How precious are Your thoughts to me, O LORD ... how vast is the sum of them!

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Another Edition of What Has Interested Me Lately

My brain has been very resistant to developing a full-bodied blog post so far this week, so I thought I’d share a few miscellaneous paragraphs about things that have recently taken up sojourn in the fiction-oriented portion of my mind. Hopefully by Friday I’ll have had time to write something more complete!

The Alice Quest isn’t a recent addition, but it has been occupying a large space of thought. I’ve been reading books about the Edwardian era and the Chicago area and am on the lookout for more; Jane Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House has been fascinating so far. (Hull-House was a settlement house in Chicago that opened in 1889 – it helped immigrants.) I’m listening to period music on YouTube and perusing old photos and fashion plates on Pinterest. I’m in the part of The Alice Quest where my characters are seeing the old house Alice Prescott disappeared from … such fun!

Doctor Who: Winner Takes All
goodreads

After hearing that several friends were fans of the BBC TV show Doctor Who, I wanted to see what it was all about. We watched the first series starring Christopher Eccleston, and while I didn’t like parts of it, overall it was a pretty entertaining ride. The Doctor was my favorite aspect … quirky characters always win out, don’t they? Although I didn’t care for his assistant, Rose, or for most of the alien-outer-space plots, I was certainly left amazed at the wild, powerful imagination of the show’s writers and developers.

All Creatures Great and Small
 goodreads
Another, older BBC show we had been watching I’m now anxious to get back to: the more down-to-earth All Creatures Great and Small, an adaptation of James Herriot’s veterinary memoirs in Yorkshire. It has rather endearing characters, not to mention animals, and was very relaxing.

Little Women 
goodreads
 
My mom has been reading Little Women for the first time! That’s one of my favorite books, and seeing as I read it when I was around 12, I and it are due for another rendezvous. My 95-year-old grandma remembers reading it when she was 10 or 11. Truly, a story that lasts and has found a place on many favorites-shelves!

Lastly, something that may prove practical: This is a dialect quiz I took that asks you 25 questions about your vocabulary and pronunciation; at the end it locates your origin to any three major American cities. It’s pretty accurate – it pinpointed my dad’s hometown to Grand Rapids, MI, and two other nearby cities. He was born in Grand Rapids! It narrowed my mom’s down to a city right outside Chicago – she was born in a Chicago suburb. I fooled it, however. It pinned me as being from either Madison, Milwaukee, or Minneapolis. Perhaps the fact that I borrow some dialect from the south, way more from my parents’ origins in the north, and formed some on my own through paying attention to the news, accounts for this. : ) I also found the list where the questions were taken from on a different site; clicking on a question here will take you to a map of the U.S. that shows where certain words or phrases are used in people’s everyday lingo. I found this helpful because I wanted to know what words my characters from different parts of the country would use. Unfortunately, when I was looking it up for this post I couldn't find it ... but, if you're interested in that sort of thing, it's out there. (I sure hope I can find it again.) Dialect is certainly an interesting study!

Feel free to comment about anything at all that I mentioned today!

6 comments:

  1. Very interesting blog post! Though I must say that the Doctor Who photo immediately drew my attention. I need to read Little Women again, so I'm glad you brought it back mentioned it. And, yes, that quiz is spectacular! It pinpointed me to Las Vegas exactly! I don't know how, but it was dead on.

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    1. I thought you might notice the Doctor Who photo! I had a hard time finding one I could use. For one, it had to have the Doctor I knew -- Christopher Eccleston. Isn't he great? What do you think of the other Doctors?
      My mom is really enjoying Little Women! It knows no age limits. : )
      It's amazing how accurate that quiz is! It's pinpointed some people to all three places they've lived.
      Thanks for dropping by!!

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  2. I must say that the Doctor is my favorite aspect of the Doctor Who show. Hurray for quirky characters! :D

    Also, I LOVE that quiz thing you found! It's so fun and interesting -- I'm going to have to tell some people about it because... wow. I took it a couple times... the first time it thought I was from Rochester or two different cities in Arizona! Weird... The second time, it thought somewhere in Maine, and California, and Nevada! I guess that works out in the long run though because I'm sort of halfway in between, and I think I have a weird vocabulary due to growing up in Texas but having parents from up north.

    Anyways, it's fascinating -- thanks for linking to it! :)

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    1. Yes! Even if a specific genre isn't your favorite some characters are loveable regardless. : ) But that show is often very, very clever ...
      I'm glad you liked the quiz! It's funny how widely it pinned you. I wish I could find the site that had all the questions for browsing ... there were lots more than what the quiz provided!

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  3. Wow, I'm starting to feel I'm the only person I know who isn't into Doctor Who--or at least the only one who hasn't seen it!

    Your mom never read Little Women before? WOW, I'm amazed.

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    1. I just had to see at least the first season since I'd heard so much about it. The stories are imaginative and well-written, I think ... and the Doctor, like I said, is a lot of fun. Is it something you think you'd ever check out? : )
      I'm amazed that she never read it before, too! She didn't read many classics when she was younger so she's been catching up in the last few years. She's read Little Men and Jo's Boys with me, so she's experienced Alcott, but she's really getting into this one.

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