(majoring in literature)
Happy belated Mother’s Day, Mums! Hopefully your kids remembered that Saturday was the big day, and bought you lots of nice presents and didn’t forget, like Steve always does. Nice job, Steve.
(Full disclosure: I did forget.)
So to make up for it, Mum, here are ten memorable mothers from literature for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday. Thank you for having all the qualities of the good ones and none of the qualities of the bad ones.
I’ll admit, I’m cheating a little this week – instead of following The Broke and the Bookish’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt this week, I’ve decided to make a small modification. This is mostly because I think humour is hugely subjective. It’s also because I’ve been told on multiple occasions that I have a simply dreadful sense of humour, so I feel it’s only fair that I not impose that on others. So instead of sharing ‘Ten Books That Will Make You Laugh’, I’ve decided to list the books that have made me laugh (or, at least, think ‘hey, that’s pretty funny’). Warning: the following may contain incredibly childish jokes, simply dreadful puns, and even a little toilet humour. You’ve been warned.
Top Ten Tuesday is a regular feature over at The Broke and the Bookish. This week the theme is ‘Top Ten Things On My Bookish Bucket List’. I have to preface this by saying that I don’t yet have an ordinary bucket list, mostly because I felt a bit silly making one up after the movie came out. But I couldn’t resist this week’s theme, because there are quite a lot of book-related things that sound too fun (or impossible; see below) to go unmentioned.
So, here goes…
Go thou to Rome,—at once the Paradise,
The grave, the city, and the wilderness …-Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats’
John Keats, one of the best-known poets of the Romantic era, died in Rome in 1821. Not long after, Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote these beautiful and heartbreaking lines, which encourage the reader to visit Keats’ grave in Rome. Since then, Keats’ final resting place has fascinated generations of visitors. A few weeks ago, I decided to visit it and try to grasp its significance for myself.
Keats left England for Italy in 1820. In a little house on the Spanish Steps, he spent his final months with his friend Joseph Severn, fighting the illness that would eventually claim him. Today the house is a museum, devoted to the writing of Keats and his contemporaries.
“The difference between literature and journalism is that journalism is unreadable and literature is not read.”
-Oscar Wilde
I’ve fallen sadly behind with recounting my trip to Europe. Apparently, after seven hours of wandering around in the chill of pre-Christmas London, the last thing you want to do is sit down and try to catch up on blog posts. I promise you, I always wake up with the best intentions, but no matter what I do, by the time I return home at night I fall straight into bed like I’ve forgotten what pillows feel like. Here is a rough idea of the way our day usually ends up going:
7am: Wake up. Look at the clock. Decide that it is ok to sleep for another ten minutes as am ‘on holiday’. Promptly fall into a deep sleep.
9am: Wake up and begin panicking because have already ‘wasted half the day’.
9:15am: Spend forty-five minutes getting dressed, drying hair, and putting on make-up. Perform complicated choreographed dance with sister as both of us try to use one air-raid-shelter-sized bathroom. Continue to panic and swear all the while for sleeping in so late.
Yes, this dapper statue of the famous James Joyce is here to tell you that I have left behind the sweltering heat of December in Australia to potter around Europe with my sister, a handful of books, and not nearly enough winter clothing to keep an ordinary human being from contracting pneumonia. Throughout my trip I’ll be sharing stories from some of the literary places I visit, including writers’ homes, literary museums, and – of course – bookshops.
My first stop is Dublin, Ireland’s capital and a UNESCO City of Literature. This, to me, sounds like an appropriate place for a eager lit major to start. So after one full day in Dublin (half of which, admittedly, was spent in a blissful jetlag-induced haze), what have I learnt about the city’s approach to literature?
Well, for one thing, they like to make jokes. Specifically, they like to make jokes about Ulysses, James Joyce’s behemoth of a book set in early twentieth-century Dublin. They are proud of it and amused by it in equal measure. It’s hard to hate a book that really put Dublin on the literary map, even if Joyce actually wrote most of it in Switzerland and France, where he ended up living until his death. Still, you’d never guess from the number of statues, museums, and mentions Joyce receives in Dublin.
There’s more to Dublin than just James Joyce, though. Ireland has a rich storytelling history which was highlighted in our first museum of the day: the National Leprechaun Museum on the city’s north side. Now, I know what you’re thinking. A museum dedicated to leprechauns? This is something to see.
(majoring in literature) 