Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Ear Worms by Morgan Mandel

Ear Worms - Sounds kind of icky, doesn't it?

I heard about them while listening to the Dr. Dean Edell Show on WLS 890AM Talk Radio on Sunday morning. They're not as bad as they sound.

Ear worms are those songs that keep running through your head, sometimes at night while you're trying to sleep or even during the day. Usually the first song I hear in the morning when I'm half asleep is the one that stays in my mind. I end up humming it the rest of the day. Someone said the way to stop an ear worm is to deliberately change the words or pattern of the song. I don't know if it works, since I haven't tried it yet.

So now you know about ear worms. What about books you've read that stay in your mind long afterwards? Book worms are the people reading the books, so we can't call them that. Maybe we could call them eye or mind worms.

Is there one that you can't you forget? It doesn't have to be a classic. It could be non-fiction, a thriller, mystery, romance, you name it. Please share.

6 comments:

June said...

Oh yeah, I've had books that have done that to me. Too many to mention here, but the first one that comes to mind is "Summer Sisters" by Judy Blume.

June

www.junesproat.com

L. Diane Wolfe said...

What sticks with me is Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern trilogy - I must've read those books a hundred times each as a teen. The characters became very real in my mind and scenes from the books pop into my mind often, even though it's been years since I read one of them.

L. Diane Wolfe
www.circleoffriendsbooks.blogspot.com
www.spunkonastick.net
www.thecircleoffriends.net

Hank Phillippi Ryan said...

First--I hear a way to get rid of earworms is to sing Jingle Bell Rock. Hey, I didn't think of it, I'm just passing it along.

Have you read Winters Tale, by Mark Helprin? I read it--wow, years and years ago--and I bet I still think of it every week.

Norm Cowie said...

I swam a two and a half mile swim once, all the time with a Clay Aiken going through my mind.

Just 'bout went nuts.

Norm

http://fangplace.blogspot.com

Helen Ginger said...

Getting a song stuck in your head is maddening. There's a local commercial that has a jingle that I sometimes wake up with. If I see it come on the TV, I change channels as fast as I can in hopes of avoiding it getting implanted. It's for a cleaners, of all things.

Usually the books that get stuck in my head are the ones I'm editing at the time.

Anonymous said...

DIane,
I'm with you on that. Pern books have such a rich backstory and well-told history that I can lose myself in them, and in turn, they lose themselves in my neural net. So, as I'm wandering through my mind, sometimes I'll find part of Pern there: a dragon, a fire lizard, a miscreant young DrumHarper. It's all good!

Tony Burton
http://www.tonyburton.biz
http://www.wolfmont.com
http://www.honeylocustpress.com/serendipity/