Courtney Carbone

Ever wonder what the Greek Gods would be like in today's smartphone, text-speak, social media society? Well, Greek Gods #squadgoals is for you. It's a goofy, fun slim book that tells the entire story of the Greek Gods pantheon all thru texts, emojis, and social media posts. Having a base knowledge of original myths helped make this especially funny for me, but you don't really need to be that familiar with the myths to still have fun reading the book. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this and show more would recommend it to anyone that likes taking a different look at the Greek Gods mythology.

I received an advanced print copy of this book from the publisher for a fair and honest review. show less

Confession time: I don’t really know the story of Hamlet all that well. I didn’t study it at school and I haven’t seen it as a movie/play. Yes, I know there are some classic lines (think ‘to be or not to be’ and poor Yorick) but I didn’t know the story except something about a king and his mother. Srsly Hamlet changed that for me. By ‘translating’ the play into text speak and voice memos (something I understand a little better than Shakespeare, although I did have to make show more occasional use of the glossary at the back - what is TL;DR:?) I could really get into the whole storyline. And I found is fascinating – what a great story! It involves love, murder, deceit, hate, anger and some crazy ideas. I don’t know if I’m ready to handle the original yet, but I would feel more comfortable knowing the storyline.

Unfortunately poor Yorick isn’t in this version, although ‘to be or not to be’ gets a modern update thanks to emojis (just look at the cover). Once again, I think (and have now tested) that these books are a good way to get teens interested in Shakespeare. They’d be a great supplement to studying the play or as a first introduction. There’s modern updates that will keep teens entertained (one of the things Hamlet complains about is how Claudius always uses filters on his images) – if you’re a purist, you might not like these, but then you probably wouldn’t be reading this book! There’s also some jokes about autocorrect, which I thought was funny – it kind of turns the whole idea of classics on their head. Both adults and teens will enjoy this book if they’re after a chuckle, as well as getting a feel for the story. It’s a light, fun read.

Thanks to Random House Australia for the copy of this book. My review is honest.

For more reviews, please visit http://samstillreading.wordpress.com show less

I love to hate Pride and Prejudice spin-offs as much as the next person. They are almost always ok but never great...like 3 stars. I read a lot of them. For some crazy reason, I keep hoping they'll catch some of the magic of my most read book.

This is the only one I can say I actually really liked. It was hilarious. Was it magic? Not in the same way but I have a feeling Jane Austen would have appreciated the snide humor as much as me.

My son was gifted a set of three of these OMG Shakespeare books, and the premise looked so amusing that I put them in my own to-read pile. This was the first one I selected to read because I actually haven't read the full version of Macbeth. I know the gist, of course, and many of the famous lines, but this proved to be a fun way to read a synopsized version of the story.

The whole tragic tale is told as in through modern social media postings: texts, group chats, to-do lists, and public show more check-ins. As a ripe-old 39-year-old, I knew a lot of the slang (I was LOLing before the target audience of this book was born!) but even so, the acronyms and emojis were so thick they lost me at times... but even with that, I never ceased to be amused by the book. (There is a slang-decoder at the end of the book, which I wish I had known from the start.) This was a VERY quick read for me, but a good one. I look forward to reading the next two in the set soon. show less