. They repeat whatever one says to them . . .

“That is the most difficult thing of all. It is far more difficult to judge oneself than to judge others. If you succeed in judging yourself correctly, then you are truly a man of wisdom.” 

“One runs the risk of weeping a little, if one lets oneself be tamed...” 

“If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures...”


Well, anyway. It was fun to revisit this one. We added it to the Kpop book club reads because so many of our reading kpop idols love this book. So many! And again I say, wouldn't it be fun to discuss with them what they love about it???

We'll be announcing our next book in a video on Saturday! Look for it! I'm very excited!

Book Review: Stories for Children by Oscar Wilde

Book: Stories for Children by Oscar Wilde, Illustrated by P.J. Lynch
Genre: children's illustrated short stories
Rating: ★ ★ ★


I picked up this one to read because we are doing The Happy Prince for the Kpop bookclub this time around and I found it in this compilation and decided to just read all the stories here, because it will also fulfill another category on the book challenge I'm doing!

This particular edition included six stories. Here's a summary of each:

The Selfish Giant: A giant gets bugged when he discovers children playing in his garden, so he bans them from coming. But then his garden is cursed with winter until he realizes why and has the kids come back. One particular kid catches his eye...

The Nightingale and the Rose: A young boy wants to give something to a girl to make her fall in love with him. The nightingale learns of this plight and sacrifices himself to create the perfect rose, but the boy takes no heed and all is in vain.

The Devoted Friend: A miller has a very warped definition of friendship and works his "friend" to literal death.

The Happy Prince: A statue of a the prince notices the suffering people in his kingdom and he gives everything he has, with the help of his sparrow friend, to ease their suffering.

The Remarkable Rocket: A firework, intended for the celebration of the marriage of the prince and princess, decides to start bragging about how wonderful he is and ends up exploding in a very unremarkable way.

The Young King: A pauper turned king has three dreams on the eve of his coronation which makes him decide he does not want to be a pompous king and he refuses to wear the riches prepared for his coronation.


Basically, every single story is extremely depressing! Except maybe the Selfish Giant which still ends in death. Yeah. Every story is also quite sarcastic and expresses the author's feelings (I'm assuming they are his feelings) in quite an unsubtle way. Of course, most of this would go over a kids head, so I was baffled they are considered "for children." They are pretty morbid for children too! More like parables for adults here! They did feel like twisted Bible stories in a way.

Anyway, still I learned lessons. Things like: be a true friend, don't be selfish, don't be a braggart, help the poor people, don't be prideful, give of yourself, know the true meaning of love. Etc. :) Also, I know I was supposed to pay attention to the illustrations, and they were okay, but they didn't really stand out to me.

I.M aka Im Changkyun of Monsta X

We read this one because recently I.M (aka. Im Changkyun)  from Monsta X read The Happy Prince for an audiobook production. I found it on Youtube and thoroughly enjoyed listening to him read it to me! He knows English well, but has some interesting pronunciations for some words which made me smile and was so very cute.  Here it is if you are interested. I know he did a Korean version too, which I would love to listen to. But I haven't found it yet.




We are also reading The Little Prince for this bookclub this time around, so look for that to come later!

Movie Review: Little Women

Movie: Little Women
Genre: Classic retelling
Starring: Lea Thompson, Ian Bohen, Lucas Grabeel, Sarah Davenport
Rating: PG13
My rating: two thumbs up

So it's been awhile, but Jenny and I randomly at the spur of the moment went to this movie together about a month ago and I've been wanting to tell you all about it!

I went in knowing nothing except that it was a modern re-make of Little Women, which was intriguing, but made me a little nervous.

But no need, I was pleasantly surprised! It's a really great retelling and I loved what they did with it! Especially the Freddy/Mr. Bhaer dude!

So the story is told in flash back mostly, since we are with Jo in the present day as she is trying to become a writer in New York. We see her pitch her book to a panel of judges and they reject it, including Professor Bhaer, but Jo tracks him down and persists and he becomes her mentor and friend. As she is doing this, we get flashbacks to her childhood days, and thus the main parts of the book we know so well!

So I really enjoyed seeing them form a relationship and it made that whole romance much more plausible and real. In fact this time I think I was actually rooting for it to happen! WEIRD!

Not a bad Professor Bhaer, eh?

The cast was great. All the girls were awesome and perfectly cast. The banter and tension between Amy and Jo was tangible and real. I died seeing Stuart Edge (a favorite local YouTuber) playing Mr. Brooke. He did great, but WHAT? No kissing scene for him???

I thought I recognized the dude playing Laurie the whole movie, but wasn't totally sure. So afterward we looked him up and YEP, the High School Musical dude! (Not Zach of course, but the brother, I forget his name!) And he did great too. Though I am still quite the Christian Bale fan when it comes to Laurie. Yeah. Not sure that will ever change.

Anyway, I really enjoyed it and having it the present day totally worked for me. Way to go guys!

Book Review Thoughts: Demian by Hermann Hesse

Book: Demian by Hermann Hesse

Genre: Classic-ish
Rating:★★☆ ☆ ☆

Guys. Do you find it weird that kpop led me to this book? I mean, who would think that a Korean band made up of boys ages 19 to 23 would base their extremely popular (I know this crowd thinks they aren't popular, but believe me they are. EXTREMELY!) music videos on an obscure German novel written a hundred years ago?

Who would think?

And who would think that in doing so they would get a gazillion people, including me, to pick up said obscure German novel and actually READ it?

Well, it happened. These boys, this band, known as BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan in Korean) over the past year has made a series of music videos inspired by this book. Now, because I've been fascinated by the videos, naturally I wanted to check out the book. And besides, I loved it that my two fandoms come together for a time!

BTS winning award after award for their latest album called Wings which is inspired by this book

Well, I must say that after having read the book I'm pretty much just as confused as ever. Here's what I got from the book (spoilers!):

• a boy (let's call him Sinclair) gets teased by a bully and another kid (let's call him Demian) comes to his rescue and now Sinclair thinks of the rescuer as a sort of savoir
• when Sinclair goes of to boarding school, he becomes rebellious mostly by drinking way too much. He yearns for contact with Demian but alas, he seems to have disappeared.
• Then Sinclair sees a girl and basically falls in love... even though he has no contact with her, just the thought of her brings him out of his rebellious stage and he suddenly becomes spiritually enlightened.
• He draws a picture of her, but somehow, it looks like Demian. Weird.
• After boarding school, he goes off to college. There he finds another friend who teaches him a sort of religion where Abraxas is the god. And Abraxas is this bird thing, but to be honest, I can't even remember how this bird thing came to be in the story. I think Sinclair drew him too.
• And then suddenly, Sinclair bumps into Demian again. And they become friends again. In fact Sinclair hangs out at his house a lot. 
• And falls in love with his mom. LOL! I mean weird. 
• And they have all sorts of strange over-my-head conversations 
• And then the war (I think WWI?) starts and both of them go off to fight. 
• And then Demian dies and the end.

Rap Mon in all his dimpled and genius glory.

So what does that all have to do with the kpop videos? I really don't know! They have wings, and a statue with wings, and a mom named Eva, and you know... maybe I should just go watch all those videos again!!! I think it has more to do with all the strange philosophy and the Abraxas stuff that went over my head than it does this actual story. Rap Monster, (I know his name is strange, but you get used to it. Or we can just call him Namjoon if you'd rather.) who is a genius and the leader of this band, read this book and was so taken with it that he instigated this whole concept. Which I find to be the coolest part of this, shall we say, experience. 

And anyway, at least now I can say I've read the book behind the videos even if I still don't get it. 

And now you want to read the book too, right? AND watch a video? Yes? Well, I can help you with the video part:

Book Review Thoughts: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

Book: Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Genre: Classic Horror
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

We've been looking forward to this book at book club for nearly two years. I can't believe it finally came! I love introducing this book to people because most have no idea what the story really is.  I can't even remember when I read it before, but I remember loving it, or at least being surprised by how different it was from all the movie portrayals. And it's fun to see everyone have the same awakening! Of sorts.

So as you may or may not know, this story is about a young man (we tend to think of him as old, but he's actually very very young) who gets this brilliant idea to create life. He studies and works hard and experiments and then one day after all this passion put into the project, he succeeds.

Now here's the thing that struck me this time around. As soon as he succeeds, he is appalled. Like, what was he expecting exactly? Frankenstein! Dude!!! What were you thinking?????

So he's so disgusted with his creation that he runs away and hides and leaves the poor monster to fend for himself. Guys, I really really don't like how our Victor handles himself in this book. He is such a pansy. Ugh. Either I forgot this or I didn't think about it before but man. He is so annoying!

And so our monster lives in the wild and learns stuff because dang, he is one smart cookie! He realizes his appearance (which truly is not really described so why is he portrayed the way he is in all the movies? Anyone? Anyone?) freaks people out so he hides from society and observes them instead. He attaches himself to one family in particular and learns to talk and read from watching them. He loves them and wants to be part of their lives. He thinks he can make this happen. But... alas... it is not to be. When he reveals himself, they freak out like everyone else.

It's then that he loses it and sort of becomes the monster we think of him as. But still, not really. He's just so angsty and sad and needy and.... he just wants a family! And he goes back to Victor and begs for one. Victor tries but fails (well, he quits actually)  and then the monster gets revenge.

And the fight is on.

Though the end is really quite unsatisfying. Sigh. I don't know what I would have liked better, but it's just quite anticlimactic.

Anyway. The story is a good one and quite fascinating when you look it all in a philosophical and psychological way. What makes someone human? And what sort of responsibility does one have for ones creations? There really is a lot to think about.

It was fun to revisit this one and I look forward to discussing it tonight at book club!

Book Review Discussion: The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde

Book: The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde
Genre: Children's classic
Rating:★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
For: the readathon and family book club
From: the library

Short Synopsis: A family moves into a nice old house and is very emphatically warned by the previous owner that the house is haunted. They just shrug and say, whatever. We'll deal. Turns out, the house really is haunted and the family does just shrug it off. They confront the ghost, they yell at him, they set traps for him, they undo all his mischief and they generally make his ghostly life miserable. The tables are completely turned. He ends up one very depressed ghost. Then the daughter of the family talks to him, learns his story and helps him to find peace and release.

My Response: Cute story! Lots of funny moments. Though you do feel sorry for the ghost, even though he really did mean things when he was alive. The end is bittersweet and I'm sure has all sorts of symbolism and stuff, but I didn't try too hard to figure those out. The writing is fun and light-hearted. I was surprised and expected it to be a little heavier coming from Mr. Wilde, but I did learn that he has written a ton of kids stories. So that was interesting.

Bottom Line: Fun story. Kids will love it. I know there are several picture versions of the story and it can be read in long sitting, or over a couple of nights.

Let's Talk About: I'm wondering if you are all familiar with this story? I wasn't until we decided to read it for our first family book club pick. I mean, the name sounded familiar but I didn't know at all what it was. How about you all? I know there are lots of movie versions too. Anyone seen one?

Other Reviews:

It’s funny, imaginative, and so easy to read it’s suitable for younger readers as well as adults. From She Reads Novels

What I am continually impressed by is how modern and fresh Oscar Wilde’s prose still sounds given it was penned in the late 1800s. From Book Lover Book Reviews

What I liked most about the Canterville Ghost was his fish-out-of-water experiences. Not being able to scare the residing family like he should. From AllReaders.com


Here's a fun trailer for one the movies: