Friday, September 13, 2013

The Scarlet Letter and Huckleberry Finn

Oh wow it has boon a while but a year later I have found inspiration and I am here for you internet, let's hug it out. I am an avid reader of YA and I intend to keep you all up to date with my reading, but I also read classic novels which I will tell you about right... NOW. Over the summer I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, and The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Though many of my classmates were unhappy with the novels, I really enjoyed them both (especially after reading other novels for school). Both novels were able to use satire in amazing ways that allowed the reader to have a deeper interaction with the text, such as the sinking of the Walter Scott steamboat. Twain's novel stood out to me because, last year I read The Grapes of Wrath which, though it is a good novel, was not able to spar my interest in the way that Huckleberry Finn did. I found the stories themselves very interesting, they did not drag and once I got into the stories the language was far easier to understand.

For anyone who wants to read either of the novels they are free through Google Play here https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Nathaniel_Hawthorne_The_Scarlet_Letter?id=jJ-s8snbHCIC and here https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Mark_Twain_The_adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn_Tom_?id=bnpNAAAAYAAJ . Need help with the language of the novels? Try an audio-book or the, "No Fear Scarlet Letter" book available online or local bookstores (check availability). I was able to get a free audio-book of Huck digitally through my local library's app, "Overdrive Media". For The Scarlet Letter I recommend this You Tube series http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UcsmuIKTPM these are just the first two chapters, the rest will be in the sidebar. Here is the audio-book for Huck, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFZYP1fDtpo . I hope this helps motivate you to read or reread these novels, feel free to agree or disagree with me and we will talk it out in the comments below! :)
Hester with the scarlet letter.