Tag Archives: literature

Feb 11 2015
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Romance

Romance Advice From William Shakespeare – Part 3

Do you believe in love at first sight?

That’s not a trick question.  I’m not going to ask you if I need to walk by again.

Do people instantly connect and have metaphysical fireworks explode in their hearts, or does it take time for love to grow?

Personally, I feel like the older one gets, the harder it is to feel those instant fireworks.  But what do I know?

Shakespeare believed in love at first sight.  And since this is a series about how to get chicks using the bard’s most romantic passages – well, if you meet someone and feel that instant connection, maybe you can recite this to said individual:

No sooner met but they looked;
No sooner looked but they loved;
No sooner loved but they sighed;
No sooner sighed but they asked one another the reason;
No sooner knew the reason but they sought the remedy;
And in these degrees have they made a pair of stairs to marriage…

– William Shakespeare, As You Like It

Love at first sight or love that grows with time?  Is one better than the other?

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Feb 10 2015
2 Comments
Romance

Romance Advice From William Shakespeare – Part 2

Dudes, you have no idea how lucky you are all to have me.  I’m here.  I’m taking time out of my busy schedule to inform you, the reading masses, how to use the writings of the most influential author of the English language, to score points with the ladies.

Bardin’ ‘Aint Easy

OK.  Look at me.  LOOK AT ME.  Take one night out of your life and woo your woman.  All to often men underestimate the power of woo.

What is woo?  It’s not easy to explain.  It’s the effort you put in to make your woman feel special and loved.  Frankly, if you have to ask, some other dude has probably wooed your woman away by now anyway.

Don’t half-ass it like you do everything else.  Your woman is not some rug that you can just sweep dirt under and then pretend like you actually cleaned the floor.  Look at your woman and pitch ridiculous amounts of woo.  Take all of your wooing skills and just send them straight into your woman’s general direction.

Shakespeare’s Henry VI dealt with all of the political power power plays and general nastiness that led to the War of the Roses.  What was that war about?   I don’t know.  One side had some roses.  The other side wanted roses.  So they fought over the roses.  What do I look like?  A history scholar?  We’re not here to talk about roses (although you should order your lady some in advance because they’ll be sold out by Valentine’s Day by dudes who thought of this stuff before you did).

We’re here to talk about this quote:

“She’s beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is woman, and therefore to be won”

– William Shakespeare, Henry VI

Take a knee, dudes.  Listen – want a translation of what Bill just said?  Here you go – you can’t phone this shit in.  Your woman is beautiful and so you have to earn that right to be around all that beauty.  Get her flowers.  Sing to her.  Read her poems and shit.  Or if she’s not into all that, then do chores and crap without her complaining about it or acting like a martyr because you had to wash a dish.  Make your woman happy!

Happy Wife = Happy Life.  Woo.  Learn how to Woo.

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Feb 09 2015
1 Comment
Romance

Romance Advice From William Shakespeare – Part 1

Valentine’s Day is right around the corner, dudes.  And even though I totally just reminded you, you’re going to wait until Feb. 14th at 6 pm to get some tired, left over card and a box of stale candy from the discount bin at the drug store because that’s all they will have left.

So, I’m here to help.  Even if you screw up your gift giving responsibilities, you can still check my blog, and recite some love poetry with the help of my main man, Bill Shakespeare.

“To Mac, or Not to Mac? That is the Question.”

Shakespeare was the most romantic dude of his day, which, alright, was pretty easy, since he lived in an age where people thought bathing was optional.

Alright.  SCENARIO – You get home on Valentine’s Day.  Your lady love is all dressed up, waiting for you to get your romance on, and what do you do?  You’ve got nothing.  You’ve got one of those M and M Dispensers where the cartoon M and M men are doing something hilarious.  But it’s not enough for this woman, because, I don’t know, what, does she think she’s the Queen of England or something?  Why is your woman not cool enough that she can’t just appreciate a good M and M dispenser?  Sheesh.

Alright, anyway, all you do is lay out the Romeo and Juliet action:

But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief,
That her maid art far more fair than she:

– William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

I’m just going to say it.  Women like drama.  Ok some women do.  Not all.  Let’s not use sweeping generalizations.  Some like to have all kinds of attention and have the focus be on them.

What was Bill saying in this scene?  He’s having Romeo tell Juliet, “Hey, Juliet, you’re hot like the sun, and you’re such a hot sun that you’re hotter than the moon.  The moon’s got nothing on you baby.”

You can just skip the poem altogether and just tell your lady, “You’re hotter than the moon.”  Or, just pick a gal she hates.  Her sister.  Your next door neighbor.  The dame she complains about from work.  Just be all like, “Baby you are way hotter than Becky from Accounting.”

Actually, don’t do that.  Then she’ll just accuse you of checking out Becky from Accounting.

The point is – Bill Shakespeare can get you chicks.  So keep following and I’ll tell you how.

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Feb 04 2015
4 Comments
Books

And I Thought I Was a Slow Writer…

Harper Lee, the now 88 year old author of the classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, has announced that her second book, Go Set a Watchman, will be published this summer.

According to this CNN article, Lee originally wrote Scout as an adult, with flashbacks to her youth. Her editor preferred the flashbacks, urged Lee to write an entire novel about young Scout, and the rest is history.

To Kill a Mockingbird was published on July 11, 1960 and this sequel, which will feature an adult Scout, will come out July 11 of this year, a full 55 years later.

In other words, calm down wannabe writers.  If one of America’s most beloved authors took five and a half decades off between novels, you can forgive yourself for putting your novel off for a week while you binge watch Breaking Bad.

I’m not sure about the name though.  Go Set a Watchman.  It doesn’t really sound very sequel-ish.

My To Kill a Mockingbird Sequel Title Suggestions:

Mockingbird II – Judgement Mock

Mockingbird II – Scout’s Revenge

Mockingbird II – Scout’s Honor (that’s actually pretty witty)

2 Mock 2 Murious

Journey to the Center of the Alabama

Mockingbird vs. Mockingjay – the Ultimate Scout vs. Katniss Royale

Mockingbird II – Electric Boo-Radley-ga-loo

Mockingbird II:  Atticus’ Revenge

By the way, one of the morals of this story?  Save your work.  According to the above article, Lee thought the novel was lost, but it was found by her lawyer.  Alas, Ms. Lee didn’t have the ability to save a copy on a flash drive because back in those days, your options were either a typewriter or, yeesh – pen and paper.

I hate to admit it, but I’m only half-way through To Kill a Mockingbird.  Ten years ago, I started to read it, found it marvelous, got busy, put it down, forgot about it, have been meaning to re-read it all the way through this time ever since.

Now I actually have to since there is a sequel.

And I’m just throwing it out there, but even though she’s 88, Lee really needs to push out a third, just so she can enter the ranks of today’s authors who now pretty much start out with trilogies from beginning.

“Hello, I’m Harper Lee, Author of the Mockingbird Trilogy.”

Hey, all joking aside, this is great.   I look forward to it.   What do you think?

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Jan 25 2015
4 Comments
Books

Polonius’ Advice to Laertes – Shakespeare – Hamlet

At some point, you must have heard these infamous words:

“This above all, to your own self be true!”

They originate with the bard himself – William Shakespeare.  And “truer” words were never spoken.  If you aren’t being true to yourself – i.e. if you are trying to be someone you aren’t, then you are just not going to be happy.

It is a scene that plays out all the time – a parent gives advice to a child who is heading off for college.  Here is what Polonius had to say before his son, Laertes, set sail to pursue his studies:

Yet here, Laertes! aboard, aboard, for shame! The wind sits in the shoulder of your sail,
And you are stay’d for. There; my blessing with thee!
And these few precepts in thy memory

See thou character. Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought his act. Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel;
But do not dull thy palm with entertainment
Of each new-hatch’d, unfledged comrade. Beware of entrance to a quarrel, but being in,
Bear’t that the opposed may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgment.
Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,  But not express’d in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man,
And they in France of the best rank and station
Are of a most select and generous chief in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be; For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine ownself be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.  Farewell: my blessing season this in thee!

What say you, readers?  Did Polonius give good advice?  Bad advice?  Discuss in the comments!

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Jan 24 2015
4 Comments
Literary Quotes

Literary Quote – Mark Twain

“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
― Mark Twain

Not sure I have anything profound to say about this one, other than I generally find that in life, one often meets many people who feel they have to knock others down just to make themselves look good in comparison.  Why do people feel the need to do that?  I don’t know.

This quote can definitely apply to writing.  Show of hands – how many of you have been laughed out of the room after mentioning you’re working on a novel?

It’s ok.  The people who haven’t been bitten by the writing bug will never understand.  Just hang out and commiserate with other writing bug bite sufferers.

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Jan 24 2015
1 Comment
Shakespeare

Deflategate Shakespearized

I like to Shakespearize things – movies, TV shows, songs.  I love Shakespeare.  Maybe it’s trite, but I do feel that the English language’s greatest author walked the earth around 500 years or so ago (give or take a few years here or there).

I hope to turn this into a new feature, and if you have something you’d like to see Shakespearized, let me know.

Without further ado…

DEFLATEGATE SHAKESPEARIZED

By:  Bookshelf Q.  Battler

A Tale Told in the Tradition of the Bard

PRESS MAN #1 – In fair New England where we begin our tale, a legend of great treachery and sanctimonious chicanery, of gladiators of the gridiron and air dispersion most foul.

RANDOM COLTS PLAYER (staring at and holding up a football as if it were a skull) – Is this a ball I see before me?  It’s lack of weight disturbeth me with the passion of the Gods who once clapped in thunderous combat above the skies of Ancient Rome. Fi on thee, Knaves of New England, Mercenaries of the Villainous Cheese Baron!  Something is rotten in the State of the NFL.

ENTER KING BELICHIK –  Friends, Romans, Countrymen!  Lend me your ears!  Good sirs, rest thine ears upon my voice, and hear me as I say that in my four score years of leading mine knights into carefully manicured grassy fields of battle all across our land, this is the first and only time that anyone hath raised the issue of mine balls!  Merry, it surpriseth me greatly to hear men complain of a trivial happenstance, as surely as it would surpriseth me were I to waken on the morrow to find that the sun’s exuberant colors had transferred from yellow to green.

PRESS MAN #2 – Foul!  Foul!  Scandal most foul!  A plague on your house, King Belichik!  For thou failest to taketh the fall in this fake story that we hath manufactured out of whole cloth!  Thou hast thrown Sir Thomas of Brady under the bus!

TYPICAL COLTS FAN –  To inflate or not to inflate?  That is the question.  Whether tis nobler in the mind to inflate your balls to 12.5 pounds per square inch, or to take air out of your balls until they are 11.5 pounds per square inch, and in doing so, ruin them?  To inflate, to deflate, to inflate perchance to dream?  Ay, there’s the rub…on our balls!

SIR THOMAS OF BRADY – Tomorrow, tomorrow, and tomorrow…inflated balls are a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, and signifying slow news days…

COLTS FAN #2 – O, I see Queen Mab!  Come she does, the Queen of the Fairies!  And she telleth me true, she fills my ears with the melodious truth, that had our balls been comprised of more air, we surely would not have had our asses handed to us in a massacre in which we lost by 40 points!  Fi!  By the beard of God I say had the game ball had one but one more pound of pressure inside of it, we would have fought boldly like the mighty warriors of the coliseum of old!

ENTER FOX AND COMPANIONS – Forsooth and hark, for we are Fox and Companions!  Bringeth yon noble viewers news of the death of the Saudi Arabian King?  Nay!  Bringeth ye news of the resignation of the Yemen Government?  Nay!  Gather round and hear a tale of balls deflated with vigorous gusto!

PRESS MAN #3 – But soft!  What lies through yonder window breaks?!  It tis the east, and the underinflated balls are the sun!  Arise fair balls, and kill the envious moon, whose maid art sick and pale with grief, that her maid’s balls are far more inflated than yours!

PATRIOTS FAN -(also holding a football like it was a skull) –  Alas, poor football, I knew him, Horatio.  Twas a football of great jest and most excellent fancy!  Once inflated to 12.5 pounds per square inch and then alas, deflated to a paltry 11.5 square pounds per inch by rapscallions of ignominious cunning and unscrupulous alacrity. Our knights, once a great bastion of the game, now reduced to wicked pissah jokes about deflated balls.

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Jan 14 2015
6 Comments
Books

Literary Quotes – “The Count of Monte Cristo” – Alexandre Dumas

“All human wisdom is contained in these two words – Wait and Hope”

– Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

I’ve never read this book.  Its sheer size is intimidating.  I’ve read The Three Musketeers and thoroughly enjoyed it.  But this quote is accurate.  We spend so much of our lives waiting for what we want and hoping it will happen.

Have you read it?  If so, what did you think?

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Jan 13 2015
10 Comments
Books

Life of Pi by Yann Martel – So, What About That Ending?

SPOILERS AHEAD

One could argue that Yann Martel’s Life of Pi has a choose-your-own ending.

Did Pi really travel across the ocean, learning to peacefully coexist with a ravenous man-eating tiger along the way, a clever allegory that opposites don’t necessarily have to cancel one each other out and people can learn to live their lives without destroying each other?

Did Pi lie to the authorities who questioned him because it was easier than it would have been to insist that his incredible story was true?

Was Pi’s claim of sailing with Richard Parker the Tiger a lie?  Did he, in fact, suffer a terrible fate in which his mother was killed and he made up the story about the animals to avoid thinking about it?

Personally, I thought the Richard Parker version of the story was very uplifting, and then to add in the possibility that it never happened was a little disappointing.  But the dual ending possibilities could be a litmus test.  Positive people probably gravitate to the Richard Parker version.  Negative people say “a boy and a tiger never could have survived on a raft together, the boy would have been eaten in 2 seconds.  The version where Pi’s mother is killed must be the true version.”

All I can say is the novel is a good read, very original, and the movie really brings it to life.

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Jan 12 2015
3 Comments
Books

Literary Quotes – Catch-22 – Joseph Heller

“There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed.

– Joseph Heller, Catch-22

Catch-22 is one of my favorite novels.  If I had to think about it, it might even be my number one favorite of all time.

Few writers are able to say they coined a phrase.  Joseph Heller did.  “Catch-22” has become shorthand for “damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”

As in the WWII pilots in this novel found out – if you’re sane, you have to fly.  Yet, to not want to fly a dangerous mission…in an airplane…high above the Earth…being shot at by the enemy….and you could easily be shot out of the sky and die at any second….to NOT want to fly such a mission is the sanest thing you could ever do.  Alas, if you’re sane, you’re cleared for take off.  But if you’re insane, well, of course insane people who actually want to be in dangerous combat aren’t going to be turned down.

Heller was able to weave humor with serious topics and create a novel that was both light hearted and rough at the same time.

 

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