I’ve gone through quite a journey with my writing/creativity in the last few weeks. I wanted to write a lovely, eloquent post about it, but I suppose I’m still a little close to it. So instead, here, in bullet list format, are some of the things I’ve learned recently about art and creativity. Creativity can…
I have recently become fascinated with the Arnolfini portrait by Jan van Eyck and in the middle of a sleepless night, I found myself reading about it and researching the scholarship around it. As one does when one can’t sleep. The original piece hangs in the National Gallery in London, but I’ve seen photos of…
I am always on the lookout for good historical dramas. A while back, I discovered AMC’s Turn. I watched the first season or two, but at the time, the rest of it wasn’t on Netflix and I was a bit too cheap to purchase it. However, over the last few weekends, I binge watched the rest…
On a recent 12-hour (overnight) layover, I found myself unable to sleep, but too exhausted to stay awake. I decided that, since I couldn’t really fall asleep but also couldn’t really keep my eyes open and pay attention to anything, I would just listen to some music. I listened to the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack. Several…
I know I’m very, very late in coming to the Wonder Woman party. I finally saw it for the first time last week and have been thinking about it a lot since then. There were definitely things that bothered me and that I didn’t like, but there was an incredible power about it that I couldn’t…
It’s funny, really, what you can learn from a children’s book. And funny how powerful such a book can be. Only, it’s not funny at all. It’s true. Right now, I want to talk about one children’s series: Harry Potter. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s/Philosopher’s Stone was first published 20 years ago today, and it…
The stories aren’t new, Not new anymore. Don’t shock like they did, Don’t shock anymore. Drawn out of the past, Dusty books on shelves. Somewhere, yes, not here. Never close, never real, Not anymore. How? We buried the dark, The monsters. Turns out it’s stubborn. Iron. Civilized, we thought, And better, we thought, But now…
Yes, I’m that kind of nerd. I love Lord of the Rings. I’m not obsessed with it in the same way as Harry Potter, but Peter Jackson’s adaptations are my favorite movies of all time, and I can honestly say that yes, I even enjoyed the books. I love looking at exceptional books or movies and…
Every reader’s dilemma: “So many books, so little time.” It kills me to know that there are so many wonderful books that I’ll never get the chance to read. Because of that, I don’t usually reread books. I used to. When I was younger, I reread books all the time. I’ve read each of the…
There are plenty of things I’m not very sanguine about, but on the whole, I have a fairly optimistic view of human nature. I think people are mostly good and that there’s not as much bad as it’s easy to think there is. Sometimes, though, it can be hard to hold on to that view. And…
Several years ago, I had the opportunity to do an internship in Amman, Jordan. It was an incredible experience, though I’ll admit I was definitely ready to come home by the end of it. I remember thinking in the final weeks of my internship about what I would miss the most – what I would…
I love a lot about classics. For the most part, there’s a reason they’ve stuck around. As wonderful experiences I have had reading classic literature, there are some definite challenges that come along with it. One of the challenges of reading classics is reconciling “old-fashioned” ways of thinking with modern expectations. This stood out to me…
For something slightly different today, let’s do a book tag! It’s simply a series of questions to answer and then you would tag somebody that you also want to answer those questions. Except I haven’t actually been tagged to do this one, and I’m not going to tag anybody, so I guess this is more of…
When I was eight, I tried to read my first adult book. I seem to remember it being at least 800 pages long, although Goodreads claims it is just over 400 pages, so…there’s that. It had been given to me by my grandmother and was part of an enormous series called The Work and the…
If you missed part 1 of my reading wrap-up, click here. It’s time for more books! We’ll jump right into it. I remember hearing oodles of rave reviews for We Were Liars by E. Lockhart when it came out a few years ago. I’m not sure why I waited so long, but I was in the mood…