Imagining books and music in quirky and creative ways
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?”
Do you ever find yourself screaming at a character not to open that door?
If no, go to a) If yes, go to b)
a) Or mentally imploring them to give that guy a chance?
If no, go to b) If yes, go to c)
b) …Hmm, I guess just go to e) if you want (look for the aligned center)
c) Then Choose Your Own Adventure Books are right up your alley! They let you, the reader, choose what happens next in the story from a given set of options. Continue reading “A Choose Your Own Adventure Guide to Choose Your Own Adventures”
At last we come to the final movement. But first, let’s indulge in a quick recap:
So now we come to the fifth and final movement. What is Grieg going to leave us with? Continue reading “Classical Music Stories #1: Anna Karenina (Part 5)”
Holberg Suite, Op. 40: IV. Air (Andante religoso) by Edvard Grieg
Hold onto your hats, kids, because the hint of tragedy that was in the second movement is in full force now. We hear a pervasive hopelessness and what sounds like a struggle against something unchangeable (…hence the hopelessness). Plus, when the music comes back to repeat, it’s even sadder and more disillusioned, just like Anna after she gives birth to Vronsky’s child and thinks she’s dying.
(2:55) But then things become much more tender and hopeful (definitely a welcome surprise after all of this depressing music). It’s like when her husband, Alexei Alexandrovitch comes to visit her. Now that she’s sick he’s the only one Anna wants—the only one who can break her out of her own misery and self-pity (a.k.a. all the music up to this point).
(3:27) All of which leads quite Continue reading “Classical Music Stories #1: Anna Karenina (Part 4)”
The “A Tale of Two Cities” and “A Glimpse of the World With Detectives” blog posts from “Confessions of a Readaholic” have caused me to think lately about what a detective story really is (and since my posts lately been pretty much dominated by the Anna Karenina Classical Music Stories series, I thought I’d take a quick break to talk about something different).
Sure, we generally think of them as containing, well, a detective, and solving a mysterious crime. But I’m starting to think that other stories are like “detective” stories, too.
After all, when you read a book you’re always solving a mystery in a sense. You gradually discover who the characters are, what will happen to them, and/or how Continue reading “Detective Stories…Without Detectives (My Top 6)”
Holberg Suite, Op. 40: III. Gavotte (Allegretto) by Edvard Grieg
General Story:
This movement sounds like a sophisticated, formal ball to me. I can just picture the nobility in their fancy suits and ball gowns as they dance the evening away.
(1:21) Then the music switches to two Continue reading “Classical Music Stories #1: Anna Karenina (Part 3)”
First, I forgot to mention something in my last post: the way I’m describing and “interpreting” the music should be understandable by anyone and everyone. You don’t have to know anything about classical music in order to “decode” the emotions or actions it’s communicating. That famous quote about music being a “universal language?” Well, there’s some truth to that.
There are, however, some requirements for understanding the music, which I will go into now:
Yup, that’s it. That’s all you need. You’ve been trained your whole life to recognize “happy” and “sad” music, and in general to connect certain types of music to certain types of feelings or actions.
Okay, time to get off my soap box and just tell you the story:
Holberg Suite, Op. 40: II. Sarabande (Andante) by Edvard Grieg
General Story:
The opening theme is so hopeful and beautiful (have I mentioned how much I LOVE this piece?)—it sounds like someone is daydreaming and/or in love.
(0:55) It’s not all daisies and sunshine, though. After all, if someone’s filled with hope then they Continue reading “Classical Music Stories #1: Anna Karenina (Part 2)”
If Mermaids Wore Suspenders 