Stacking the Shelves - July 26th, 2015

Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Tynga's Reviews.  It is a way for us to share the new books we have collected.  This week I got several physical books, a few free e-books, and no egalleys.  I also got these cool Pop figures:

Physical books:

I've been wanting to read the new companion series to Flowers in the Attic, and I know that Secret Brother is one of them.  I just didn't realize the other two I'd seen were supposed to be before this one.  So guess I'll be on the lookout for them.  I'm hoping that I didn't already buy Red Hill, but I've wanted to read it for awhile, and it was on the bargain table for like $5, so I had to grab it.  I got Prodigy through the Books for Trade tag.  I've tried really hard to keep the coloring books out of my house so that I don't waste time on them, but I love peacocks so had to buy this one.  Broken Trust is by my friend Michelle Sodaro, and I finally was able to get together with her since she got them so that I could buy one.  And the last one is just a sampler of the actual Black Widow book that they were giving out at my bookstore during the Pop Culture Fangirl event.  

Ebooks:

Both of those were free ebooks.  They sound pretty good.  

So, what books did you add to your shelves this week?

Review: YOLO Juliet by Brett Wright/Shakespeare and srsly Hamlet by Courtney Carbone/Shakespeare

Okay, thanks to Edelweiss and Random House Books for Young Readers for allowing me to read a sampler of these two titles.  Now, I am a little disappointed that it was only samplers, but that is fine. While I normally do enjoy books like this, I might not have made it all the way through, as I have actually read Romeo and Juliet.  But I think this could be a great way to help kids today understand Shakespeare.  Yeah, you could say it "dumbs" it down.  But, it's not any different to me than translating it into more modern words like the No Fear Shakespeare books do.

These are basically told through Romeo and Juliet texting each other, or else writing in diary mode on their phones.  They use normal texting abbreviations and terms, as well as emojis.  One of the exchanges between Romeo and Juliet that I love was like this:

Romeo:  Juliet, I swear on the

 

Juliet:  Wait, you swear on a piece of rock in the sky?  Um.

Romeo:  Okay, what should I swear on, then?

Juliet:  Maybe we shouldn't make any promises yet.  All of t his happened as fast as 

Doesn't that kind of look like fun?  Of course in the book each person's speaking part is in bubbles like in a text message.

So I would recommend this as a fun book for someone trying to understand Shakespeare as they read it.