In high school we read 1984 and A Brave New World in quick succession in British Lit. This has lead to them mashing up in my brain in a very unfortunate way. Though they are both dystopias, they really are very different, so if I think about it, I can usually get them sorted out, but sometimes I blurt out the wrong thing about one or the other and look really ignorant.
I also saw the new Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days, and Shaun of the Dead very close to one another, and I have a tendency to get those mixed up. I definitely think of them as distinct works, but nine times out of ten I come up with the wrong title for the one I’m thinking of (even aside from Dawn/Shuan slips of the tongue.)
I get several of the James Bond flicks lumped into one big explosion.
I read a handful of Ludlum thrillers a few years back. I can’t tell you the difference between them.
Right now, I’m reading Dalton Trumbo’s 1939 classic Johnny Got His Gun. I think the completely bandaged patient in Heller’s Catch-22 is a tip of the hat to Trumbo’s book.
I think I’ve seen three of the Harry Potter movies. The whole lot is young wizards sneaking about where they aren’t supposed to go, finding out things they aren’t supposed to know. Then there’s a big whiz-bang showdown, the bad guys are beaten but they escape. Harry gets hurt, all is forgiven, and Harry’s house wins again.
You can play any Spyro Gyra track for me, and I can’t tell you which is which.
Have I seen the most recent 007, Star Wars, Rocky, or Batman? I don’t know for sure.
The Music Man, The Rainmaker, and Rainman. Similar names, of course, but I think the real problem was that I had a vague understanding of the plots of all of them before actually having seen any, so for years, I thought Rainman was about a savant who was in love with a librarian named Marian… :wally on self
I went through a time when I read all the Russian classics. Then, years later, I re-read Anna Karenina. It contained all my favorite scenes from War and Peace…