One of the great things about teaching classic works of literature is that you’re arming students with a cultural bookmark that they carry with them for life.  Who hasn’t been somewhere where people started talking about Of Mice and Men or Romeo and Juliet or The Catcher in the Rye and been silently thanking their lucky stars (or maybe, just maybe, damning their high school English teacher all over again) that they read that book and can comment on Lennie’s diction or Romeo’s cock driven idiocy or Holden’s acerbity?

By the way, I’m willing to concede that you’ve never had that experience and that I’m just making myself feel better.

Ernest Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea has always been one of my favorite novels.  It grows in richness with each sweet return and it’s one of the books of which I never seem to tire.  I just stumbled upon this amazing interpretation of the novel done through drawing and sped-up photography.  I think they missed the mark with their music choice, but this video is pretty much the poster child for everything that’s great about the Internet.