The Silence of the Lambs
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Gone With The Wind
The Godfather
Apocalypse Now (Heart of Darkness)
Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)
Rosemary's Baby
Perfume
The Exorcist
A Clockwork Orange
Showing posts with label gone with the wind. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gone with the wind. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 15, 2020
Top Ten Tuesday: Great Posters For Books Made Into Movies
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week is technically supposed to be a cover freebie, but honestly I am not huge into book covers. So I'm doing a little twist on it: I'd originally thought of highlighting books that get new covers when a movie is released and the best or worst of those, but instead, I'm just going to do the posters for the movies themselves! I have either seen the movies or read the books (mostly both) for every one of these.
The Silence of the Lambs
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Gone With The Wind
The Godfather
Apocalypse Now (Heart of Darkness)
Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)
Rosemary's Baby
Perfume
The Exorcist
A Clockwork Orange
The Silence of the Lambs
Breakfast at Tiffany's
Gone With The Wind
The Godfather
Apocalypse Now (Heart of Darkness)
Blade Runner (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep)
Rosemary's Baby
Perfume
The Exorcist
A Clockwork Orange
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
Top Ten Tuesday: Longest Books I’ve Ever Read
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about the longest books we've ever read. I know a lot of readers find gigantic books kind of unwieldy, but I actually quite like doorstops! Some of them have been amazing, some less so, but here are ten of the longest ones I've made it through (if one author has multiple entries, I'm going with the longest one for that author)!
A Suitable Boy: This will almost certainly be the longest book I ever read because it's looooong, y'all. I spent weeks reading it during a summer in college. It was really good and I want to read it again but that is a COMMITMENT.
Les Miserables: I know a lot of people complain about the extended digressions into things like the history of the sewer system in Paris, but I actually really liked the whole thing!
War and Peace: It's so long but it's soooo good! The size can be intimidating but once you get started it really draws you in.
A Storm of Swords: The longest of the A Song of Ice and Fire series! All of these books are super long, and this one is actually my favorite but it took me until my second try to actually get all the way through it.
Gone With The Wind: In the ultimate bookish heresy, the movie is better. The subplots that got cut were worth excising for a still-sprawling but more focused narrative.
The Executioner's Song: I still maintain that there's a very good 600 page book inside this 1000+ pager about the first person executed after the death penalty was re-instituted in the United States but as is it's just too bloated to really recommend
Don Quixote: I hated this book so much.
The Cider House Rules: The movie inspired me to pick this one up, and though I haven't read it again in ages I want to someday because it's really good.
The Memoirs of Cleopatra: I read this (and quite a bit of other Margaret George) in high school, and I feel like I liked it? My memories of it are vaguely positive anyways.
Shantaram: I read this fairly recently, and after about page 200 it was hate-reading. For the next 700+ pages.
A Suitable Boy: This will almost certainly be the longest book I ever read because it's looooong, y'all. I spent weeks reading it during a summer in college. It was really good and I want to read it again but that is a COMMITMENT.
Les Miserables: I know a lot of people complain about the extended digressions into things like the history of the sewer system in Paris, but I actually really liked the whole thing!
War and Peace: It's so long but it's soooo good! The size can be intimidating but once you get started it really draws you in.
A Storm of Swords: The longest of the A Song of Ice and Fire series! All of these books are super long, and this one is actually my favorite but it took me until my second try to actually get all the way through it.
Gone With The Wind: In the ultimate bookish heresy, the movie is better. The subplots that got cut were worth excising for a still-sprawling but more focused narrative.
The Executioner's Song: I still maintain that there's a very good 600 page book inside this 1000+ pager about the first person executed after the death penalty was re-instituted in the United States but as is it's just too bloated to really recommend
Don Quixote: I hated this book so much.
The Cider House Rules: The movie inspired me to pick this one up, and though I haven't read it again in ages I want to someday because it's really good.
The Memoirs of Cleopatra: I read this (and quite a bit of other Margaret George) in high school, and I feel like I liked it? My memories of it are vaguely positive anyways.
Shantaram: I read this fairly recently, and after about page 200 it was hate-reading. For the next 700+ pages.
Tuesday, August 7, 2018
Top Ten Tuesday: Books To Read Together
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! I'm taking a slightly different tack on this week's topic. We're supposed to be writing about books we'd like to mash together to make an epic story, but honestly I had no idea what I'd do with that. I don't read a lot of fantasy, and I know you could do it with other kinds of books but I wasn't feeling creative so here's what I came up with instead: books that complement each other when read together. Each of them portrays a "side" of a story, so putting them together makes for a more well-rounded look at it.
Gone with the Wind and Beloved: Margaret Mitchell's classic of the antebellum South did bring us the incredible character of Scarlett O'Hara, but made no attempt to critically examine the machine on which that society was built: chattel slavery. Toni Morrison's Beloved, the story of a slave who escaped to the north at a great price, makes the horrors of it viscerally real. We often romanticize the plantation lifestyle, and we need to reckon with the terrible cost, too.
Little House on the Prairie and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: I used to get in trouble in school for reading books while I was in class, and when I was a kid, Laura Ingalls Wilder's stories about her family's journey across the country were ones I tucked inside my textbooks to read again and again. But the westward drive of white settlers had a devastating impact on the people who'd lived there for hundreds of years, so Dee Brown's nonfiction recounting of the desperate, doomed fight of the Native Americans to retain their land and traditions is necessary to understand what the Ingalls family was actually a part of.
To Kill A Mockingbird and Native Son: That poor Tom is innocent of the charges against him is, of course, a critical part of the injustice Harper Lee's novel asks us to understand. But while Lee wraps it in a soft, white-savior narrative, Richard Wright's searing book is much less comfortable in its story of a young black man who does assault a white woman. It examines the social conditions of the Jim Crow era that perpetuated criminality in a very up-front way, really forcing us to consider our own complicity in the system.
Lolita and Speak: Don't get me wrong, I consider Vladimir Nabakov's tale of Humbert Humbert's obsession with the vulnerable Delores one of my all-time favorites. It's an incredible book and not nearly as salacious as most people expect. But it's the story of the predator, and for a story about the impact of being the very young prey of a rapist, it's hard to beat Laurie Halse Anderson's incredible YA novel about a teenage girl ostracized after she calls the police when she's assaulted at a party. Anderson makes her nightmare real, and she's not even dependent on her rapist as Lolita is on hers.
The Great Gatsby and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn: I actually didn't love it when I first read it in high school, but F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece has come to be The Great American Novel in my eyes. It's come to symbolize the grandeur and excess of early 20th century New York City so thoroughly that people don't talk about having Roaring 20s parties, they talk about Great Gatsby parties. But for all that excess and wealth, there was also poverty and want, and Betty Smith's beautifully rendered coming-of-age story shows the struggle beneath the glitter.
Gone with the Wind and Beloved: Margaret Mitchell's classic of the antebellum South did bring us the incredible character of Scarlett O'Hara, but made no attempt to critically examine the machine on which that society was built: chattel slavery. Toni Morrison's Beloved, the story of a slave who escaped to the north at a great price, makes the horrors of it viscerally real. We often romanticize the plantation lifestyle, and we need to reckon with the terrible cost, too.
Little House on the Prairie and Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: I used to get in trouble in school for reading books while I was in class, and when I was a kid, Laura Ingalls Wilder's stories about her family's journey across the country were ones I tucked inside my textbooks to read again and again. But the westward drive of white settlers had a devastating impact on the people who'd lived there for hundreds of years, so Dee Brown's nonfiction recounting of the desperate, doomed fight of the Native Americans to retain their land and traditions is necessary to understand what the Ingalls family was actually a part of.
To Kill A Mockingbird and Native Son: That poor Tom is innocent of the charges against him is, of course, a critical part of the injustice Harper Lee's novel asks us to understand. But while Lee wraps it in a soft, white-savior narrative, Richard Wright's searing book is much less comfortable in its story of a young black man who does assault a white woman. It examines the social conditions of the Jim Crow era that perpetuated criminality in a very up-front way, really forcing us to consider our own complicity in the system.
Lolita and Speak: Don't get me wrong, I consider Vladimir Nabakov's tale of Humbert Humbert's obsession with the vulnerable Delores one of my all-time favorites. It's an incredible book and not nearly as salacious as most people expect. But it's the story of the predator, and for a story about the impact of being the very young prey of a rapist, it's hard to beat Laurie Halse Anderson's incredible YA novel about a teenage girl ostracized after she calls the police when she's assaulted at a party. Anderson makes her nightmare real, and she's not even dependent on her rapist as Lolita is on hers.
The Great Gatsby and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn: I actually didn't love it when I first read it in high school, but F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece has come to be The Great American Novel in my eyes. It's come to symbolize the grandeur and excess of early 20th century New York City so thoroughly that people don't talk about having Roaring 20s parties, they talk about Great Gatsby parties. But for all that excess and wealth, there was also poverty and want, and Betty Smith's beautifully rendered coming-of-age story shows the struggle beneath the glitter.
Tuesday, July 24, 2018
Top Ten Tuesday: Books with Vivid Reading Memories
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about books for which we have particularly vivid and detailed reading memories. I don't often have super strong recollections of where I was and who I was with when I read (even if I really like the book!), but for some books, I do, and here are ten of them.
Fifty Shades of Grey: I KNOW, okay? I have very vivid memories of reading these blissfully brain-engagement free books on the boat at my mom's house when I was studying for the bar exam. I raced through them, because goodness knows I needed something easy on the gray matter that summer.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Another memory very tied to the boat...years after their big popularity boom, I read them over the summer after my first year of law school. That year in particular was not great for me in a lot of ways, so I relished getting lost in these twisty, propulsive books.
Never Let Me Go: I can still picture the little purple bookcase in my room my senior year of college that this book sat on after I read it for the first time...and the couch in our living room that I read it on.
The Virgin Suicides: I remember picking this up at the bookstore and starting to read it while sitting in the backseat on the way home with my mom and sister and getting really excited about seeing Bon Secours Hospital, where I was born, turn up in the text.
A Wrinkle In Time: This is very unglamorous, but in the interests of honesty, this book was always sitting in a basket in the bathroom with reading material growing up and so I read and re-read it over and over again in there in little bits at a time.
Bridget Jones' Diary: I remember getting this book in high school and staying up late to read it (my light dim so I could turn it off quickly if my mom came to tell me to go to sleep), trying desperately to stifle the sound of my laughter.
Zodiac: This isn't really honeymoon reading, but that's when I read it. There was one night we were in Chicago that we had a just crazy thunderstorm (the night we were going to go down to the fireworks at the Navy Pier, in fact) and I remember sitting on the little loveseat by the window and just hearing the thunder crash while I read.
A Suitable Boy: This isn't just one memory, because this book is crazy long, but I remember very much living at home after my sophomore year of college and reading this book when I wasn't working my very short-lived stint as a checkout clerk at the local grocery store. I would stay up in my room for hours because it was so absorbing.
The Awakening: We read this book late my senior year of high school in AP English and got these really cheap paperbacks, and I remember very much freaking out because I'd managed to rip off a big chunk of the cover accidentally. Thankfully it was only like $5 to replace it.
Gone With The Wind: My mom once dated a guy who had a cottage in northern Michigan on Torch Lake and I remember that we went up there for a long weekend one summer to open it and this is what I was reading...it's forever linked in my mind with the slightly musty smell of a house that's been shut up all winter.
Fifty Shades of Grey: I KNOW, okay? I have very vivid memories of reading these blissfully brain-engagement free books on the boat at my mom's house when I was studying for the bar exam. I raced through them, because goodness knows I needed something easy on the gray matter that summer.
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo: Another memory very tied to the boat...years after their big popularity boom, I read them over the summer after my first year of law school. That year in particular was not great for me in a lot of ways, so I relished getting lost in these twisty, propulsive books.
Never Let Me Go: I can still picture the little purple bookcase in my room my senior year of college that this book sat on after I read it for the first time...and the couch in our living room that I read it on.
The Virgin Suicides: I remember picking this up at the bookstore and starting to read it while sitting in the backseat on the way home with my mom and sister and getting really excited about seeing Bon Secours Hospital, where I was born, turn up in the text.
A Wrinkle In Time: This is very unglamorous, but in the interests of honesty, this book was always sitting in a basket in the bathroom with reading material growing up and so I read and re-read it over and over again in there in little bits at a time.
Bridget Jones' Diary: I remember getting this book in high school and staying up late to read it (my light dim so I could turn it off quickly if my mom came to tell me to go to sleep), trying desperately to stifle the sound of my laughter.
Zodiac: This isn't really honeymoon reading, but that's when I read it. There was one night we were in Chicago that we had a just crazy thunderstorm (the night we were going to go down to the fireworks at the Navy Pier, in fact) and I remember sitting on the little loveseat by the window and just hearing the thunder crash while I read.
A Suitable Boy: This isn't just one memory, because this book is crazy long, but I remember very much living at home after my sophomore year of college and reading this book when I wasn't working my very short-lived stint as a checkout clerk at the local grocery store. I would stay up in my room for hours because it was so absorbing.
The Awakening: We read this book late my senior year of high school in AP English and got these really cheap paperbacks, and I remember very much freaking out because I'd managed to rip off a big chunk of the cover accidentally. Thankfully it was only like $5 to replace it.
Gone With The Wind: My mom once dated a guy who had a cottage in northern Michigan on Torch Lake and I remember that we went up there for a long weekend one summer to open it and this is what I was reading...it's forever linked in my mind with the slightly musty smell of a house that's been shut up all winter.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Didn't Like But Am Glad I Read
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl! This week, we're talking about books we didn't actually enjoy but were nevertheless glad we've read. For me, this kind of reading generally means classics, because I do like bragging about getting through these (and honestly, many of them are better than you think before you actually crack them open). So here are ten that didn't do it for me but I appreciate having finished anyways.
Don Quixote: I know this is considered a delightful comedic classic, but I hate this kind of cringe comedy. For me, the "joke" played out quickly and then there were still hundreds of pages to struggle through and emphasis on the struggle.
Crime and Punishment: I thought I hated Russian literature until I read Tolstoy. It turned out I love Tolstoy, so I happily turned to Dostoevsky in the hopes that I would love him too. Nope. Just Tolstoy. I hated this book.
Hunger: I found this book on a list of under-rated classics, but the best thing about it was that it was short.
Gone With the Wind: The movie is an (admittedly problematic) fave, but the book? Scarlett O'Hara is a total grade-A asshole but Vivien Leigh makes it compelling on screen. I just rooted for the Scarlett in the book to get her comeuppance.
Of Mice and Men: This one is less on the braggy side and more on the pop-culture reference understanding side.
The Catcher in the Rye: This one even more on the pop-culture side. Why does popular culture think the world is so invested in the narratives of Sad Alienated Boys?
Heart of Darkness: Being able to drop a pretentious allusion to this Joseph Conrad classic is literally the only reward for reading it.
Into the Wild: I enjoy having read this so I can rant about how much I hate it to anyone who tries to tell me that Christopher McCandless was anything other than a dude who deserved exactly what he got.
The DaVinci Code: This was not a good book, for me, but it was a cultural phenomenon and I'm glad I read it at the same time everyone else was.
Butterfly Boy: This was a book club pick and while I really appreciated getting the perspective of a man who is both gay and Latino, because it's not a kind of voice I experience very often, I didn't actually like reading it.
Don Quixote: I know this is considered a delightful comedic classic, but I hate this kind of cringe comedy. For me, the "joke" played out quickly and then there were still hundreds of pages to struggle through and emphasis on the struggle.
Crime and Punishment: I thought I hated Russian literature until I read Tolstoy. It turned out I love Tolstoy, so I happily turned to Dostoevsky in the hopes that I would love him too. Nope. Just Tolstoy. I hated this book.
Hunger: I found this book on a list of under-rated classics, but the best thing about it was that it was short.
Gone With the Wind: The movie is an (admittedly problematic) fave, but the book? Scarlett O'Hara is a total grade-A asshole but Vivien Leigh makes it compelling on screen. I just rooted for the Scarlett in the book to get her comeuppance.
Of Mice and Men: This one is less on the braggy side and more on the pop-culture reference understanding side.
The Catcher in the Rye: This one even more on the pop-culture side. Why does popular culture think the world is so invested in the narratives of Sad Alienated Boys?
Heart of Darkness: Being able to drop a pretentious allusion to this Joseph Conrad classic is literally the only reward for reading it.
Into the Wild: I enjoy having read this so I can rant about how much I hate it to anyone who tries to tell me that Christopher McCandless was anything other than a dude who deserved exactly what he got.
The DaVinci Code: This was not a good book, for me, but it was a cultural phenomenon and I'm glad I read it at the same time everyone else was.
Butterfly Boy: This was a book club pick and while I really appreciated getting the perspective of a man who is both gay and Latino, because it's not a kind of voice I experience very often, I didn't actually like reading it.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books I'm Thankful For
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic, with Thanksgiving in two days, is books that we're thankful for. This isn't usually how I think about books (I tend to think about good to bad, not more to less thankful), but I pondered for a bit, and here are ten books that make me grateful.
A Wrinkle In Time: For teaching me it was okay to be a prickly adolescent girl, and that I could still be the hero even if I was.
Anna Karenina: For teaching me that I didn't hate Russian literature (just Dostoyevsky).
Memoirs of a Geisha: For being a wonderful book, and then inspiring me to think more critically about own voices.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: For inspiring in me a lifelong fascination with psychology and the brain.
Lolita: For teaching me that the English language can be playful and unexpected.
To Kill A Mockingbird: For showing and not telling its lessons about injustice and being all the more powerful for it.
Gone With The Wind: For teaching me that sometimes the movie is better.
Harry Potter: For being magical.
The Hunger Games: For reminding me that reading outside of my usual genre lines can be very rewarding indeed.
The Handmaid's Tale: For making the misogyny behind male control of female reproduction blindingly obvious.
A Wrinkle In Time: For teaching me it was okay to be a prickly adolescent girl, and that I could still be the hero even if I was.
Anna Karenina: For teaching me that I didn't hate Russian literature (just Dostoyevsky).
Memoirs of a Geisha: For being a wonderful book, and then inspiring me to think more critically about own voices.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: For inspiring in me a lifelong fascination with psychology and the brain.
Lolita: For teaching me that the English language can be playful and unexpected.
To Kill A Mockingbird: For showing and not telling its lessons about injustice and being all the more powerful for it.
Gone With The Wind: For teaching me that sometimes the movie is better.
Harry Potter: For being magical.
The Hunger Games: For reminding me that reading outside of my usual genre lines can be very rewarding indeed.
The Handmaid's Tale: For making the misogyny behind male control of female reproduction blindingly obvious.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
Top Ten Tuesday: All-Time Favorite Couples
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! Today is Valentine's Day, y'all, so this week's topic is All About Romance. Since I've actually never done just a straightforward list of my favorite couples in the books I've read, I figure that's a great thing to highlight on the holiday of loooooooove.
Anne and Captain Wentworth (Persuasion): Persuasion was actually my first Austen, and I've never lost my fondness for this tale of love found, and lost, and then found again. Anne and Wentworth are a lovely couple and that they come together again after they've lived enough to really appreciate each other makes it sweeter.
Scarlett and Rhett (Gone With The Wind): Both bold and brash and so perfect for each other, although by the time Scarlett realizes how perfect he is for her, she's already pushed him away. I admit, the onscreen portrayals of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable bias me towards them because they're so amazing.
Jay and Daisy (The Great Gatsby): The kind of all-consuming love that makes someone devote themselves to becoming the kind of person they'd need to be to win the object of their desire is hard to argue with.
Elphaba and Fiyero (Wicked): This incredible take on The Wizard of Oz gives the green woman a full backstory, including a sweet and powerful love story.
Henry and Clare (The Time Traveler's Wife): I'm not big into "chick lit", but this story about a woman and man who love each other through a unique blend of space and time was powerful enough to overcome my biases.
Lyra and Will (The Amber Spyglass): I just finished going through this trilogy again on audiobook (which I highly recommend, Pullman narrates his own novels beautifully) and the scenes where they have to part broke my heart all over again.
Sabriel and Touchstone (Sabriel): I've always loved the way that Nix wrote Sabriel, so strong and independent, and that her love story feels like what love is in the real world: an addition, not the end-all-be-all of either person's existence.
Daine and Numair (The Realms of the Gods): I loved this series as a teen, and even though I now look a little more askance at the age difference between the young woman and her teacher, I like the way Pierce paces it. No insta-love here, rather a changing and deepening relationship between two people, which makes the payoff even better.
Alobar and Kudra (Jitterbug Perfume): I really enjoy Robbins, and the centuries-long love that he draws between a Bohemian king and an Indian widow is just one part of an epic about the power of smell and the quest to live forever.
Bridget and Mark (Bridget Jones' Diary): It feels like sacrilege to say that I didn't have especially strong feelings about Pride and Prejudice, but this modern take on it gets me much more invested in the relationship between our Lizzie stand-in and her Darcy.
Anne and Captain Wentworth (Persuasion): Persuasion was actually my first Austen, and I've never lost my fondness for this tale of love found, and lost, and then found again. Anne and Wentworth are a lovely couple and that they come together again after they've lived enough to really appreciate each other makes it sweeter.
Scarlett and Rhett (Gone With The Wind): Both bold and brash and so perfect for each other, although by the time Scarlett realizes how perfect he is for her, she's already pushed him away. I admit, the onscreen portrayals of Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable bias me towards them because they're so amazing.
Jay and Daisy (The Great Gatsby): The kind of all-consuming love that makes someone devote themselves to becoming the kind of person they'd need to be to win the object of their desire is hard to argue with.
Elphaba and Fiyero (Wicked): This incredible take on The Wizard of Oz gives the green woman a full backstory, including a sweet and powerful love story.
Henry and Clare (The Time Traveler's Wife): I'm not big into "chick lit", but this story about a woman and man who love each other through a unique blend of space and time was powerful enough to overcome my biases.
Lyra and Will (The Amber Spyglass): I just finished going through this trilogy again on audiobook (which I highly recommend, Pullman narrates his own novels beautifully) and the scenes where they have to part broke my heart all over again.
Sabriel and Touchstone (Sabriel): I've always loved the way that Nix wrote Sabriel, so strong and independent, and that her love story feels like what love is in the real world: an addition, not the end-all-be-all of either person's existence.
Daine and Numair (The Realms of the Gods): I loved this series as a teen, and even though I now look a little more askance at the age difference between the young woman and her teacher, I like the way Pierce paces it. No insta-love here, rather a changing and deepening relationship between two people, which makes the payoff even better.
Alobar and Kudra (Jitterbug Perfume): I really enjoy Robbins, and the centuries-long love that he draws between a Bohemian king and an Indian widow is just one part of an epic about the power of smell and the quest to live forever.
Bridget and Mark (Bridget Jones' Diary): It feels like sacrilege to say that I didn't have especially strong feelings about Pride and Prejudice, but this modern take on it gets me much more invested in the relationship between our Lizzie stand-in and her Darcy.
Tuesday, February 7, 2017
Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Wish Didn't Have Love Triangles
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic are books we wish had more or less of...something. Love triangles can be well-executed (Anna Karenina and The Age of Innocence both come to mind), but often don't add anything interesting or special to the story, rather padding it with extra drama that doesn't serve the underlying narrative very well. Here are ten books I wish I could read again without the love triangle element.
The Hunger Games: This is the start of an amazing trilogy about a young woman who conquers tremendous odds to become to be both a freedom fighter and a symbol of the resistance. Her relationship with Peeta is built slowly and organically, but the silly love triangle with Gale? Not even remotely necessary.
New Moon: Bella and Edward have plenty of obstacles in their romance without the artificial hurdle of stupid Jacob. This is the book where he's the most real as a third leg of the triangle, but mostly he's just sulking in the corner. Laaaaaame.
Water for Elephants: I loved this book about a young man who finds himself traveling along with a circus and working with an elephant, but the love triangle with Marlena and Jacob and August? Doesn't add that much to the story, really.
The Interestings: While Jules and Ethan have a connection (and Ethan has a crush) when they're teenagers, I never understood why it persists past the point when Ethan marries Ash and they have children. Jules is happily coupled, Ethan is happily coupled...why the need to add the *~drama~* of a long-burning love triangle?
Gone With The Wind: Has anyone who's ever read this book or seen the movie ever understood why Scarlett gets so hung up on Ashley?
The Circle: Every single person involved in the Mae-Francis-Kalden triangle sucks. Mae is a selfish asshole, Francis is the worst kind of "she friendzoned me" bro, and Kalden only ever wants to bang in weird places. There's no tension here.
From Dead To Worse: Most of the love triangles that make up Sookie Stackhouse's romantic life are well-rendered and entertaining, but Quinn is my least favorite of her partners and when it comes to either him or Eric Northman, it's hardly even imaginable why she might consider the other side.
Return Of The King: This is less of a love triangle than an ill-advised crush, but the half-heartedness of Eowyn-Aragorn-Arwen is just
The Marriage Plot: Being in a relationship with someone with a serious mental health issue is a topic that doesn't get explored very often, and Eugenides handles that issue really thoughtfully. But inserting Mitchell's crush on Madeleine like it's a viable spoiler to that romance? Falls totally flat.
Sophie's Choice: While Sophie's love affair with Nathan is a beautifully tragic, Stingo's desperate crush on her leads to one of the single most cringeworthy scenes I've ever read and it just feels so pointless.
The Hunger Games: This is the start of an amazing trilogy about a young woman who conquers tremendous odds to become to be both a freedom fighter and a symbol of the resistance. Her relationship with Peeta is built slowly and organically, but the silly love triangle with Gale? Not even remotely necessary.
New Moon: Bella and Edward have plenty of obstacles in their romance without the artificial hurdle of stupid Jacob. This is the book where he's the most real as a third leg of the triangle, but mostly he's just sulking in the corner. Laaaaaame.
Water for Elephants: I loved this book about a young man who finds himself traveling along with a circus and working with an elephant, but the love triangle with Marlena and Jacob and August? Doesn't add that much to the story, really.
The Interestings: While Jules and Ethan have a connection (and Ethan has a crush) when they're teenagers, I never understood why it persists past the point when Ethan marries Ash and they have children. Jules is happily coupled, Ethan is happily coupled...why the need to add the *~drama~* of a long-burning love triangle?
Gone With The Wind: Has anyone who's ever read this book or seen the movie ever understood why Scarlett gets so hung up on Ashley?
The Circle: Every single person involved in the Mae-Francis-Kalden triangle sucks. Mae is a selfish asshole, Francis is the worst kind of "she friendzoned me" bro, and Kalden only ever wants to bang in weird places. There's no tension here.
From Dead To Worse: Most of the love triangles that make up Sookie Stackhouse's romantic life are well-rendered and entertaining, but Quinn is my least favorite of her partners and when it comes to either him or Eric Northman, it's hardly even imaginable why she might consider the other side.
Return Of The King: This is less of a love triangle than an ill-advised crush, but the half-heartedness of Eowyn-Aragorn-Arwen is just
The Marriage Plot: Being in a relationship with someone with a serious mental health issue is a topic that doesn't get explored very often, and Eugenides handles that issue really thoughtfully. But inserting Mitchell's crush on Madeleine like it's a viable spoiler to that romance? Falls totally flat.
Sophie's Choice: While Sophie's love affair with Nathan is a beautifully tragic, Stingo's desperate crush on her leads to one of the single most cringeworthy scenes I've ever read and it just feels so pointless.
Tuesday, October 18, 2016
Top Ten Tuesday: Characters I'd Name A Child After
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic is characters we'd name a child after. I've got lots of thoughts about baby names (as a nine-and-ten year old, I'd read baby name books like they were actual books, cover to cover) and I've got lots of characters I love, so here are my ten!
Lyra Belacqua (The Golden Compass): I love this little hotheaded, stubborn, intelligent girl so much that I'd love to name a child after her and hope she could be nearly as delightful and challenging as her namesake.
Sabriel (Sabriel): Her strength and resourcefulness make her a wonderful role model for a little girl to look up to...and the name is familiar and yet different enough to be special.
Emma Woodhouse (Emma): A little more morally complex of a heroine, Emma is handsome and clever...and spoiled and selfish and convinced of her own rightness even when she probably shouldn't be. But she's charming and she learns a lesson by the end and no one's perfect, right?
Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre): I didn't expect much when I read this one a few years ago...gothic drama has not tended to light my fire. But I really liked it, and Jane herself is strong and bright and while Mr. Rochester is problematic, Jane herself is very much rootable-for.
Natasha Rostova (War and Peace): I LOVED Natasha for most of the (long) runtime, so to speak, of this classic that more people should actually tackle. She's a shining presence in the midst of a lot of very Russian sturm-und-drang (I know that's German, but I don't know what the equivalent would be in Russian). Like many, I'm disappointed in how the best character ended up...if you want to know why, you should read it!
Daine Sarassri (Wild Magic): I never got into much else in the Tamora Pierce bibliography, but I think it's because none of her other heroine spoke to me the way that Wild Magic's Daine did. Literally raised (in part) by wolves, she's connected to nature and animals and spunky and brave and great.
Sherlock Holmes (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes): He doesn't seem to be much of a functional human, but damn Sherlock is clever and interesting and it's weird but not too weird of a name for a kid, right?
Rhett Butler (Gone With The Wind): I will say that he's not as dashing on the page as he is on the screen, but it would have been really hard to measure up to Clark Gable at maximum charisma no matter what. And even on the page, he's still way better than Scarlett.
Samwise Gamgee (The Lord of the Rings): He's not the protagonist of LOTR, but I would argue that steadfast, truehearted Samwise is the hero. When I first read the books as a teenager I found him an irritating tag-a-long, but as you get older you see that the power of his devotion to his friend is the power that really destroys the Ring at the end.
Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire): There are so many indelible characters in this series that it's hard to pick just one. But to name a child after? The deliberate, strategic Tyrion, who recognizes that his body isn't going to be what gains him the respect he craves and develops his brain instead.
Lyra Belacqua (The Golden Compass): I love this little hotheaded, stubborn, intelligent girl so much that I'd love to name a child after her and hope she could be nearly as delightful and challenging as her namesake.
Sabriel (Sabriel): Her strength and resourcefulness make her a wonderful role model for a little girl to look up to...and the name is familiar and yet different enough to be special.
Emma Woodhouse (Emma): A little more morally complex of a heroine, Emma is handsome and clever...and spoiled and selfish and convinced of her own rightness even when she probably shouldn't be. But she's charming and she learns a lesson by the end and no one's perfect, right?
Jane Eyre (Jane Eyre): I didn't expect much when I read this one a few years ago...gothic drama has not tended to light my fire. But I really liked it, and Jane herself is strong and bright and while Mr. Rochester is problematic, Jane herself is very much rootable-for.
Natasha Rostova (War and Peace): I LOVED Natasha for most of the (long) runtime, so to speak, of this classic that more people should actually tackle. She's a shining presence in the midst of a lot of very Russian sturm-und-drang (I know that's German, but I don't know what the equivalent would be in Russian). Like many, I'm disappointed in how the best character ended up...if you want to know why, you should read it!
Daine Sarassri (Wild Magic): I never got into much else in the Tamora Pierce bibliography, but I think it's because none of her other heroine spoke to me the way that Wild Magic's Daine did. Literally raised (in part) by wolves, she's connected to nature and animals and spunky and brave and great.
Sherlock Holmes (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes): He doesn't seem to be much of a functional human, but damn Sherlock is clever and interesting and it's weird but not too weird of a name for a kid, right?
Rhett Butler (Gone With The Wind): I will say that he's not as dashing on the page as he is on the screen, but it would have been really hard to measure up to Clark Gable at maximum charisma no matter what. And even on the page, he's still way better than Scarlett.
Samwise Gamgee (The Lord of the Rings): He's not the protagonist of LOTR, but I would argue that steadfast, truehearted Samwise is the hero. When I first read the books as a teenager I found him an irritating tag-a-long, but as you get older you see that the power of his devotion to his friend is the power that really destroys the Ring at the end.
Tyrion Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire): There are so many indelible characters in this series that it's hard to pick just one. But to name a child after? The deliberate, strategic Tyrion, who recognizes that his body isn't going to be what gains him the respect he craves and develops his brain instead.
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Book 31: To Die For
"Around sixth or seventh grade we got the video camera- one of the first they came out with- and that's when Suzanne got into news. She'd have me tape her so she could watch her performances and work on certain problem areas, like licking her lips and saying um. It's a very competitive field, video journalism. And she figured it's never too early to start. She knew what she wanted by then, so why wait around to start developing her skills, is what she said. We were all so proud of her."
Dates read: March 14-16, 2016
Rating: 8/10
I don't care for the Kardashians. I refuse to purchase magazines that feature them as cover models. I don't watch any of their shows. I don't buy their apps. I find them to be vapid, shallow, and insipid; with no talent and nothing to offer. I am apparently in the minority in holding that opinion. Which is fine, other people apparently enjoy them and they're richer than I can even dream of ever being. But even I have to hand it to them in one respect...they are incredibly skilled at creating and maintaining one thing that many people want but few have: fame.
Suzanne Maretto, the main character of Joyce Maynard's To Die For, desperately wants to be famous. She wants nothing more in life than to be a national news anchor, and she pursues that goal with relentless determination. Not even just like Jim Harbaugh levels of determination. Attacking each day with an enthusiasm unknown to mankind isn't enough. She will do whatever it takes. If that means taking out her good-natured husband because he has the gall to want to start a family, well, that's what it means. She begins an affair with an underprivileged, not especially bright high school student and convinces him and his friends to carry out the hit.
The story is told in a multiple-narrator format. We don't know at the beginning that this is the story of a murder, just that something big must have happened. Chapters are told from the viewpoints of Suzanne's parents, her teenage lover, his friends, her husband's parents and friends, and even Suzanne herself (among others). Slowly, the story emerges: the affair, the murder, the arrests, the aftermath. It's well-written, with several very different perspectives that each maintain their own voice (her parents both think she's the bee's knees, but the tone of each parent varies from the other) and so engaging that you keep thinking "just one more chapter" (they're all short) and before you know it you've gobbled through half the book.
I remember seeing the movie treatment of this book several years ago, and enjoying both the sharp satire and the strong performances (Nicole Kidman as Suzanne and Joaquin Phoenix as her young boyfriend were both particularly good). Both the book and the movie depict that rare beast: the sociopathic female. It seems that career ambition is the new social climbing for ladies with anti-social personality disorder. While Scarlett O'Hara and Becky Sharp schemed to land themselves wealthy husbands, Suzanne Maretto and her obvious counterpart, Tracy Flick, maneuver to achieve professional goals. This makes me a little uncomfortable, honestly. I don't think you need to look further than the discourse that has surrounded Hillary Clinton during her time in public office to see that a woman who is too obviously interested in power is treated as some sort of freakish anomaly. I'm in my second traditionally male profession (the law, now lobbying) and the double standards at work are very real and very persistent.
Tell me, blog friends...would you want to be famous?
Note: Review cross-posted at Cannonball Read
Monday, May 23, 2016
Literary Adaptations...The Good
Any book snob will tell you that the book is always better than the movie. Always! I'm not a very good book snob, because I think that's baloney. A book is a different medium, but that doesn't mean that it's always the superior one. So get ready to hate, because here is my list of movies that I like more than the books they're based off of:
Practical Magic: Ok, qualifier here. This isn't a "good" movie. But it's really fun to watch. I remember being SO excited when I found out it was based off a book and eagerly tearing in...and hating it. The fun and lightness of the movie were nowhere to be found and while I've watched the movie over and over again, I've never been tempted to reopen the book.
Gone With the Wind: A lot of people love Margaret Mitchell's novel and it's widely considered a classic. But I'd seen the movie, with the absolutely perfect Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable so many times before I read it that it just couldn't measure up. The movie sheds some of the side plots that are more narratively deadweight, which helps it feel like it's moving along even through a run time long enough to require an intermission.
Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet: Reading the play is one thing, but seeing it come to vibrant life, original language and all, is awesome. Luhrmann finds the youth and impetuous energy of this play about young people and with the help of a well-cast Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes makes the Bard's words resonate way more than your randomly assigned classmates in 5th hour English.
The Godfather: The first two movies in this series (I pretend the third doesn't exist), tell what I will argue is the greatest American tragedy ever presented: the rise and fall of Michael Corleone. The story that Mario Puzo's The Godfather tells is a pretty boring gangster drama. Skip the book and watch the movies until you can recite them from memory instead.
Clueless: This is saying something, because I LOVE Emma. But Alicia Silverstone is so delightfully vapid but good-natured as Cher Horowitz that it's impossible to not just fall in love with her. It's not an especially faithful adaptation, but there are a lot more of the major themes and plot points in there than you might give it credit for unless you think about it. It updates and refreshes the story without being too revisionist.
The Shining: Stephen King's tale of claustrophobic horror is legitimately great, even though I honestly don't much care for horror as a genre. Either in books or movies, but Kubrick's version of the story (which shares only broad outlines with the original, much to King's dismay) is so weird and visually stunning that its domination of the source novel can't be denied.
Breakfast At Tiffany's: Truman Capote was famously displeased with what the movie did to his novella, which is beautiful written. Instead of casting Capote's friend Marilyn Monroe as Holly Golightly as he'd wanted, they gave the role to Audrey Hepburn and completely changed the ending. But I feel like the movie works even better, somehow, as Capote didn't want it, with a staying power much more durable than the original slim volume.
Tuesday, March 8, 2016
Top Ten Tuesday: Five Characters Everyone Loves But I Just Don't Get and Five Characters I LOVE But Others Seem To Dislike
Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish! This week's topic: characters you either love that everyone else hates or you hate that everyone else loves. I feel a little like this prompt is tilted towards reading that’s fandom-oriented (i.e. YA), which isn’t most of my reading. Since I can't come up with ten either way, I’m going to split this as 5 Characters Everyone Loves But I Just Don’t Get and 5 Characters I LOVE But Others Seem To Dislike.
Not For Me
Luna Lovegood (Harry Potter): Honestly, she was the first character that came to my mind when I read the prompt. People ADORE Luna, and I just...don't. I re-read the series a few years ago and my first impression was confirmed. She's not an awful character or anything, she's just not my cup of tea...I find her quirkiness irritating rather than endearing, which leaves me feeling all aloney on my owney.
Lizzie Bennett (Pride & Prejudice): Everyone falls all over themselves about what an amazing heroine she is, but she's my least favorite of the Austen novel leads. I get that the whole thing with the book is her and Darcy learning to get over their pride (hers) and prejudice (his), but she's kind of a jerk enough along the way that I'd have been just as happy to see her not get the happy ending (I think Darcy's pretty yuck himself, though, so they totally deserve each other anyways).
Tris Pryor (Divergent): I tried and failed to get into the Divergent books (I thought the first was decent, but the second annoyed me so much I didn't even pick up the third. I will at some point, probably, but I'm in no hurry at all. Tris completely failed to grab me...she just immediately felt like a poor man's Katniss Everdeen, except with all the real interest sucked out of her. Pass.
Scarlett O’Hara (Gone With The Wind): The only reason
anyone can stand her, I think, is Vivian Leigh’s incredible performance in the
movie adaptation. In the book, I found her selfish and spiteful and petty and just a terrible mother. I enjoyed the book much less than the movie and the character of Scarlett was the main reason why.
Don Quixote (Don Quixote): The power of my hate for this book a year after I've read it is unabated. If the guy were just being weird by himself and not getting anyone else involved in his nutty take on the world, I have no beef. But like old dudes everywhere, he goes ahead and decides that his view of the world is the only correct one, dammit. Ugh. Ugh. Hated him, hated Sancho, hated the book.
But I DO like...
Daisy Buchanan (The Great Gatsby): She's selfish and shallow, but I've always seen her as a sad and ultimately sympathetic character. To me, she's trapped inside the world she's chosen and swallowed up by it. She's a pretty little bird, raised in a cage, that lives in a cage, and ultimately will die there without ever knowing true happiness.
Cho Chang (Harry Potter): This is maybe cheating a little because I'm not a hardcore Cho fangirl, but I think she gets an unreasonable amount of pushback. Harry gets a crush on her, waits forever to make a move, and then gets all butthurt when she's had the audacity to start going out with someone else who likes her. And after that guy dies, she tries to move on with her life and give going out with Harry a shot and figures out she's not ready to date again yet. What's to hate on here? I genuinely don't get it.
Frodo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings): He's not anyone's favorite character in The Lord of the Rings trilogy...not even mine. But I feel like he gets brushed off as whiny or boring, when he's actually incredibly brave and dedicated. Guy has never left his hometown and then VOLUNTEERS to take the most powerful evil object that exists to the worst place in the world to destroy it, and stays true to his mission even though he's given plenty of chances to ditch it. He only falters at the very end, when the Ring's malevolent influence that has been working on him the entire time finally overcomes him. Frodo is a badass, yo.
Humbert Humbert (Lolita): I know. He's reprehensible. He's a child rapist. If he were an actual human, my legs couldn't carry me away from him fast enough. But as a character in a book, he's fascinating: witty, erudite, and completely undone by his infatuation with Lolita. It's a testament to the power of Nabokov's talent that he can write this absolute monster of a man with such pathos that he's not nearly as loathsome as he should be.
Becky Sharp (Vanity Fair): I totally did hate Becky for the first portion of the novel as she schemed away without any apparent thought for the consequences for other people, up to and including her only real friend Amelia. But as the plot pushed forward, I found myself rooting for her. She's totally a sociopath, but girl is a SURVIVOR. She does what she needs to do to. Now that I'm thinking about it, she's a lot like Scarlett O'Hara, but for some reason I find her struggles to work her way up the ladder from the bottom more compelling than Scarlett's quest to retain a top-level perch.
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