Book Bloggers in the Chat

     It’s pretty easy to slack off on independent reading, especially now when a library isn’t as accessible as it used to be. However, there are other ways to read a wide variety of books.      One easy way to read at home is to use a Kindle. The Kindle Paperwhite is a tablet like device that is used for reading books. It can carry multiple books at once and you can connect it to wifi to buy books directly on it from Amazon. There are also a couple free books you can buy and you can download free books from the internet. I don’t know how my mom downloaded the whole Harry Potter Series but she did. Is it legal? I don’t know, and I don’t need to know.       But you may think, I don’t want to spend so much money just to buy books for my Kindle and to be honest, the free books are quite mediocre. I’d much rather go to a local library with free loans for a wide selection of books. That’s what I thought too until the pandemic hit. Now, I don’...

 By Walter Kraatz      Artemis by Andy Weir is set in Artemis, the only city on the moon. It follows a smuggler named Jazz Bashara who sneaks contraband into Artemis. The contraband is mostly things that are flammable, like cigars and soundproofing. Flammable things are contraband because fire is extremely dangerous on the moon because people can't just go outside until things stop burning. Jazz says that she has standards on what she will smuggle into the city (hard drugs, plants, weapons), but is still endangering the residents of the city by smuggling in things that have the potential to kill quite a few people. Jazz's smuggling operation only used as expostition and backdrop and is the least ethically ambigious part of the story.     The main part of the plot of the story concerns Jazz's work for a billionaire as an industrial saboteur. Artemis is home to an aluminum smeltery that is also the source of the city's oxygen supply. The smeltery pr...

By: Grace To The first time I picked up a book from the Ranger's Apprentice series was in the 7th grade. It was just another Sunday visit to the library. I walked into the teen section with the intention of borrowing a book. A couple of steps brought me to the first shelf. I stopped and lazily scanned the rows of books, not exactly sure of what I was looking for. A title caught my eye. Correction: titles. In the bottom left corner of the bookshelf was "Ranger's Apprentice" written across several books stacked next to each other. I felt a sense of déjà vu and I suddenly remembered my sister sitting on the kitchen chair with the book in her hand with the same title.  Making a decision, I picked up the book, wanting to give it a try after watching my sister binge the series a few months before.  The Ranger's Apprentice series centers around Will, an orphan abandoned in the front doorstep of Castle Redmont. Knowing near nothing about his family, Will is convinced that...