Podcasts

  • With... Bethany Turner-Pemberton - Sassy and Sam chat to researcher and curator Bethany Turner-Pemberton. Bethany is PhD candidate in Textiles and Museum Studies at Manchester Metropolitan...
    12 hours ago

Thursday, November 16, 2017

Thursday, November 16, 2017 11:55 am by Cristina in , , , , ,    No comments
It's Book Week in Scotland and they have an online poll to find out people's favourite songs with a literary connection as The Guardian reports:
Will it be The Invisible Man or Bell Jar, The Dark Is Rising or For Whom the Bell Tolls? Scottish Book Trust is celebrating Book Week Scotland with an online poll, of course. But this year’s vote isn’t looking for readers’ favourite books, instead it is trying to find our favourite songs with a literary connection.
Some of the songs on their 40-strong list of possible choices wear their bookish credentials on their sleeves. There are songs where no attempt has been made at obliqueness or subtlety, with titles lifted directly from the works that inspired them. Step forward Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë) and the Velvet Underground’s Venus in Furs (Leopold von Sacher-Masoch). For others, the connection is almost as direct. Bright Eyes by Art Garfunkel was the lead song from the movie adaptation of Richard Adams’s Watership Down, while Leonard Nimoy’s The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins does exactly what it says on the pipeweed tin. And Radiohead’s Paranoid Android takes its title from Douglas Adams’s depressive robot in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (David Barnett)
According to Daily Collegian,
Generally, we don't associate books with champagne or laughter. We don't connect thousands of pages of words with partying or fun. You don’t think of cocktail dresses when you read about Jane Eyre in Charlotte Brontë’s eponymous novel, or black ties when you read about Captain Ahab in Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick ,” or red lipstick when you read about Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice.
This reason is exactly why celebrating books in such a way — just as the 68th National Book Awards ceremony did last night and the BookExpo of America does in the spring and the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books does every summer — is crucial. (Gabrielle Barone)
My Web Times has an article on 'Perfect reads for chilly winter nights'.
With winter weather already settling in, what could be better than curling up with a hot beverage, a comfy blanket and some atmospheric literature?
It can be disheartening when darkness falls by 4 p.m., but I like to fight fire with fire by diving headfirst into gothic thrillers and romances. There, the settings are always gloomy, because what's the point of having a castle if it's not awash with thunderstorms every night?
The heroes are so brooding they'd make Lord Byron step back and say, "Really?" while the heroines are intrepid and cutthroat — sometimes literally. Staples include ghosts, murder, monsters and unspeakable family crimes screaming from the very walls ...
It's a female-dominated genre, which has always been part of its personal appeal, championed by the Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley and Ann Radcliffe. (Angie Barry)
Big Shiny Robot reviews Aline Brosh McKenna and Ramon Pérez's Jane.
Jane, the comic adaptation, remains true to elements of the novel while bringing it into the 21st century. Jane, still an orphan, is an artist who makes her way to New York on an art scholarship. We skip the depressing orphan years and jump into the meat of the story: her schooling, her fabulous roommate (who we, unfortunately, see too briefly), and the spectacle of this new city. She procures a job as a nanny and, in turn, a romantic relationship between her and the father develops. It’s abusive and fantastical, much like the literature of the 19th century. While the idea of the story is grounded in realism and events happening to Jane that are relatable for a reader, if this series of events unfold in real life you'd wonder if you were living in sexless 50 Shades of Gray. But that is ok, this is a work of fiction based on another work of fiction. We as readers are allowed to escape into stories of romance and dreams, not every story must be created relatably.
Do I recommend this over the original? Not at all. I'm a purist and demand everyone read the original of anything before absorbing the adaptation. But, if you're a lover of classic lit and graphic novels, Jane is a fun combination of the two. (Rebecca Frost)
The Spinoff (New Zealand) has picked A Life of My Own by Claire Tomalin as book of the week. We are reminded of the fact that,
By eight, Claire is at boarding school, a confirmed bookworm: the Brontës, Black Beauty, Dickens, the Golden Treasury. For her 13th birthday she asks her mother for the two-volume Shorter Oxford. (Marion McLeod)
The Nation's Past in Perspective celebrates the anniversary of the publication of Jane Eyre on the wrong date, a month after the actual one.

0 comments:

Post a Comment