Movies and Books

Even though it’s usually a mistake (grin) … do movies made out of books make you want to read the original?

Sometimes. I generally don't read a book just because there is a movie coming out, but if it's a book I want to read anyway the fact that a movie is coming out encourages me to read it sooner. I've actually read two of my favorite books after reading the movie versions of them. High Fidelity and About a Boy were, and still are, two of my favorite movies. I watched them both several times before finding out they were based on books. Then I realized they were both based on books by the same author- Nick Hornby. I ran to the store to get the books, read them both (I like the book High Fidelity more but I think I like the movie About a Boy more), further fueling my obsession with Nick Hornby. 

What do you think? Check out other answers at Booking Through Thursday. 

Housekeeping Vs. the Dirt

Housekeeping vs. the Dirt is the second volume of Nick Hornby's columns for The Believer. I recently reviewed the first volume, The Polysyllabic Spree, but these books can be read in any order you like. The columns list what Hornby has read, what books he has purchased, and what he thought about everything. I mentioned in my last review that Hornby isn't allowed to say negative things about a book because it is Believer policy. This is kind of annoying but I guess one plus side is that you can only come away from this book with at least mediocre recommendations.

One thing that still amazes me about Hornby's column is that the stuff he reads is really nothing like the stuff he writes. It seems like Hornby has a real thing for mysteries and if you've ever read a Hornby book you know there really isn't a whole lot of mystery to them. That being said, I think I liked Housekeeping vs. the Dirt much more than The Polysyllabic Spree as far as book recommendations go. From this book I found Chronicles: Volume One by Bob Dylan, Early Bird by Rodney Rothman, Saturday by Ian McEwan (or really just anything by Ian McEwan, this book reminded me I've yet to read him), In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (which I did read), The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler, and Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris (which I bought). So as you can see, that is quite a few more than the three books I came away from The Polysyllabic Spree wanting to read. He also talks about Persepolis and includes a selection from it, and since I really like that book the recommendation made me like this book even more.

I also really enjoyed the first few columns where Hornby references books that make you walk into a lamppost because they are so gripping. When I read this I had just finished Envy, which was a book that gripped me in such a way. I think in this volume Hornby really gets a good stride with his column, and he carries ideas through columns more. This is something you might not notice as much when you read each column individually as the new issue of The Believer comes out, but when you read them altogether you see how he brings back old ideas.

Loved this book, I give it an A.


I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
 

Top Ten Tuesday: Favorite Heroines

 I love books with really strong female characters, so I'm excited that Top Ten Tuesday is all about that this week. Check out other answers at The Broke and Bookish.

1. Jane Eyre of Jane Eyre One of my favorite books of all time. Jane isn't particularly outstanding, but she does stick up for herself and does what she believes is right, so I must respect her for that.
2. Katniss Everdeen of The Hunger Games series Another girl who does what she thinks is right, even in the face of danger.
3. Diana of The Luxe Series This is another girl (am I seeing a pattern?) who isn't afraid to say what she thinks or live her life the way she pleases, even if it's unpopular.
4. Marian Halcombe of The Woman in White Oh Marian. She is ugly, but incredibly smart and you just have to love her. The best character in the whole book.
5. Bridget of Bridget Jones's Diary She is hilarious, honest, and messed up just like the rest of us. A girl to love.
6. Margaret of Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret A young heroine, but like Bridget she is totally honest with what she thinks, even if its bizarre or rude.
7. Joan Didion of The Year of Magical Thinking This is a nonfiction book, but I think I love her character in the book for a lot of the same reasons as I love Bridget and Margaret, although she is less funny. She doesn't lie though, and it would be easy to lie in the situation she is in.
8. Hermoine Granger of The Harry Potter series Smart, outspoken, and not afraid to run with the boys. Gotta love Hermoine!
9. Edna Pontellier of The Awakening This is just a beautiful, sad book and I really admired her character when I first read it.
10. Scout of To Kill a Mockingbird Another young heroine but one of my favorites. Not afraid to ask questions or say things how they are.

So apparently I love women who aren't afraid to tell it like it is! Wonder what that says about me in real life?

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid

In my post about the Audiobook I mentioned that The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid was my first audiobook. For this review I'll talk a little bit about the book itself and then I'll talk about the actual audiobook. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is a memoir about Bill Bryson's childhood in Des Moines, Iowa, during the 1950's. It's about Des Moines, but not just about Des Moines. It's about a time when moms stayed at home and made meals out of magazines, kids could ride their bikes downtown without parental supervision, and all the restaurants you went to were locally owned. Basically it's about a world that doesn't exist today, and maybe about a world that never really did exist in real life.

A disclaimer, I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa, too, although I grew up in the 1990's. Because of that I enjoyed this book a lot. It was insane for me to hear about all the restaurants and stores that used to exist in Des Moines and are no longer there. Des Moines has changed a lot even in my lifetime. The East Village used to be a really dumpy somewhat terrifying area, and now it has tons of hip boutiques and ethnic restaurants. I worked in the East Village this summer and I never ran into a pan handler, which used to be unheard of. Some of the things he talks about I knew existed at one point, or they closed during my lifetime, but most of these things I'd never heard of, never thought of, never seen. Bryson talks about how Des Moines used to be, and how America used to be, this wholesome, local business thing. And while he was a part of that, he was also a bit of an outsider. Both of his parents worked, which was unusual for Des Moines at the time, and they both worked as newspaper writers, which was a different career than most people in Des Moines had at the time. Because of this I think he can give a unique perspective on that world and how people, or even how he himself, reacted to his family.

The audiobook itself is wonderful. It's narrated by Bill Bryson who is obviously from Iowa so he says very Iowan things, like warsh instead of wash, but he's lived in England for quite awhile and so he has a bit of a British accent as well. He is a great reader and has great delivery with his jokes. I listened to this audiobook while walking or driving and I caught myself getting stared at because I was laughing hysterically at what he was saying. It feels a lot more like he is telling you about his life than reading a book he wrote to you.

I give this audiobook an A.

I am an Amazon Affiliate. If you make a purchase using one of my links I will earn a small percentage which will then go back into this blog.
 

Sunday Salon: 200 Followers & How I Read

When I reached 100 followers in time for my six month anniversary I made a new goal to reach 200 by the end of my first year. My one year anniversary is in October, about a month and a half away. But if you take a look, I've already reached 200 followers. This is a ginormous accomplishment and I have all of you to thank for it because my readers are the best advertisers of this blog. You guys put me on your blog roll, retweet my posts, and tell your friends about my blog. This is awesome! When I started this blog I had to know sense of what I was doing or where it would go, but in less than a year I've find an amazing community of people who love books as much as I do and are willing to spread the word about what I do here. I'm so grateful for that.

The question I get asked most frequently about my blog is how I make time for all of this reading. The answer is simple: I make time for it. I make time for reading just like I make time to go hiking on Sundays, go for walks, ride my bike, cook healthy meals. I spend a lot of time trying to live a healthy lifestyle and to me reading is a part of that. Reading feeds my mind. Sometimes when I'm done with all of my homework I look at my TBR pile and think, "Ugh, I don't have time for this. I just want to dink around on the Internet." But when I come to the Internet I see hundreds of tweets and blog posts all about reading. That is one of the greatest encouragements. When you see that there are other people out there reading books that look good and talking about them, it gives you a reason to leave the laptop and pick up a book for awhile.

Another encouragement is making someone decide to read a book based on your review of it. This is my favorite part about blogging. I love, love, love when someone leaves a comment on a review that says "I think I'm going to have to read this!" Even better than that, I love when someone comes back to my blog a few weeks later and says, " I read that book because of your review and I loved it." To be a part of helping people decide what to read is a beautiful thing. And all of you have given me some great recommendations too! You always come to the rescue when I say, "Gee, I don't know if I should read this book or this book." You give me reasons why, all of you.

So basically what I'm trying to say is thanks. For being cheerleaders, mentors, recommendationists, and friends.

Awesome Essays: The Crack-Up & I Met the Walrus

For my film and essay class we had to read the introduction to The Art of the Personal Essay edited by Phillip Lopate. The introduction made reference to several essays that are in the book, most of which I had never read before. Until I came across one, The Crack-Up by F. Scott Fitzgerald. When Lopate made reference to that essay I exclaimed, "This book has The Crack-Up in it?!?!?!" You can ask my boyfriend, this is a true story. I was thrilled because The Crack-Up was one of the first essays I read and loved, way back in high school, and it was also one of the first times that I realized that essays were the genre I was reading and writing so much. So The Crack-Up holds a very special place in my heart, and I think you all will enjoy it as well.

The essay is basically about hitting rock bottom and what comes with that. Like a growing hatred for everything. I would also say the essay is a bit about being so much part of the time you grew-up in or the time you loved in your life (for Fitzgerald this would probably be the 1920's) and then trying to adjust to time when you are still the person you were during that important time of your life. This is something my mom has talked about before. She grew-up mostly during the 1960's and she often talks about how she can't really understand the world she lives in now because it is so different from the one she grew-up in. This isn't an overt part of the essay and it might not even be something Fitzgerald intended us to see, but it's something that I have taken from the essay. So here is a bit:

As the twenties passed, with my own twenties marching a little ahead of them, my two juvenile regrets- at not being big enough (or good enough) to play football in college, and at not getting overseas during the war- resolved themselves into childish waking dreams of imaginary heroism that were good enough to go to sleep on in restless nights. The big problems of life seemed to solve themselves, and if the business of fixing them was difficult, it made one too tired to think of more general problems.

Life, ten years ago, was largely as personal matter. I must hold in balance the sense of the futility of effort and the sense of the necessity to struggle; the conviction of the inevitability of failure and still the determination to "succeed"- and, more than these, the contradiction between the dead hand of the past and the high intentions of the future. If I could do this through the common ills- domestic, professional and personal- then the ego would continue as an arrow shot from nothingness to nothingness with such force that only gravity would bring it to earth at last.

For seventeen years, with a year of deliberate loafing and resting out in the center- things went on like that, with a new chore only a nice prospect for the next day. I was living hard, too but: "Up to forty-nine it'll be all right," I said."I can count on that. For a man who's lived as I have, that's all you could ask."

-And then, ten years this side of forty-nine, I suddenly realized that I had prematurely cracked. 

You can read this essay on Esquire's website, where the essay was originally published. It's about ten pages long in print.

I would also like to share this short film essay, it's only five minutes long. It's an interview between a 14-year-old Beatles fan and John Lennon in Toronto, 1969. A few years ago John Raskin and the boy in the interview, Jerry Levitan, worked with two illustrators to create this really interesting visual representation of the interview.