Monthly Archives: December 2015

What do Suzanne Collins, Stephenie Meyer, and J.K. Rowling all have in common?  In addition to being authors who have been financially successful in selling books to a young adult audience, these women have also taken a leaf from Dickens’ … Continue reading →

I am in the Spirit of Gold marching band, so I am at every home football game.  I think it was my sophomore year when marketing encouraged the crowd to go to Moe’s and obtain free queso every time our football team scored … Continue reading →

As a society, we are steeped in instant, or nearly instant, gratification. You want a pizza? You can press buttons on your phone, and without leaving your house, pizza appears. What fascinates me, then, is that we still watch serial … Continue reading →

I thought it was interesting that Dickens was compelled to address the problem of drug abuse in his final novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It got me thinking that drug abuse during the time had to be extremely prevalent, … Continue reading →

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m pretty disappointed that Dickens died before he could finish The Mystery of Edwin Drood. This got me thinking about other times I have been disappointed by an ending to a … Continue reading →

By 19th century standards, Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist contains one of the most shocking, violent scenes in all of Victorian literature. Of course, I am speaking of the moment when Nancy is brutally murdered by her lover, Bill Sikes. In … Continue reading →

In the age of the Internet, many advertisers have chosen to take a modern approach in the way they influence people to buy their products. I’m speaking of “ad retargeting,” or the way ads advertising for the products of retailers … Continue reading →

Advertising, however intelligent Google is, can be confusing. I was reading an article this morning from the website of The New Yorker. It is an article written by award-winning author Jhumpa Lahiri, in Italian, and translated into English, about her … Continue reading →

BBC is producing a new 20 part drama for this holiday season, which is titled, Dickensian. It sounds pretty intriguing, as it will feature various famous Dickensian characters all interacting with each other. Here is a link to the DailyMail … Continue reading →

It’s no secret that Christmas is a hugely commercialized holiday–more and more, the buzz surrounding Christmas focuses on the economical, with advertising to convince people what items they should buy for their loved ones. But where exactly does this come … Continue reading →