Books, Boardgames, & Music

If you're still making up you mind about Classical Music, here's something to help you decide, The Piano Guys. The Piano Guys is a musical group which consists of pianist John Schmidt, cellist Steven Sharp Nelson, videographer Paul Anderson, and music producer Al van der Beek. They do a mix of contemporary, classical, and rock music, and often combine these genres (for example, some of their videos have songs which are a classical song combined with a movie song). Because of this, they often write their own music! The group originated at Anderson's piano store, The Piano Guys , in St. George, Utah. He often had local piano player John Schmidt come in to test his pianos. In 2009, Anderson saw a video which Schmidt and Nelson had uploaded to YouTube, Love Story Meets Viva la Vida, which earned more than 1 million hits. He then invited the two to post videos on his store's Facebook page and YouTube channel, for advertisement. Nelson brought Beek, his neighbor who w...

Photo by  Penguin Random House WARNING: THIS REVIEW IS OF A REALISTIC BOOK WHICH IS PARTIALLY EDUCATIONAL Do you like Sci-Fi? Are you interested in Space Exploration? Are you tired of fictional novels where the main character’s resources, such as food and shelter, are magically unlimited and appear whenever they need them? Do you just want a nice, realistic yet humorous novel, where an astronaut gets stranded on Mars, and has to use their ingenuity to survive (who doesn’t?)? If you've answered yes to all of these questions (and even if you didn’t), then you should absolutely read The Martian. The Martian, by Andy Weir, is a sci-fi survival thriller, which follows the adventures of American astronaut Mark Watney on Mars, where after a dust storm he is presumed dead and left stranded by his crew mates, without any way to communicate with Earth. However, even if NASA knew that he was alive, any rescue mission would arrive only years after he starved to death. Good thing he is...

Here is my hero story, which is explained in the previous post (it is somewhat long):                                                                                       The Owl I was running; running for the sake of it, running away . I was running with tears streaming down my face, running from everything that I knew and held dear. I was running… for I had just killed someone...       I awoke with a start, my heart pounding, my mouth breathing short, raspy breaths, and my face sweaty. After a few moments I realized that it was only a dream, and calmed down. “Why do I keep having that atrocious dream?” I asked myself, as it was the third time in a week that I had had it.     ...

Have you ever wanted to write your own Superhero Story, but not known how to start, or how to organize it? Well then, you should read about The Monomyth. The Monomyth, or Hero’s Journey, is a series of events in literature that nearly every single myth, hero story, and fictional story (including movies and TV shows), in human history, follows. It was created by Jospeh Campbell, a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence Collage, and published in his book, The Hero With a Thousand Faces, in 1949. The book describes what Campbell considered to be the 17 main stages of a Hero Story. Not all pieces of literature have all of them (most don’t), and may even have them in a different order, but they all generally follow it. Since then, there have been many new versions of The Monomyth, but they all follow the same basic principles, and are divided into three major sections: I: The Departure II: The Initiation III: The Return My Story I wrote a Superhero Story which follows t...

And the winner of my poll for this week’s post, with ONE vote, is... FÜR ELISE! In second place, also with one vote, is Brahm’s Lullaby (if you're wondering how I differentiated between 1st place and 2nd place, I chose Für Elise because I like it better)! In third place, with zero votes, is everything else! Für Elise may be one of those “sleepy” and “boring” classical tunes (unlike  Eine Kleine Nachtmusik ), but I insist that you give it a try. There's a reason why it is so popular. It was composed by Ludwig van Beethoven in 1810, but was only published in 1867, 40 years after his death. In English, it translates to “For Elise”. As for who “Elise” is, no one knows (although there are many interesting theories). Overview Für Elise, also known as Bagatelle No. 25 in A minor, was originally written for a solo piano and today, is still most commonly played by one. It is a shorter piece of music (compared to other classical songs), and is characterized by the bagatelle, ...