Miscellaneous Thoughts on Miscellaneous Bookish Topics

I’ve rounded up my random and momentary musings on bookish topics from the last couple of weeks into a single post. Here we go, in no particular order:

• I am halfway through A Farewell to Arms and have (slightly) revised my opinion of Hemingway. This time around, his style is (slightly) less repetitive and his themes (war, love) more interesting. *Thanks for at least trying, Hem.*

• My dad and I bonded over The Outsiders last fall, so for my birthday I asked him to buy me this set of rings. For those of you who don’t remember (or never read The Outsiders, because you didn’t attend an American middle school), Ponyboy recites Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” while hiding in an abandoned church with Johnny. As he lies dying in the hospital in a later scene, Johnny says his famous line: “Stay gold, Ponyboy.”

• Also for my birthday, a certain thoughtful husband took me to the Morgan Library, which houses J. P. Morgan’s personal collection of rare manuscripts, historically significant objects, and artistic masterpieces. It is ridiculously beautiful and ridiculously interesting. Morgan had, for example, a Gutenberg Bible, an original Mozart manuscript, and a plaster cast of George Washington’s face (he really did look just like his portraits). Here are some photos of his three-story library:

• One of my all-time favorite websites, TV Tropes, inspired my recent article on memorable moments from The Simpsons. TV Tropes looks at tropes and rhetorical devices in TV (obviously), but also film, literature, and many other creative forms. If you’re a reader or a writer, you’ll want to check it out—though I should warn you in advance that you’ll probably get caught up in a trope version of wikidreaming . . .

That’s all, folks. Have a great weekend, and happy reading!