There's a new button on my left sidebar announcing and linking to the "Lit Flicks Challenge." It lasts until the end of February 2009 (six months). The LFC plan is 5 books/pieces of literature that have been made into movies (read them) and at least 2 movie adaptations of same (watch them) and review them. LFC's proprietor is Jessica; her brother, Blake, is running a corollary challenge whose idea is 5 movies adapted from books (watch them) and at least 2 of the books those movies are based on (read them).

Aside from the sheer pleasure of these challenges, there will be monthly activities and giveaways. Jessica deserves a ton of praise for this (does praise come in tons?) and for her "regular" blog, The Bluestocking Society, which is great, where she writes about and reviews lots and lots and lots and lots of books. Blake's blog is all about movies and reviews, and also needs to be added to one's day.

To start the challenge, a participant is instructed to answer 4 questions. Here goes:

1. Are you more likely to see a movie if it’s based on a book?
   Honestly, I don't think so. I vacillate between thinking I do and thinking I don't so I guess the truthful answer is no.
   
   
2. Do you prefer to read the book first or see the movie first?
   No preference. But whether I approach either with an open mind is a mine field inside my ridiculously judgmental head. I'm puzzlingly prejudiced about books and authors, completely irrational about it, really, so if my internal voice says the author is "good" I'll feel thrilled to watch the movie or read the book in either order whichever presents itself first. (Note to meme: one reason I'm excited about this challenge is to be forced to read and watch things on a schedule and therefore possibly foil the judgmental obnoxious voice in my head.)
   
   
3. List one movie that was better than the book it’s based on, and one book that is better than the movie.
   Tom Jones was without a doubt the most boring movie I have ever seen. Considering that it's based on a quite ordinary but enjoyable novel by Henry Fielding, and that the screenplay was written by John Osborne who is absolutely one of the last century's most exciting playwrights (Look Bank in Anger, The Entertainer, Luther. . .), I never understood why it didn't work at all for me but I've gotten better nights sleep "watching" it than under medication.
   
   Believe it or not, my choice for the second part of the question is the 1988 tv version of Anna Karenina (WAIT! don't despair of my taste - I'll explain). I loathed the book when I read it when I was really too young to understand it, but it still makes me want to throw a book at Anna's head because she's so relentlessly pouty and unwilling to do anything to fix her situation. But in this version, Paul Scofield conveys an astonishingly two-part emotional impact - on the one hand, loving and care-taking but on the other utterly stodgy and almost imprisoning of his wife and child whom he, nonetheless, clearly and vividly loves. Since I found Scofield very attractive, this portrayal of a man who could not be dashing and exciting even though he wanted to appeal to his wife clicked with me and finally made me understand Anna's misery. Furthermore, Jacqueline Bisset was superficial yet conveyed affection and tenderness so wasn't the idiotic flibbertigibbet that Anna seemed to me in the book. In other words, I understood, appreciated and cared about the emotional truth of the characters because of this movie even though it had eluded me in the book.
   
   
4. In your opinion, what film is the most accurate representation of the book?
   There are several in contention but the winner is the 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion. I thought the subtlety and richness of the characters was every bit as deep as Jane had written them and, amazingly, brought quietly and yet intensely to three-dimensional life. It's such an over-used word, but the "truth" of the characters was absolutely intact.
   
   I must also mention Amy Heckerling's Clueless. As attested to by the Writer's Guild of America's giving her screenplay the best writing award, Heckerling retained Austen's Emma's characters at the core of their emotional lives, and the essential plot, while changing everything on the surface. It was brilliant.
   
   And I need to add something about another movie from a book. When I was quite young, I saw the Audrey Hepburn/Mel Ferrer/Henry Fonda version of War and Peace which was directed by King Vidor. (It's pretty funny to see "writing credit: Leo Tolstoi".) I was absolutely bowled over by the cinematicness of the experience and was deeply moved by Natasha's and André's love for each other although in the end I was even more touched by Pierre's great love for Natasha and for Russia. Anyway, the experience was so profound that I spent several months reading a wonderful 2-volume edition of the book that is now almost in tatters because I loved it so much. I have no idea whether it really is the best adaptation of a book into a movie but I know that watching it changed my movie-going and reading it changed my reading and reading it would not have happened, at least not then, without having seen the movie.

I'm a bit startled - and embarrassed - to see that evidently I really like literary chick-lit but so be it. I also like many adaptations of detective books (Dorothy Sayers' Peter Whimsey stories, for example) and I thought the British tv series of Jeeves and Wooster (with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry) infused the two men with liveliness and depth.

Labels: blogs (others'), books, good ideas, movies

I've been listening to one of Joan Anderson's books in my car.  (Cds are a pleasant alternative to music or talk, by the way though that's a subject for another day.) I'm not sure what I think.  She's got some wonderful ideas but also a tone of smugness that's annoying and alarming.  Some of what she suggests is undoubtedly useful and I've even done a fair number of the exercises and processes on my own.  But you get the feeling that she's saying if women would isolate themselves and discover their own needs then everything else would fall into place.  I don't mean to challenge her but other people are involved in people's lives and we cannot control them at all.  Sometimes they don't respond as we'd like, even if we're entirely centered and calm.  Obviously the effect of someone being non-responsive or antagonistic is very different if one's own center is calm and clear, but that doesn't seem quite what she's saying.  Then again, maybe I'm just resisting.  I must say spending a weekend, month or year in a cottage on Cape Cod sounds like heaven although few of us have the financial wherewithal.  Have any rare readers experienced her books/workshops and, if so, what do you think?

Labels: books, women, writing

In Los Angeles, a wonder-of-wonder has occurred.  A bookstore has closed . . . because it's moving down the block and getting more space and more books.  Check out this story!  I've long been of the opinion that bookstores that do not have snobby attitudes and that do have specialized stock or knowledge can thrive even in this nutty time.  There are dozens of stores proving my point in and around Washington DC (of all places) and even a few in Dutchess and Ulster counties in New York.  I know there are many stories of bookstores that close and attribute the problem to B&N or WalMart or Sam's Club or some other monolithic monster.  But I really feel certain that if DC can support bookstores, other communities can do it.  If all the commuters I see reading every day are at all representative of the world at large, then books and printed matter aren't nosediving, they're just changing delivery methodologies or something like that.  So three cheers to Skylight Books - hurrah and congratulations to them!!

Labels: books, good ideas, whining

The blog What Kate's Reading is worth a stop now and then even if you don't want to join in on her giveaway of a copy of a Jude Devereux book. But if you do, better get cracking since the deadline is this Friday. Meanwhile, it's a fun exercise to consider who is (are?) your favorite flawed hero?? And a corollary question: who are flawed heroines and are they as much fun??!

Labels: blogs (others'), books, fun

From Small World Reads (via Semicolon) I learned that Joanna at Lost in a Good Story is hosting The New Classics Challenge and it sounds wonderful! It's all based on Entertainment Weekly's list of new classics - which is an odd list to say the least - but it's all in good fun and who can argue with picking bunches of books to read and talk/write about, right?!

The Rules:

1. Copy the list, post it and bold the titles that you have already read.
   
2. Choose at least 6 other books from the list; read and review them between 8/1/2008 and 1/31/2009.
   
3. Go back to Lost in a Good Story and post links to your reviews.
   
4. In January 2009, cast your vote for which one of the 100 books on the list is your favorite (and write a post on why). The winning book will be sent to a lucky winner chosen by the scientific method favored here in the blogosphere, i.e. names in a hat.
   
5. Have fun! :-)

The List
Bolded titles I've already read; I've asterisked ones I thought were especially good.
Orange titles are on my list for the Challenge.
1. The Road , Cormac McCarthy (2006)
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
3. Beloved, Toni Morrison (1987)
4. The Liars' Club, Mary Karr (1995)
5. American Pastoral, Philip Roth (1997)
6. Mystic River, Dennis Lehane (2001)
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
8. Selected Stories, Alice Munro (1996)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
10. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami (1997)
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
12. Blindness, José Saramago (1998)
13. Watchmen, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons (1986-87)
R4. Black Water, Joyce Carol Oates (1992)
15. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers (2000)
16. The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood (1986)
17. Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez (1988)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
19. On Beauty, Zadie Smith (2005)
20. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding (1998)
21. On Writing, Stephen King (2000)
22. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Díaz (2007)
23. The Ghost Road, Pat Barker (1996)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
25. The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan (1989)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
27. Possession, A.S. Byatt (1990)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
29. Bel Canto, Anne Patchett (2001)
30. Case Histories, Kate Atkinson (2004)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
32. Parting the Waters, Taylor Branch (1988)
33. The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion (2005)
34. The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold (2002)
35. The Line of Beauty, Alan Hollinghurst (2004)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
38. Birds of America, Lorrie Moore (1998)
39. Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri (2000)
40. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (1995-2000)
*41. The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros (1984)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
43. Borrowed Time, Paul Monette (1988)
44. Praying for Sheetrock, Melissa Fay Greene (1991)
45. Eva Luna, Isabel Allende (1988)
46. Sandman, Neil Gaiman (1988-1996)
*47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
48. The Poisonwood Bible, Barbara Kingsolver (1998)
49. Clockers, Richard Price (1992)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
51. The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcom (1990)
52. Waiting to Exhale, Terry McMillan (1992)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
54. Jimmy Corrigan, Chris Ware (2000)
*55. The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls (2006)
56. The Night Manager, John le Carré (1993)
*57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
58. Drop City, TC Boyle (2003)
59. Krik? Krak! Edwidge Danticat (1995)
60. Nickel & Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich (2001)
61. Money, Martin Amis (1985)
62. Last Train To Memphis, Peter Guralnick (1994)
63. Pastoralia, George Saunders (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
R65. The Giver, Lois Lowry (1993)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
67. The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini (2003)
68. Fun Home, Alison Bechdel (2006)
69. Secret History, Donna Tartt (1992)
70. Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell (2004)
71. The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, Ann Fadiman (1997)
72. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon (2003)
73. A Prayer for Owen Meany, John Irving (1989)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)
75. Cathedral, Raymond Carver (1983)
76. A Sight for Sore Eyes, Ruth Rendell (1998)
77. The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro (1989)
78. Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert (2006)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)
81. Backlash, Susan Faludi (1991)
82. Atonement, Ian McEwan (2002)
83. The Stone Diaries, Carol Shields (1994)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)
85. Gilead, Marilynne Robinson (2004)
86. And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts (1987)
87. The Ruins, Scott Smith (2006)
*88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)
89. Close Range, Annie Proulx (1999)
90. Comfort Me With Apples, Ruth Reichl (2001)
91. Random Family, Adrian Nicole LeBlanc (2003)
92. Presumed Innocent, Scott Turow (1987)
93. A Thousand Acres, Jane Smiley (1991)
94. Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser (2001)
95. Kaaterskill Falls, Allegra Goodman (1998)
96. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003)
97. Jesus’ Son, Denis Johnson (1992)
98. The Predators' Ball, Connie Bruck (1988)
99. Practical Magic, Alice Hoffman (1995)
100. America (the Book), Jon Stewart/Daily Show (2004)

Hope some of my own rare readers (as Alan would say) will join me.

Labels: blogs (mine), blogs (others'), books, reading, writing

Apparently Acres of Books in Los Angeles is relocating, to the dismay of many including the ever-brilliant and wonderful Ray Bradbury. Their website doesn't mention it but Laura wrote about it here and Bradbury's visit adds credence. I hope independent bookstores (and other businesses) manage to hang on over the next six-to-eighteen months while the economy does its tremulous little dance because things will right themselves economically even if we have some rough times to go through first. They usually do but unfortunately some cannot hang on. The Mysterious Bookshop in NYC is famous for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is 30 years in existence, in large part because of the foresightedness of its proprietor in purchasing the store and land way back when it was (somewhat) affordable. People do read and will continue to read, nay-sayers to the contrary notwithstanding.

Labels: books, optimism, writing

It all began when I saw edog's list. I'm a tad competitive about some things (understatement) so I had to check and see how I measured up. I copied the list into Excel and bolded the ones I'd read and added them up, but then I noticed that the last one was numbered 100 in text but was on the 98th line. Upon further investigation, I discovered that #44 and #51 were missing entirely so I tried edog's code thinking maybe the printed version had swallowed something but no. I went to The Big Read website sure they'd have the original list but found nothing even remotedly like this. (They've got their books for this summer's recommendations and all kinds of intellectualizing gobbledeegook about Americans and reading but no 100s.) I tried all manner of internet searches and found all manner of lists of books but none were these. Finally I returned to edog and saw he said he'd gotten the list from "Sheila" so after a bit of sleuthing on his site I found her link (Sherri Blossoms) but her list was missing 44 and 51, too. So I clicked her from whence (Moonrat) but again they were missing. I kept going back and back and back . . . six times in all until eventually I got to halo4's list which, blessedly, included the two books (wonder what happened? was it a simple case of Blogsphere Telephone?). In the end, here we are. See rules at the end of the post.

THE LIST - of which waaayyyyy too many are collections, children's and/or school books and/or science fiction. Since this list is unobtainable except via other blogs, I do not know but am curious as to who compiled it and with what criteria in mind. It seems like a mix of "important" books and best sellers and "pc" and "favorites" from its compiler(s). Meme and list writers should include their source. Anyway, be that as it may . . . .

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling (I read one so I get 1/6 of a point)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 *Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (I gave myself 1/2 a point)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 *Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 *War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (hated it as a kid, like it now)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy (didn't understand it at 15, love it now)
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 **Persuasion - Jane Austen (Anne Elliott is one of my favorite people in the world)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (started it, didn't like it)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (started it, didn't like it)
40 *Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell (marvelous idea but not crazy about the book)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (a good friend adores this)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 *Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (does watching the movie count?)
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert (hated the movie, sorry)
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons (no way)
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon (?)
57 A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (Dirk Bogarde made it come alive)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On the Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (you must be kidding)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie (that's SIR Rushdie to you)
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 *The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson (marvelous)
75 Ulysses - James Joyce (MUST read this)
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath (loathed it, have major issues with her)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 *A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry (never even heard of this)
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton (another collection; sheesh)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (ugh; cute until you're 11)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (I hate anthropomorphizing)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute (I've read others of his though)
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 *Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl (love lots of his stories)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (hated the musical too; so sue me)

So bottom line is I've read lots of them (72-4 depending on how you count) although I feel I should have read them all but I guess no one can be expected to have read every book in the world. Plus, the older I get the more readily I put aside a book that I don't like after 50 or 100 pages.

THE RULES : such as they are:
   (1) bold titles you've read,
   (2) italicize those you intend to read,
   (3)(a) underline those you liked
* (3)(b) tag those you adore with an asterisk, and
   (4) strike out those you didn't like.

Labels: about me, blogs (others'), books, writing

Simply Audiobooks is a terrific idea. Kind of Netflix* for books but much more expensive and tons less reliable. It takes almost a week to get a book to or from them, thus taking ten days or more of a month right there. And although they list lots of books, they must have few of each title including the not-best-sellers I usually like, so you can have ten or more books in your queue and still have none available to be shipped. They're very nice when you call or write to ask questions or complain, but it just doesn't quite make the grade. Makes one appreciate Netflix all the more.

*According to Wikipedia, Netflix was founded in 1997 by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings in Los Gatos, California.

Labels: books, confusion, movies

I read this book to one of T2CGITW last night. It's so good I can't begin to praise it adequately. Zen Shorts by Jon Muth. The story is terrific and so are the watercolor illustrations. The little girl I was reading to was entrance by some of the illustrations herself, not something that often happens with *little* children, but they are beautiful, frameable.

I discovered Jan Muth linking from some other book, basically browsing online at Barnes & Noble - something I haven't done particularly successfully very often because I'm more familiar browsing in a physical store. Anyway, I'm a convert now because this is an amazing experience. On the surface, it's a story about a big panda named Stillwater and the three children who meet him because he's sitting in their backyard under a red umbrella. They visit him at his house, and play with him, and he tells them three stories. The essence of the book is to inculcate in one's mind a quietness that welcomes thoughts and ideas. The almost-4-year-old I was reading with last night liked the book so much that after we read it and played with cut-outs for a while, she asked me to read it again. And then she asked her father to read it to her at bedtime. Three times in a couple of hours. What greater compliment is there?

Labels: books, children, reading, reflections, t2cgitw, writing

I need to vent. Recently I read a blogger's diabtribe about best sellers and it reminded me of how frustrated I get when people act all high and mighty about what they read, or (more often) about what others read. Some people actually make apologetic excuses if you ask them what they're reading and it turns out to be a best seller. My father wouldn't let me read what he called "trash" (i.e., Nancy Drew and other popular novels) so I grabbed a flashlight and became a secret Nancy Drew reader. When he found me out, he took all the novels out of my room and made a deal with me that I could read one of my choices every time I finished two of his. The result of which was that I stopped reading for pleasure. My mother had me read aloud to her to surmount the onus of the requirement. Thus I read Ivanhoe, The Black Arrow, Christians Courageous, and Master Skylark and came to adore all of them.

My father was a noted professor and an avid reader. He read so quickly that he could polish off a small novel in a couple of hours without any trouble. So he read mysteries and spy stories the way some of us watch Shark or CSI. And yet, despite his passion for, and ability to wax thoroughly rhapsodic on the wonders of good mysteries and spy stores, he was an inveterate snob about best sellers, like the blogger I encountered the other day.

I fail to understand a snotty attitude toward best sellers. Despite that dreadful patch with my father which led to a period where I didn't read anything for pleasure, I now read voraciously and anything that strikes my fancy, both "good" and popular. I asked people why being popular *must* equate to being lesser but never get a satisfactory answer. Popular really isn't necessarily bad. In fact something being popular may mean it has some merit. Pasta is popular. Apples are well-liked. Blue jeans are hugely popular. Are any of these bad for people? Of course not. And as far as reading goes, not everyone can work up interest in the smells of a small pastry or a mother's shawl. Proust's prose is certainly graceful and stirs more qualitative and evocative images, more so than Danielle Steele. And Sartre demands responses from a reader, whether in agreement or not. And Shakespeare requires engagement. And Jane Austen wraps you in her arms. All of which is wonderful and unquestionably more refined and smart, more likely to enhance the reader's cleverness and perceptions of life and people than, say, Jackie Collins or John Grisham.

But any reading stimulates the imagination. Babies read Pat the Bunny - a humungous best seller, by the way - and move on to Eric Carle and 1001 Tales and Madeleine and libraries-ful of wonderful fantastic books. If they're lucky, they proceed to Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames and Judy Blume and eventually Norton Juster and Tolstoi. What matters is that their imaginations are stirred. If one adult likes so-called trashy romances and another prefers history and biography, is either a better person? Possibly more aware of facts and events, which is useful and good to know, but beyond that?

I'd love to know what any rare readers of this page read and what they think about best sellers.

Labels: books, history, reading, reflections

I watched the Maggie Lawson Nancy Drew movie the other night. Written by Amy Mann, daughter of Michael Mann of smart and fabulously popular tv fame ("Miami Vice"), it was not even remotely as bad as some reviews led me to expect. Lawson's Nancy has vigor and charm in spades, and the mystery itself was certainly passably interesting, and that's really what she's all about. I loved the camera showing us her desk top piles of favorite books and photos - they were wonderful (Sherlock Holmes, Dorothy Sayers, her parents, and others), identifying the person those of us who love her know well. Now that I think of it, perhaps for a dyed-in-the-wool Drew fan, any telling of one of her stories is just fine. Which brings to mind that t2cgitw still have The Secret in the Old Clock ahead of them . . . lucky girls!!!

Labels: books, entertainment, family, movies, reading

One of the best books in the world is Bernard Schlink's The Reader. It challenges tons of thoughts and attitudes about many things and, at minimum, makes you realize how difficult some moral and ethical choices can be, even for good people who have every intention of making good and correct choices and decisions. And it makes you see the tiny bits of frailty and vulnerability that we all have. It's an amazing book.

Not surprisingly, The Reader is being made into a film. Nicole Kidman was to play Hanna and Ralph Fiennes to play Michael. It is fundamental to the entire story that Michael was 15 when Hanna was 30 - it actually wouldn't make sense otherwise. As a result, in the "present" in the book, Michael is around 35ish and Hanna 50. Kidman would be hard pressed to look world-weary-though-appealing and 50 since she is actually 40 and doesn't appear at all world-weary. Fiennes could not possibly look innocent and sweet, except unctiously so, let alone 35, since he is actually nearing 50. It would utterly change (read: ruin) the story if they alter the ages, especially switching who's older and who's younger.

Anyway, it's all moot at the moment because Kidman has withdrawn from the project due to her pregnancy. (I'm happy for her though puzzled in a gossipy and completely rude way; it supposedly was she who couldn't have children with Tom Cruise and that's why they adopted and that was supposedly further backed up by the ever-so-viral proof that he and Katie had Suri so quickly but now Nicole is pregnant and rumors are afoot that Suri was in vitro from L.Ron Hubbard (of all people); can you say scientology is insane and maybe so is Cruise and maybe so am I for even thinking let alone writing about this . . . .) Well, in my perfect and completely unlikely fantasy world, they'll hold off on making the movie until Kidman can do it and that will mean Fiennes will go do something else and they'll have to sign a younger and more appropriate man in his place. My fingers are crossed.

Labels: books, headlines, movies, people

Today (or yesterday or tomorrow, depending on which calendar you use) is the birthday of both Jane Austen and Ludwig van Beethoven. A fortuitous date upon which to be born, clearly. There is very little that equals almost all of Beethoven's music, in power and melody and brilliance. The fifth symphony? The ninth? What more is there?! And isn't it absolutely astonishing that Jane was born 232 years ago?! That's over two hundred blooming years ago, for heaven's sake. And yet her stories continue to engage and entrance, and her characters continue to come entirely and totally to life. Elizabeth Bennett, Mr Darcy, Anne Elliott are friends of ours all these years later, people whose names and persons bring joy. Happy happy day.

Labels: books, people, writing

Even a casual observer of history knows that Winston Churchill was interesting. But it takes alert bloggers, in this case blog friend Laura, to find and cite people like Elizabeth Nel who was Churchill's last wartime secretary. A Canadian, Nel improbably worked with and was devoted to Churchill. She wrote Winston Churchill by his personal secretary, which was published in 1958 and revised this past year and is being republished this month. She is also the subject of this interesting obituary in Friday's U.K. Telegraph.

Learning about otherwise unknown but utterly important and vital people is exactly why there are many devotees of well-researched and well-written obituaries in places like the Guardian, the U.K. Times, the N.Y. Times and others. They present a fascinating and vivid history of the world, one person and one event at a time. Such as Elizabeth Nel.

Labels: books, headlines, history, people

There's a new book out called Deceptively Delicious. Its raison d'être is to get kids to eat vegetables but without them knowing (the kids, not the veggies, heh). Written by Jerry Seinfeld's wife, the book's underlying assumption is that many kids don't like vegetables and won't eat them even if they should and even if Mom and Pop like them and try to be even-handed about presenting them as just as yummy as other foods. I know several kids who actually like vegetables, so I'm not sure about the premise, but maybe my small sample doesn't count. Anyway, I'd be curious to know what any CRRs think about it all.

Labels: books, headlines, silliness

Fresh Bilge mentions the publication of Until Proven Innocent and an article on it, The Massacre of Innocence, about the Duke lacrosse players' party and its aftermath that led to so much ghastliness. Indeed there were ladles-ful of appalling behavior on the parts of the prosecutor and his staff, the university and (particularly egregiously) video and print media. It's good that they are all being called to task and that the town-gown aspect of the problem is also receiving its fair share of the blame. But can I just say "Tawana Brawley" here, please? That was *exactly* the same situation except that the initially-identified bad guys weren't glamorous and the D.A. wasn't especially eager to jump on the condemnatory bandwagon. The press and media, and the politically active black community, were every bit as vile, however. And there has been no Until Proven Innocent for that horror. There should be some reckoning, some way to expose misplaced zealotry that assigns blame solely because of decades' and centuries' old grievances, or it will happen yet again.

Labels: books, headlines, reflections

I cannot fathom how it escaped my attention until now but The Rap Sheet is the cat's meow and pajamas all rolled into one. I'm a huge film noir fan, the predecessor and first cousin to which is detective/crime/spy fiction (although some would disallow spies in this category). The Rap Sheet has billions of titles, authors, character and other details, suggestions, interviews, etc., etc., all about these wonderful stories. There's an editor and a bunch of writers who maintain TRS which is more than a year old and was in January Magazine for several years before that. Currently there's a sixth installment of nifty answers to the question "What one crime, mystery, or thriller novel do you think has been most unjustly overlooked, criminally forgotten, or under-appreciated over the years?"and some of the answers are gems. (Note to self: better sleep hard tonight because you'll be reading all weekend; maybe buy some stronger glasses on the way home.)

Labels: blogs (others'), books, writing

There are so many books even on this not-exhaustive list of books coming out this summer that we'd better get started planning and reading even though it's still only early May.

Labels: books

I was sad to learn that I missed World Book Day on March 1st (the 10th WBD, as it happens), but since it's only a few days since then - less than a fortnight as they'd say in some of my favorite books - I'm mentioning it now (with thanks to Stephen Lang). It's an occasion for celebrating, sharing (lists of books and, of course, books), and giving books. The British Library has an Adopt a Book plan which they call "a novel present idea" and I figure serious praise is due a title fashioned with two puns in four words! World Book Day seems a really big deal in the U.K. what with loads of inexpensive book tokens that purchase six- and ten-packs of ten books for pre- and secondary schoolchildren. There's also a survey to learn people's top ten books they can't live without. The #1 choice was Pride and Prejudice, followed by Lord of the Rings, Jane Eyre, all Harry Potter books, To Kill a Mockingbird, the Bible, Wuthering Heights, 1984, His Dark Materials and Great Expectations. Good books, all, though I'm a bit surprised there aren't more outrageous choices considering kids were involved. There's also a game matching public figures and books, and an e-cards page. All very cool. I will be aware and prepared next year. In the meantime, I'll just sacrifice myself this weekend and read a book in commemoration.

Labels: anniversaries, books

Don't miss today's birthday writers at Semicolon, including Copernicus and Louis Slobookin.

Labels: blogs (others'), books, writing