Month: December 2015

Books

Vronsky and Wickham: BFFs

Aubrey Leaman

tin-soldiers-208581_1920I bet Vronsky and Wickham would have been friends.

They’re both ladies’ men.

They’ve both gone after high-society women (Anna and Georgianna—hey, their names are even similar).

They’re both soldiers.

They both end up in not the happiest of situations (married to Lydia and trying to get himself killed in the Servian war, respectively).

I can just picture them both sitting in a bar, good-naturedly arguing over whose woman is better while simultaneously complaining about said woman and swapping war stories. Two peas in a pod.

What other literary characters do you think would get along well?

The Other Stuff

10 Awesome Words For Bananagrams

Aubrey Leaman

scrabble-62837_1280.jpgBananagrams is kind of like Scrabble: you race against other players to get rid of your letter tiles by making words.  But do you ever feel like a cheat when you find yourself using the same words over and over again or making a lot of three-letter words? Well, I do, and as a result I tend to look for crazy words even if it takes extra time, just because it’s fun! Here are some of my favorites that I’ve found and that I suggest to any of you Bananagrams or Scrabble players if you’re in a word rut:

Pilfer

Regicide

Lexicon

Sphinx

Squid

Fastidious

Sanitize

Grenade

Magi

Briar

Bonus! Even those these words are fairly simple and short, I love them:

Poof

Crib

What are some of your favorite words?

Music

Similar Songs Across Time: Elf and Boy Bands

Aubrey Leaman

Whether it’s heartbreak or true love or “girl power,” we tend to say the same types of things over and over again through music.  But have you ever heard two songs that really struck you as fundamentally similar? Ones that seemed to have the same message, even if communicated slightly differently? Sometimes music is similar in both meaning AND mode, yet that doesn’t make one or the other superfluous, at least in my experience.

I was thinking about this idea recently after watching the Christmas movie, “Elf.”  I noticed that Frank Sinatra’s “You Make Me Feel So Young” (as heard in the movie) has a similar message to…well…One Direction’s “Act My Age.”  While Sinatra’s song talks about feeling younger than normal because of a girl, the modern boy band’s song states that in the future they will feel as young as they do now.

But this one line in Sinatra’s song particularly Continue reading “Similar Songs Across Time: Elf and Boy Bands” →

Judging the Book By Its Cover

Judging the Book By Its Cover: Fate and the Princess Bride

Aubrey Leaman

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My Idea: Is it inconceivable that a love for the movie “The Princess Bride” could result in love between two people?

Apparently not.

Told from a third-person perspective, Wren’s novel alternates between following Adam and Elle as their knowledge of the movie subtly influences their actions and movements in various ways. Ultimately, they both meet in London where they fall in love, invoking the question: how much can a single inanimate object truly influence our lives?

Goodreads Summary: “When Ozarks native Hatty goes ‘whole hog’ during karaoke, she catches the eye of Prince John. He isn’t what she expects the heir to a small European nation to be: he’s affable, witty, and isn’t put off by her tell-it-like-it-is demeanor. Their flirtation should be short lived, but a force stronger than fate—Hatty’s newspaper editor—assigns her to cover the royals. After spending time together, she and John soon begin dating, and Hatty finds herself making headlines instead of writing them.

But challenges loom that are even more complicated than figuring out how to Continue reading “Judging the Book By Its Cover: Fate and the Princess Bride” →

Books

Top 5 Literary Mash-Ups That Totally Need to Happen

Aubrey Leaman

Alice 1984

Classic literature is great.  But have you ever wondered what would happen if two of history’s greatest stories were combined into one like some incredible atomic fusion?

Well, I have! Here are some of the ones I’m dying to read:

Alice’s Adventures in 1984 (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland + 1984)

To Kill a Frankenstein (To Kill a Mockingbird + Frankenstein)

The Great Jane (The Great Gatsby + Jane Eyre)

The Secret Women (The Secret Garden + Little Women)

Sense and a Mockingbird (Sense and Sensibility + To Kill a Mockingbird)

 
What book mash-ups would you read?

 

The Other Stuff

Five Fascinating Facts about the Limerick

Aubrey Leaman

Your questions about limericks are hereby answered.

InterestingLiterature's avatarInteresting Literature

Fun facts about the limerick, the five-line comic poem whose origins are shrouded in mystery

1. Nobody knows for sure why limericks are named limericks. There have been numerous theories put forward for why the five-line verse known as the ‘limerick’ is so named, but none of them is conclusive. The name ‘limerick’ was first applied to the five-line form in the late nineteenth century, and one theory holds that comic verses once contained the line ‘Will [or won’t] you come (up) to Limerick?’ But although the poems are almost certainly named after Limerick in Ireland, whether this is the true explanation of the name’s origin remains unproven. One thing’s for sure: the limerick, unlike the sonnet or other poetic forms, seems to be a peculiarly English form. It has even been described by Brander Matthews as perhaps the only original verse form in the whole of English literature. (Or is…

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Classical Music Stories

Classical Music Stories: Peter Pan

Aubrey Leaman

Schoenberg’s Suite for Piano, Op 25: IV. Intermezzo

This is like the ticking of the clock inside the crocodile. It seems unthreatening, and to most of the pirates it is—but not to Hook. He is terrified because he recognizes that crocodile as an overhanging and absolutely terrifying threat to him. In return, the creature plays with his fear by pretending to leave or feigning harmlessness, but Hook knows better and feels only an increase in terror. Though it finally leaves, Hook is still nervous as he never knows how far it’s gone, or when it will return, or if it will lose the clock inside of it that warns him of the impending danger…

 

Can you hear Hook’s fear? Do you hear something else?

You can also discover Classical Music Stories about The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights, and more.