Imagining books and music in quirky and creative ways
You know you love them.
1) Jane Eyre + Mr. Rochester = Rochesteyre
2) Lizzy Bennett + Mr. Darcy = Dizzy
3) Jane Bennett + Charles Bingley = Jingley
4) Daisy Buchanan + Jay Gatsby = Jaisy (not Jay-Z)
5) Romeo + Juliet = Julio (with a hard J)
What’s your favorite?
Could your favorite character be the next POTUS? Meet the candidates:
(SPOILERS)
Hamlet (Hamlet)
As Prince of Denmark, I already have incredibly valuable experience in politics. My fellow candidates like to point out my inability to act in previous situations[1]. They also like to throw around the term “insanity” in their accusations. But need I remind you that I did get the job done in the end? Anyone who acts impulsively is not fit to rule this country, which is why I am the man for the job.
Hermione Granger (Harry Potter)
It is high time that the United States of America had a president with a head on his—or her—shoulders. It is true that I do not have the political experience of Hamlet, but while he was dealing with political scandal I was out in the real world, helping to save millions of lives from Voldemort. Yet I am also one of you, coming from a humble family of dentists. Vote for me and we will increase this country’s prestige together.
George Wickham (Pride and Prejudice)
What this country needs is a soldier, and I am just the man for Continue reading “Literary Characters for President!”
Happy Halloween!
Want to read something creepy? Shakespeare’s Hamlet has you covered with ghosts, murder, insanity, and more!
Today my review/analysis of Claudius’s creepy, evil character is featured on Matthew O’Connell’s blog. He posts atypical book reviews that focus more on a particular aspect of a book. If you haven’t already, you should definitely check it out! Here’s a sneak peak of my post:
Inspired by Robert Schumann’s “Verrufene Stelle” from Waldszenen, Op. 82, a classical music work (as performed by Sviatoslav Richter).
Hamlet is easily one of my favorite plays for reasons too numerous to go into here. So I’m just going to focus on Claudius: Hamlet’s evil, murdering, and incestuous uncle.
How can we understand his character? He’s obviously committed the horrible crime of killing his royal brother as well as the highly questionable act of marrying that brother’s wife shortly thereafter…We don’t explicitly know what he was like before the murder, but it’s still reasonable to infer that the murder and marriage were his first “large” sins because of the torturous guilt and echoes of remorse he experiences later on in the play. A repeat criminal would perhaps be hardened, but a first-time criminal may struggle with the emotional aftermath of his actions. Actually, such a character transformation also occurs in Shakespeare’s Macbeth: Macbeth originally doesn’t want to murder King Duncan. It’s his wife that incites him with the deprecatory lines:
“I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this”And:
“But screw your courage to the sticking-place,
And we’ll not fail.”
GRYFFINDOR: Fanfare for the Common Man by Aaron Copland
This short piece practically bleeds courage.
SLYTHERIN: Prelude Op. 23 No. 5 in G minor by Sergei Rachmaninoff
Both the Slytherins and this music are determined at all costs.
“The last colors slowly faded from the western sky, and, as they did, one by one the instruments stopped, until only the bass fiddles, in their somber slow movement, were left to play the night and a single set of silver bells brightened the constellations. The conductor let his arms fall limply at his sides and stood quite still as darkness claimed the forest.” –The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
I love how Norton Juster makes music the source of color in his children’s book, “The Phantom Tollbooth.” (For those of you who aren’t familiar with the book, it’s very Alice-in-Wonderland-esque with puns and other wordplay.)
He really hit the nail on the head here: different subtleties of sounds are as beautiful as all the different shades of color! And without music, how colorless would our lives be?
This passage also made me think about synesthesia, the state when a person sees actual, physical colors when they hear music among other things (I knew a band director who had this). It got me thinking: what color would my favorite songs be? Would each song by the same artist have the same basic hue with different nuances, or would there be an entire spectrum in every album? Do all synesthetes see the same colors for the same sounds, or is each person different?
On a related note (ha! Pun not intended), Continue reading “A Colorful Symphony”
What if people were nicknamed based on what they wore, like in Little Red Riding Hood?
“Hello, Suit!”
“Yo, Crop Top!”
“What’s up, Oversized T-Shirt and Leggings?”
“How’s it going, Blue Jeans?”
For me, it would be, “Hey there, Knee Highs!”
What would your nickname be?
This week I was I guest posted on Aman Mittal’s blog, Confessions of a Readaholic, which was quite exciting because his blog is awesome! If you love to read, I highly recommend checking it out!
Without further ado, here’s my post:
How Numbers Can Tell Stories
So let’s talk about math! I know, I know…as readers we tend to hate math, right? But Francie Nolan (from Betty Smith’s novel, “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn”) has a passion for both words and numbers and in fact combines the two in creative ways:
“When Francie added a sum, she would fix a little story to go with the result…The figure 1 was a pretty baby girl just learning to walk, and easy to handle…Each single combination of numbers was a new set-up for the family and no two stories were ever the same.”
When I read this passage (of which I’ve only quoted a small amount here), I was blown away by the wonder and magic of it all. In effect, Francie is like a Victor Frankenstein who imbues life into the meaningless, dead conglomeration of body parts around him. Now those numbers that were once “dead” are living and breathing people who have unique personalities and ways of life!
1) Being able to hire a hero (J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit)
2) Perpetual tea time (Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland)
3) Amateur sleuths choosing you as their companion (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes)
4) Mysterious strangers who have only one name (Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights) Continue reading “Top 8 Things From Books That I Wish Were Real”
Thanks to sfarnell for tagging me in the Pastry Book Tag! As usual, I can’t do anything quite like the rest of the world, so I turned this into a list of some of my favorite classics!
P.S. What in the world is a croquembouche??? Continue reading “The Best Classic Books as Inspired by Pastries”
From dark twists on Peter Pan to time traveling heists, book covers can make you imagine all sorts of things.
I chose five intriguing covers of books I knew nothing about from Goodreads and imagined what stories the pages might contain. Below are my ideas next to the actual Goodreads summary. What other stories do you think could match these covers?
Thanks to Tasha for tagging me (warning: I may or may not have taken this idea and run with it in a not-necessarily-intended way)!
1) Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
My Ideas: This title reminds me of “Neverland” from Peter Pan, especially with that picture of the clock tower on the cover (good ol’ Disney!). So I’m thinking this is some kind of darker spinoff of the J.M. Barrie novel (please please please).
Meet Brandy, a youth destined not to be happy and carefree for much longer… Mysterious clues and messages start to pop up around him, his name carefully inscribed on the front and inside describing things only he could ever know about his life. Gradually, they lead to the terrifying realization that he has been trapped in a place called “Neverwhere” for years. Like Neverland, Continue reading “What Happens When You Actually Judge a Book By Its Cover?”
If Mermaids Wore Suspenders 