Posts about literature, storytelling, writing, and narrative.
So much of Christmas is supposed to by happy, jolly and filled with thoughts of prancing reindeer that we often overlook the darker side of winter solstice. But if we think about it for a while we start to realize that Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is certainly a ghost story. The Nutcracker, especially E.T.A. Hoffman’s…
We’ve all been there. We’ve been passed up for a promotion because the nephew of the CEO came on board. Or we came down with the flu the day before we leave on our dream vacation. Something goes wrong in the universe and we are dealt a really bad hand. Life feels like it’s all…
What exactly trigger’s Ebenezer Scrooge’s big transformation in A Christmas Carol? I always thought Scrooge’s change of heart came about when the spirit of Christmas-yet-to-come pointed a boney finger to Ebenezer’s grave. I may have been influenced in that respect by the Mr. Magoo version. Re-reading A Christmas Carol this year I noticed that the spirits themselves have little to do with Uncle Ebenezer’s big…
There’s nothing like a book to take you into different worlds, experience different lives and in the doing learn something about yourself. Here’s a list of offbeat books by some very worthwhile authors, including one who lives to chase animals: The wildly various stories in Running After Antelope are connected and illuminated by a singular…
For my money Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio is one of the most marvelous books ever written. Full of dry wit and dark humor, much of which is lost on children, the story is a developmental cautionary tale. For children the take-away is “see what happens when you don’t listen to your conscience” but for…
