Imagining books and music in quirky and creative ways
Why recommend books the normal way when you can recommend them with pictures? (Confession: I really just wanted to share these pictures I took. But I also love each of these stories!)
Continue reading “Creative Book Photography (Plus Four Quick Book Recommendations)”
A book lover’s guide to classical music
The opening is lyrical and tragic—the perfect representation of Romeo and Juliet’s star-crossed love. Although the Continue reading “Classical Music Stories: Romeo and Juliet”
When faced with ten questions and a Liebster award (shoutout to The Library Lizard who tagged me and has a great blog with all kinds of bookish stuff), I decided to answer each of the questions with book quotes (and one movie quote) since I don’t normally like blogging directly about myself. Plus, I’ll be killing two birds with one stone by posting some great quotes! (I’m violent that way.)
1. What is one of your favourite quotes from a book?
“First Murderer: (Stabbing him) Young fry of treachery!
Son: He has kill’d me, mother.” —Macbeth (I originally posted this quote here.)
Also these hilarious quotes from The Importance of Being Earnest.
2. Favourite animal/creature from a book? (e.g. hippogriffs from Harry Potter) Continue reading “Literary Quotes About Me”
I was jamming to some music this morning but when this song came on it transported me straight into Macbeth:
About Lady Macbeth:
“I was a loner
I was just waiting by myself
When you, warped temptress
Rose to bring me happiness and wealth”
About Macbeth:
“You convince yourself that you want it, but you don’t know
You keep trying to wash the blood from your hands, but it won’t go”
If you liked this post, you might also enjoy Songs for Every Book: Romeo and Juliet, Funniest Macbeth Quote Ever, and Songs For Every Book: Ophelia From Hamlet.
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.”
HAMLET: I did love you once.
OPHELIA: Indeed, my lord, you made me believe so.
HAMLET: You should not have believed me; for virtue cannot
so inoculate our old stock but we shall relish of
it: I loved you not.
OPHELIA: I was the more deceived.
…
O, help him, you sweet heavens!
–Act III, scene i
1965 by Zella Day
“Can we go back to the world we had?
With a love so sweet it makes me sad
Can we go back to the world we had?
It’s the world we’ve been dreaming of.”
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”
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”
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)”
If Mermaids Wore Suspenders 