After this last round of considerable snow, I made a discovery. Snow has this amazing tendency to highlight little things, tiny little details that don’t really have a bearing on your life at other times. For instance, the fact that I don’t own a shovel generally has zero impact on my life. Looking at the three foot pile of snow blocking my car in the wake of the snow plow, however, causes this tiny little detail to suddenly become the most egregious oversight of my entire life.
Hollywood has been converting books into movies for ages. However, in the more recent years, there has been a surge of popularity in this method. This, at first, seems a little odd. After all, doesn’t the public want to see new, creative movies with shiny new storylines? I know that I personally love nothing more than a good story. When you think about it, though, making movies out of books is a very smart move for filmmakers.
Normally, grammatical infractions don’t bother me, at least not in conversation; I chalk them up to dialectical differences. However, one thing that drives me crazy in literary discussion is the use of the descriptors "classic" and "classical" interchangeably. These two terms are not synonymous.
Having recently moved to living on my own, I’ve discovered that fish don’t make the best companions for daily life. However, in choosing a new pet, I ran into a series of problems. I’m not a dog person. I’m allergic to cats. I don’t like the smell of hamsters. My apartment complex would not let me have a reptile, and birds make far too much noise. It seemed to be a dismal plight – I was doomed not to have a companion.
I recently had both the necessity and the pleasure to do a close reading of Ralph Ellison’s book, Invisible Man. The prose is incredibly frantic, but in that way that perfectly complements the mentality of the narrator. The imagery is vivid, bordering on the edge of graphic. The content is wrenching as it strips away the illusions of society and exposes the raw flesh of a man beaten by social expectation. However, I have to posit that Ellison’s true genius is in the blank spaces, in what he doesn’t say.
The Mayan Doomsday passed, leaving me to celebrate a very, merry holiday season with my family. However, as the sun came up over the horizon of 2013, I found myself uneasily looking at the aftermath of my Christmas wishes. Admittedly, I teeter on the precipice between book love and book obsession, so it really isn’t difficult to figure out what to get me for Christmas. With the passing of another year, I find that I’ve added even more to the list of books that I need/want to read.
Christmas magnifies nearly everything. There is more to eat, the shops are lit up by extra lights, and suddenly you have more family members around than you even remember having. However, it seems to me that Christmas also magnifies the effect of Murphy’s Law. There are a million extra little things that can – and do – go wrong. Don’t worry, though. I have the answer for your two biggest Yuletide headaches.
One of the most amazing things about being a librarian is the adventure of it. I am always discovering new things about our Library, despite the fact that I’ve been here for years. Just the other day, a coworker was showing me something new about our website. We have a database called Access Video on Demand that contains countless documentaries over a spectrum of topics.
My issue is not that I don’t want to spend money on the holidays; it’s that I don’t have any money to spend in the first place. I’m a college student, and I follow the financial stereotype of my office to the letter. When the holidays roll around, it feels like I should eat something a little nicer than usual, but it seems silly to cook a huge meal for just myself. So, after some thinking and inspiration, I’ve come up with ways to make a holiday meal for one on a tight budget.
When it comes to characterizing the atmospheres of different times of the year, I would have to say that mid-fall is a time of settling. The world is not moving too fast, nor too slow—as a general rule, most of the great changes have already happened, and people are simply settling into their newly established conditions and routines. One of the biggest changes that people have to adjust to about this time is that the new adults have been away from home just long enough that it the silence begins to echo.
