Sanrock Reviews

looking at things from a literary viewpoint

Cirque du Freak Manga

As with  many things that gain some type of popularity, Cirque du Freak has had a comic based off of it. More specifically, a manga by  Takahiro Arai.  After spending some time with it, I can safely say Arai has done a decent job with it. As with making anything into a comic, there’ the whole “does this character look like how I imagined him/her to be?” The thing is […]

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Cirque du Freak Series

Vampires have been a part of human literature for centuries. from the normal vampire bat to the Chinese jiangshi you’ll see vampires everywhere. of course, some modern vampire stories range from classic (The Strain)  to oh my god, kill it with fire (Twilight. Don’t worry, I’ll get to that later.) Today We’ll look at one series that takes a different spin on vampires while managing to create a worthwhile story. […]

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Let’s Talk About Shlock

Low budget, poorly acted, poorly written, bad direction. These are just some of the things that describe horrible movies, TV shows, books you name. Of course, there are those that have these qualities and people love them. This is called so bad it’s good or shlock. There is plenty of shlock around. TVtropes.org has an entire section on this. There’s more crap in there than a barn. Of course, there […]

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The Giver Movie Trailer Rant

So the world finally gets a movie trailer for The Giver and my reaction to it is: WHAT! THE! FUCK! Seriously, this movie looks like it’ll be a spectacular failure. What in this trailer  makes me think that? It’s in color. I understand that keeping it in color was a design choice to appeal to the masses, but the whole point of everyone seeing in black and white was for […]

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Out of my Mind Review

Today I realized it’s been two weeks since I posted anything. Had other writing to do. So, here’s my review of Out of my Mind by Sharon M. Draper. Eleven-year-old Melody was born without the ability to speak or move 90% of her body. She also has a photographic memory and is extremely intelligent. However, since she can’t speak or move people think she has low intelligence and needs to […]

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Son Review

So after me taking a ten day (give or take) hiatus I am finally reviewing the conclusion to The Giver. So without further ado, here’s Son. Claire is a birthmother (remember those from The Giver?) who, after “creating to her first product” (giving birth) and having major problems with it, she is resigned as a worker at the hatchery. During this time she does spend some (illegal) time with her […]

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Messenger Review

So, my nephew brought to my attention that Lois Lowry wrote a third sequel to The Giver called Son. I got it from the library on Friday and I’ll write up my opinions on it the second I’m done. For now, here’s book three, Messenger.  Matty has living in Village (that’s what they call it, Village) for the past six years with a blind man named Seer. Matty has two […]

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Gathering Blue Review

How many of you know that Lois Lowry made not just one but TWO sequels for The Giver? The only people who’d really know about these books are Lowry fans. The only reason I heard about them was because one of my college English professors mentioned them when we did The Giver (FYI: the class was called Literature for Young People.) So the next two posts will be about these […]

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The Giver Review

Pop quiz: What’s one book every American school kid reads that’s not Shakespeare or written in the 19th century? If you said Of Mice and Men, well, you’re right. I was, however, thinking of The Giver by Lois Lowry. Don’t judge me.  You remember reading this sometime in your school years, right? If you don’t, you had a terrible school. If you did, isn’t it awesome? No? Well, as the […]

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