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"It's not really fair to say, 'Look at this guy who died 400 years before I was born. He certainly had different opinions than me about the value of women.'" North says. "There's stuff that doesn't age as well, and what you do is you either adapt it so it works better now, or you ignore it."

For the purists, the original storyline remains in To Be Or Not To Be. A Yorick skull, one of the most iconic elements of the play, appears next to each choice that takes the reader through the original plot — the choices that Shakespeare made (as North jokes, "when he plagiarized my book").

"I honestly thought there'd be people saying, 'Oh my God, who are you to rewrite Shakespeare?' and that hasn't really happened." North explains. "I think people realize that the original story is still there."

The best-known monologues appear in Shakespeare's original language too — if you so choose. You can instead have characters rap their famous speeches. "I surprised myself with some raps that I wrote." North says.

Of course, seeing the characters make different choices is all part of the fun, and also makes for a unique new way to understand Hamlet.

"If Ryan's version gets us to ask why the characters in Hamlet make certain choices — and maybe don't even see that they are making choices, but think that they have no choice — that can help us rethink things that Hamlet (the play) takes for granted." William N. West, Northwestern University Professor of English, Classics, and Comparative Literary Studies, wrote to us. "It might also help us see what we take for granted."

And what better way to study these choices in one of the most studied stories written in the English language than with a Choose Your Own Adventure book?

"The story, I think, is timeless in that not many of us are plotting to kill our stepdad, but a lot of us face choices we don't really want to have to deal with," North says. "The idea of taking command of your life and doing something that you're not sure if you can do and you're not really sure if you should do it, I think is pretty timeless. We all face those doubts often, if not constantly."

Ryan North's To Be Or Not To Be is available from the publisher's website, where some of the proceeds will go towards the Canadian Cancer Society.

Get recipes for Peach-Blackberry Cobbler, Plum-Cherry Crumble, Apple-Raspberry Pandowdy and Blueberry Buckle.

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

Director: Thor Freudenthal

Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy

Running Time: 106 minutes

Rated PG for fantasy action violence, some scary images and mild language

With Logan Lerman, Alexandra Daddario, Brandon T. Jackson

(Recommended)

In Choire Sicha's Very Recent History; An Entirely Factual Account of a Year (c. AD 2009) in a Large City, a voice from our future looks back at events taking place in a "massive" east coast metropolis, its citizens perpetually gripped with "a quiet panic" while living in a gritty landscape of iron and excess. Throw in a mysterious virus, a rich, blind governor, a sketchy mayor campaigning for a third term, and this novel gets even more curious.

Guiding us through this is John, a young man so poor he can't even afford socks or regular haircuts. His days are spent working in a dreary office, making less money now that he has a "real" job than he did freelancing. Sicha spins a compelling allegory of New York City and its residents. Here's a tangled fable of greed, consumption, and isolation in a place where characters grapple with profound feelings of isolation despite too many friends, too many romantic flings, and too many choices.

John spends his nights partying with his tight-knit group. There's the sensible Chad, a tutor to the children of the city's wealthy, and Chad's boyfriend, Diego, who he met on a dating website aptly called DList, the likeable Kevin and his "incredibly symmetrical face," with whom John sometimes has sex, and the beautiful Tyler Flowers whose skin is "so pale that you [can] see into his head a little."

As the novel progresses, the city sinks deeper and deeper into a recession, the shadowy virus gradually claims more victims, our imperious mayor spends more money on a re-election campaign based on fear and intimidation, and John and his friends find themselves increasingly lost in a labyrinth of smoky bars, hook-up sites, and sex clubs.

But, even as they glibly rant about cigarettes and social media, wealth and power, Sicha portrays this group of gay men not as vapid and shallow products of their time, but as compelling, keen, and intensely complex individuals yearning to be heard and remembered in the face of so much annihilation. In the relentless bombardment of text messages and non-sequiturs, one-night stands and obsessions about money and jeans, we encounter incisive musings on love and worth at a time when it seemed as though the entire world would unravel.

Choire Sicha's writing charms and delights, but beneath the biting wit and cynicism, I found a book that dares to explore the darker underbelly of human avarice and capital, a book that's equal parts blindingly terrifying and smartly humorous, and one of the most clever reads I've encountered in a long time. This novel forces us to consider the cyclical nature of profits and losses, forces us to remember that friends and fads come and go, and that some things survive while others die off.

For it's only when we closely examine our own very recent history can we better learn to understand, and embrace, the very possible future we'll inevitably inherit.

Alex Espinoza is the author of Still Water Saints and The Five Acts of Diego Leon.