Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog

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Days left: 10

So on Thursday we literally just watched the movie adaptation of Cold Comfort Farm, and today I managed to sidetrack my prof into a history lesson for around 45 minutes. And after that? We talked a little bit about the names of the characters in CCF, and then we watched part of a PBS documentary on Aimee Semple McPherson (she shows up in out next book, The Loved One).

This class is turning out to be way easier than I first thought it’d be. Yay!

I didn’t take many notes, but I did want to talk a bit about the names Stella Gibbons chose for her characters. My prof said she was influenced by Dickens and all those other authors who gave their characters names that matched up somehow to their personality or role in the book. When you see a name like “Ada Doom,” for instance, you pretty much know that character is going to be gloomy and soul-sucking and so on. “Agony Beetle” is also pretty straightforward, and so is “Urk.” But what about a name like “Amos Starkadder?”

Ian McKellen as Amos Starkadder

If you’re not familiar with Biblical names, a lot of Gibbons’ characters names won’t mean anything unless you Google around, as I had to. Amos, for instance, is the name of a prophet who did a lot of gloom-and-doom sort of prophecies. Amos Starkadder is a gloom-and-doom sort of preacher– and so you can see the connection, right? Let me tell you, Google and my prof have uncovered a whole new layer of the book for me.

The other Biblical names– Judith, Seth, etc– are still somewhat murky in meaning, but I assume they follow along the same lines as Amos and Ada Doom. On the more positive side of things, “Flora Poste” is a wonderful name, full of meaning. “Flora,” meaning flowers and growth and change! “Poste,” like Emily Post and her insistence on adhering to manners and etiquette! How perfectly that fits Flora Poste’s character and personality!

I like it when a character’s name matched their personality somehow. On the other hand, names of the like that tend to show up in paranormal romances (or any romance, really) tend to annoy me. “Bella Swan?” Please. Either have a sense of humor about it (naming a cow Feckless, for instance, is very humorous) or go deep into a somewhat obscure meaning– don’t half-ass it and name your character ugly-duckling-that-really-isn’t.

What’s your favorite character names? Do you like it when a name matches a personality?

Previously: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5

Days left: 13

Sorry this is a day late! I felt lazy yesterday.

In yesterday’s class we talked yet again about Wodehouse and his books. It’s surprising how much you can glean from a humor book, but apparently my prof is all into Wodehouse and that’s why we spent three days on him instead of what was supposed to be two. So!

Wodehouse and women. The women in his life were the ones that helped him stay on the path of not being a ninny, and so you’d think he’d be treating them favorably in his books. Well…he doesn’t really. Not that he’s mean about women– Wodehouse is never mean, or cruel, or any of those things– but his books are a decidedly male-driven world. By that I mean the focus of his books are always on the male characters, with the female characters regulated to secondary roles.
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Previously: Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

On Friday (day 4), we basically just watched videos. Specifically, we watched this featurette about P.G. Wodehouse’ life, the first half of an episode of the Jeeves and Wooster adaptation starring Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie, and also some clips from various movie adaptations of Three Men in a Boat.

I don’t really feel like getting into a biography of P.G. Wodehouse at the moment (which is partly why this post is late), but basically it seems like he was a sweet, naive man who wasn’t much cut out for the real world without the support of his wife and step-daughter, who (mostly) kept him from becoming entangled in something silly and disastrous. I think this explains why all his books seem super insulated from the “real world,” something that tends to annoy the more cynical of us.

To keep this post from getting uber boring, here’s my favorite clip of the 1975 Three Men in a Boat movie, starring Tim Curry, Michael Palin, and Stephen Moore. It’s the bit with the tin of pineapple:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUiciXpZsK4]

Previously: Day 1

Unfortunately we didn’t quite get to Three Men and a Boat today as I hoped, and honestly I thought class was a little bit boring for the lack. However, we did talk a bit about humor, in relation to yesterday’s lecture about comedy.
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