Literature
- Top Ten Tuesday: All Time Favorite Authors
Oh, boy. This is a tough one. It sure would be a lot easier to list my top 10 least favorite authors. I will never be satisfied with this list because it tends to change quite often but as of this April 21, 20015, here are my Top 10 favorite authors....
- Friday Memes: Book Blogger Hop, Book Beginnings, Friday 56
This week sure went by fast didn't it? Daylight savings time certainly didn't help matters but it won't take much longer to fully adjust to the time change. Of course, the big literary news this week is the death of Terry Pratchett, who sadly...
- Top Ten Tuesday: All-time Favorite Books From The Past 3 Years
It's been a while since I've participated in the Top Ten Tuesday hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week's topic is far too enticing to pass up. At first, I thought that they meant to list your top 10 favorite books published within...
- The Classics Spin #5
I missed the last four Spin events hosted by the Classics Club so its time to finally participate in one of them. The challenge this time around is to list 20 books left to read from the Classics Club Challenge, which will then become my Classics Spin...
- The Classics Club
I stumbled upon this site by accident and it seems like the perfect way to get back into reading! In conjunction with my literature frenzy challenge, here is a condensed list of 50 "classics" (subject to change) that I hope to finish by 2017: ...
Literature
Book Blogger Hop: March 6th - March 12th
A few years back, I had a lot of fun participating in the Book Blogger Hop hosted by Billy at Ramblings of a Coffee Addict and was surprised to discover that it was still going on! Blimey, it kinda feels like stepping into a time-warp. Anyways, this is a great way to discover other book blogs and meet other bloggers. There is a prompt question provided each week that we are asked to answer. This one comes from Elizabeth: Do you think a book's title is important?
My answer:
Absolutely, positively, no doubt about it -- an unequivocal YES. The function of a good title should serve two main purposes: to pique the readers interest and reflect the context of the story in some way. In certain cases, the title might appear superfluous for the sake of vanity, but it seems to me, that all those classics and all your favorite books almost always have the best titles. They capture the imagination immediately even without having any prior knowledge of what the story might be about. Of course, there are exceptions. Some of my favorite novels have pretty basic titles that don't really offer much in terms of deeper meaning: Saul Bellow's Herzog comes to mind -- it's just the last name of the protagonist.
Once you start reading, the inevitable question arises: Why did the author choose this particular title in the first place? If it just so happens that you are reading a well-written novel, the title then becomes of great value because it can take on a host of different meanings; perhaps serving as a metaphor, representing important symbolism/imagery, emphasizing the main theme(s) or ideas that will later become crucial to understanding the novel's subtext.
Some of my favorite book titles: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.
I could go on.
My answer:
Absolutely, positively, no doubt about it -- an unequivocal YES. The function of a good title should serve two main purposes: to pique the readers interest and reflect the context of the story in some way. In certain cases, the title might appear superfluous for the sake of vanity, but it seems to me, that all those classics and all your favorite books almost always have the best titles. They capture the imagination immediately even without having any prior knowledge of what the story might be about. Of course, there are exceptions. Some of my favorite novels have pretty basic titles that don't really offer much in terms of deeper meaning: Saul Bellow's Herzog comes to mind -- it's just the last name of the protagonist.
Once you start reading, the inevitable question arises: Why did the author choose this particular title in the first place? If it just so happens that you are reading a well-written novel, the title then becomes of great value because it can take on a host of different meanings; perhaps serving as a metaphor, representing important symbolism/imagery, emphasizing the main theme(s) or ideas that will later become crucial to understanding the novel's subtext.
Some of my favorite book titles: Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick, Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner.
I could go on.
- Top Ten Tuesday: All Time Favorite Authors
Oh, boy. This is a tough one. It sure would be a lot easier to list my top 10 least favorite authors. I will never be satisfied with this list because it tends to change quite often but as of this April 21, 20015, here are my Top 10 favorite authors....
- Friday Memes: Book Blogger Hop, Book Beginnings, Friday 56
This week sure went by fast didn't it? Daylight savings time certainly didn't help matters but it won't take much longer to fully adjust to the time change. Of course, the big literary news this week is the death of Terry Pratchett, who sadly...
- Top Ten Tuesday: All-time Favorite Books From The Past 3 Years
It's been a while since I've participated in the Top Ten Tuesday hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week's topic is far too enticing to pass up. At first, I thought that they meant to list your top 10 favorite books published within...
- The Classics Spin #5
I missed the last four Spin events hosted by the Classics Club so its time to finally participate in one of them. The challenge this time around is to list 20 books left to read from the Classics Club Challenge, which will then become my Classics Spin...
- The Classics Club
I stumbled upon this site by accident and it seems like the perfect way to get back into reading! In conjunction with my literature frenzy challenge, here is a condensed list of 50 "classics" (subject to change) that I hope to finish by 2017: ...