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[It by Stephen King and Games of Thrones by Goerge R. R. Martin]

Friendships come in all shapes and sizes. This is especially true in the literature world, where the most unlikely relationships can bloom. Stephen King and George R. R. Martin are a good case in point (see here).

Last time: The Face of Terror

Next time: In Which the Mummy Begins to Unwind

New to the group? Meet the monsters.

Photo by Julian Myles on Unsplash

We loved Lady Bird – like, really loved it. Laying on car hoods with your best friend listening to Dave Matthews Band, having the football coach take over the drama club, learning that Timothee Chalamet’s character is a grade A jerk. (Why, Timothee? Why?) Greta Gerwig has a knack for tapping into the volatility of the teenage experience, so we couldn’t help but wonder what our favorite teen issue books would look like under her lens.

While we’ll take any excuse to introduce our friends to Tracy K. Smith, the incredible poet behind Life on Mars and our irreplaceable Poet Laureate, or Sylvia Plath, whose newly collected letters are phenomenally exciting because they’re her first piece of published writing untouched by her abuser and ex-husband Ted Hughes, today we’re taking our poetry love in a different – and digital – direction. So, take out your phones, open Instagram, and start reading.

[source: Warner Brothers]

The next time you complain about having a terrible birthday, whether forgotten or not going according to plan, please stop and think: is this birthday better or worse than a Harry Potter birthday? Unless you too are dealing with an all-powerful Dark Lord trying to kill you at every turn, your answer will be “oh, so much better, I can’t believe I was complaining, accio cake, please.” As if The Boy Who Lived wasn’t already dealing with enough, he couldn’t even look forward to July 31st, the one day a year that was supposed to be celebratory. Once at Hogwarts, not all of his birthdays were completely terrible, since you know, people actually remembered them, but even the best ones were filled with some sense of doom and/or gloom. But of the seven birthdays readers got to celebrate with Harry, which was the worst? From merely not terrible to angsty to his life was in mortal danger, here’s all of Harry Potter’s birthdays ranked from best to worst. Happy Birthday, Harry…we guess?

Has there ever been a literary character adapted to film and television as much as Sherlock Holmes? From the Basil Rathbone films of the '30s and '40s to Sherlock, Elementary, and Danny Boyle’s films starring Robert Downy Jr. and Jude Law, there have been many variations on Holmes and Watson. Heck, we even have a Sherlock Holmes Handbook for would-be sleuths. But what might the characters themselves think about these adaptations?