The Ducklerfish Mystery!

Today is the day of two posts and both of them had to do with The Fault in Our Stars! 

The mystery of my Hanklerfish has been solved. I noticed that Hank Green had commented on my tumblr, (meaning that both the vlogbrothers had commented on my tumblr in a two day time period which is pretty ridiculously crazy i don't know what to think or do) with an answer to my question:

"It says “Ducklerfish” and it is extremely rare. In fact, this is the only Ducklerfish in existence. It’s simply an Hanklerfish that looked kinda like a duck because I screwed it up.It’s nice to see he found a good home!"

Which is totally and completely awesome. I think this is the most random but awesome thing that has happened and is definitely and awesome start to 2012!

I also have to say that this is completely fitting. You see, when it comes to making purchases I have extremely bad luck. I'm the type of person who goes out and decides to buy an iPod or a computer monitor and when I bring it home find that it just happens to be faulty. So here I am with a faulty Hanklerfish and I absolutely love it. 

Thanks to everyone for all their help and theories :)

DFTBA

REVIEW: Falling for Hamlet

I'm just going to skip how much
this cover bothers me, okay?

Hamlet is a story of betrayal, dealing with grief, politics and madness. In the play, Shakespeare is able to hit on many themes and emotions, giving actors much to work with leading to some intense performance from talented actors. 

Then there is this book. 

Falling for Hamlet takes the story of Hamlet, sloppily butchers it and stuffs the remaining corpse with teen fiction tropes. The book is told from the perspective of Ophelia and how she is so in love with Hamlet... etc... etc... Hamlet is so hot... etc etc. The usual. The core of the story, the atmosphere and the depth has been removed and sacrificed to make the story flashy and hip. Don't get me wrong, rewrites and novelizations of Shakespearian plays can work (For example, Fool by Christopher Moore) but the author needs to take care with what they are doing and how they approach it. 

In the case of this novel, it is modernized. It takes place in Denmark probably present day. Ophelia is still the daughter of Polonius, an advisor to the King. She has been friends with Hamlet and Horatio forever. She also has dated Hamlet off and on again, recently getting back together with him at the distain of Gertrude Hamlet's Mother. 

So Ophelia? Is she likeable? Meh. Is she relatable? Not in the slightest. On many occasions it is shoved in the Reader's face that Ophelia is hot. She's so hot that she doesn't have to do anything and she will look hot. She's blond, well dressed and lives the celebrity life. But she doesn't want to celebrity life, she wants to be normal. Ophelia is madly in love with Hamlet, which we are constantly reminded of. In the play, Ophelia is a side character. She is in love with Hamlet and Hamlet loves her too, but this isn't that crucial to the story line. Ophelia's purpose is to act as a foil to Hamlet's character and to be a comparison to him and his "decent into madness". In this novel Ophelia comes off as being unbelievable. She reminded me of Bella from Twilight judging her existence on how much Hamlet loves her. Which makes me wonder... Ophelia acknowledges that she is that girl, the girl who drops her friends and her life to run after a boy, does it make it worse that she knows this, or does it make it better in some way? 

Kenneth Branagh as Hamlet in the 1996 film adaptation.
More entertaining then anything....

Then there is Hamlet, as I mentioned earlier, Hamlet is "hot". When we are first introduced to him his main characteristics are that he is hot and he is a great boyfriend. All of Hamlet's story arch becomes unbelievable as his actions are forced. 

What really got to me, was how the author tried to incorporate the soliloquies into the novel. This didn't really work. The speeches lost their power after being translated into modern english. All of the eloquence lost. This novel took the plot strands of Hamlet and stripped it down to the bare minimum (the romance, Hamlet going crazy) and simplified the characters. I understand what Michelle Ray was attempting to do here, but it wasn't effective. This novel would have been much better if it wasn't a direct adaptation, instead stood on its own with different character names and different locations (pulling a Lion King if you will). 

I highly recommend you take a look at the original play.