Uncategorized

World of Words Wednesday – Memes, Reviews, Challenges, et al – part two

Part two of my post for Wednesday also spills over into Thursday memes.
For 3WW (Cause,Implicate,Stretch), ThemeThursday (Possibilities), and AlphabeThursday (Letter Z)

She looked out into the wide stretch of land beyond and
before her

Here she was, all alone, yet for the first time, feeling put
together
What was the cause? she pondered of late..
Maybe with no one around her to implicate
Life seemed full of possibilities,
And filled with a new zeal, new abilities,
she could finally stretch herself to her fullest, to remake
herelf; No cause to worry if she did make a mistake
for there was no one around her to implicate..

Update: Meri from MeriMagic commented on this post that the image she had up on her wonderful blog was a match for my poem so I looked at it and yes, she was correct! So, after getting an Yes from her, here is the image with my poem. And do have a look at Meri’s wonderful creations at her blog MeriMagic.

Wondrous Words Wednesday: I found many words in the past week of reading, and I have been doing  a lot of it to catch up on challenges, book reviews to complete, and just to read. But I did not make a note of all the words and for this week’s WWW, decided to pick up two words – both beginning with P – from Pride and Prejudice (the book that has been on  my TBR for the longest time):

  • panegyric n. a public speech or published text in praiseof someone or something: Vera’s panegyric on friendship. pan·e·gyr·i·cal adj. pan·e·gyr·i·cal·ly adv. early 17th cent.: from French panégyrique, via Latin from Greek ‘of public assembly’, from pan’all’ + aguris ‘agora, assembly’.
Usage in Pride and Prejudice: “Her answer, therefore, was not propitious, at least not to Elizabeth’s wishes, for she was impatient to get home.”
  • propitious adj. giving or indicating a good chance of success; favorable: the timing for such a meeting seemed propitious. See note at TIMELY. ARCHAIC favorably disposed toward someone: there were points on which they did not agree, moments in which she did not seem propitious. pro·pi·tious·ly adv. pro·pi·tious·ness n.late Middle English: from Old French propicieus or Latin propitius ‘favorable, gracious’.
Usage in Pride and Prejudice:
“When you told Mrs. Bennet this morning that if you ever resolved upon quitting Netherfield you should be gone in five minutes, youmeant it to be a sort of panegyric, of compliment to yourself—and yet what is there so very laudable in a precipitance which must leave very necessary business undone, and can be of no real advantage to yourself or anyone else?””

Book Review:  Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw for the Backto the Classics Challenge at  Sarah Reads Too Much

Summary of the book from Wikipedia:

Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador’s garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women’s independence.

My thoughts on the book: I loved My Fair Lady, She’s all That, and every adaptation of Pygmalion that I have seen or read. I read the screenplay for My Fair Lady (not sure where that book is now though, unfortunately) and loved that as well. You can look at the Wikipedia article for more adaptations. And finally, I got around to reading Pygmalion as part of the back to the classics challenge, and what can I say – I loved this best of all. Shaw left the ending open of the five-act play published in 1914, and when he found himself annoyed at the endings people came up with, wanting a predictable,
happy ending, he came up with a sequel to the play to be published along with the 1916 version of the play.
The play is a quick read, yet wonderfully witty and wise, with characters who literally leap out of the pages. Each and every character is brilliantly developed – and this only using the dialogs they have with each other.  If I had to choose one favorite character in this book, it would be a little difficult, but I would end up choosing Mr.Doolittle, described by Professor Higgins as ‘the most original moralist at present in England’.
Eliza herself is very likable, at least to me, for she is strong and stands up to bullies, like her father and Professor Higgins, and proud, rightly so. Henry Higgins is definitely not a likable character but he has his moments or rather dialogues where I do appreciate his way of thinking which brings me to one of my favorite quotes from this play:
“The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.”
All the other characters in the play stand on their own as well and their personalities shine through, even if only briefly, including the bystanders at the beginning of the play. This was totally worth reading and I
enjoyed it, now you should go ahead and read it as well. I am off to watch the movies based off this play.
You can read it in any one of the following online links (among others):
Pygmalion– this is on OpenLibrary – so glad to have discovered it – and is the original 1914 unpublished rough proof of the book.
http://drama.eserver.org/plays/modern/pygmalion/– this includes the preface and the sequel Shaw wrote for the play.

10 thoughts on “World of Words Wednesday – Memes, Reviews, Challenges, et al – part two

  1. No one around her to implicate…I love that line. This is truly when there are so many possibilities. It sounds great to sometimes have no responsibilities and no one to be responsible to. But then at the same time it also sounds lonely.

    I love to try and use words that seem to have lost their favor with the world. Definitely something that needs to be continued. Thanks for doing this.

    Have a great weekend and a Happy Theme Thursday.

    God bless.

  2. I, too lie t he phrase "No one around her to implicate." I'm hopping over from Miss Jenny's classroom. I can't believe we haven't by chance met before now, but there's always a first time for everything, right? I'm now following you and I shall look forward to reading more Alphabe-Thursday posts in our next round!

  3. I love the word zeal.

    I need to use it more in everyday conversation!

    I shall attempt to do so today.

    With natural zeal!

    ha!

    This was quite an interesting link for the letter Z.

    Thank you for sharing it.

    A+

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *