Death Comes to Pemberley

I am a huge fan of P. D. James, but not so Jane Austen, but I was interested to how James did writing in the style of Austen and combining it with a mystery. The novel is about a murder that threatens to disturb the quiet, settled married life of Elizabeth Barrett and Darcy (from Pride and Prejudice). Good sister Jane is there and also the youngest sister Lydia, who married the scalawag Wickham. It was not one of James' best mysteries, but she did a good job setting it in 19th century England with appropriate language.

It is presently #4 on NY Times Hard Cover Fiction bestseller list

Water For Elephants

I read two other books by Sara Gruen before I read Water for Elephants.  I was originally skeptical of the book because of the circus setting, but it's really not at all about the circus.  She has a knack for writing emotional dramas that pull you in and make you care about the characters, despite or because of their flaws.  It's basically a love story, but I couldn't really decide if it had a happy ending or not - the whole book has sort of a sad feel to it, even though the boy and girl do get together.

Currently #20 on the New York Times "Combined Print and E-Book Fiction" Bestseller list.

Hunger Games

I heard about this book at the National Book Festival in DC two years ago.  The third book in the series, Mockingjay, had just been released, and the author, Suzanne Collins, was a speaker at the event.  The description of her motivation for writing the book was pretty interesting - she said that September 11 defines the life of kids this day and that she tried to write a story of war from a kid's perspective.

There's a lot of trauma in these books.  I find it hard to believe it's appropriate for pre-teens, the books' target audience.  Of course, I watched Disney movies almost exclusively through high school.  :) 

I'm going to reread the books before the movie for the first book comes out in March.  I am curious to see how the movie script handles the political and social message of the books while portraying the action central to the games.

Hunger Games is currently the #1 bestselling Children's Series Book on the New York Times Bestseller List!

February Book Club

Thanks for a great discussion of books on the blog and at our meeting!  There are many, many more books that have been made into movies than I ever knew.  We chose our theme for February and we should get just as much variety out of our selections this month as well!

This month's theme:  Books on the New York Times Bestseller List

Have fun reading!

One For the Money

For fans of Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series, I think the movie will be a huge disappointment.  It was soooo poorly cast.  I could not get over the fact that my mental image of the characters (through eighteen books now!) did not match in any way, shape, or form, the actors they chose for the movie.  I don't think I'm alone in this either.  The movie itself was cute, but I don't know how it would seem to those who hadn't read the books.  I'm hesitant to think anyone who hadn't read the series would be interested in seeing the movie.  They changed the storyline a little bit, but not outrageously.  The chemistry between Stephanie (Katherine Heigl) and Ranger and Morelli (actors I don't really know) was minimal.  It was just uncomfortable and weird.  In any case, I don't recommend the movie, but the books are amusing and fun!

Chronicles of Narnia

I actually really like the new movies.  Prince Caspian was a bit farfetched with Caspian being at least a teenager in the most recent movie and definitely younger in the book, but I liked some of the changes they made to Voyage of the Dawn Treader and they were quite faithful to the book in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  They are, of course, much better produced than the original BBC mini series, but the big stuffed lion they used for Aslan in the TV version will always hold a special place in my heart.  :) 

Edmund has always been my favorite, even with the whole betrayal thing in the first book.  He grows up so much by the second book!  Peter is too self-righteous for me and Susan is too holier than thou.  I didn't realize when I first read the series that the Magician's Nephew was sort of tangential to the storyline.  I reread all the books before the new movies came out and they were much simpler that I remember them being.  I didn't read too much into the religious aspect - the Aslan/Jesus connection is fairly obvious, but I think I need to study more about Christianity to get all the details.

Princess Bride

Classic!!!  My brother and I could quote most of this movie.  I read the book way after falling in love with the movie.  It was OK.  I liked learning more about the background of Fezzik and Inigo, but for an adventure story, the writing was pretty blah.  I found the ending quite surprising - the version of the book I have has an excerpt from the unfinished sequel, Buttercup's Baby.  But the movie really brought the book to life.  Still love it!

Atonement

Books like this are too depressing.  And the movie just made it worse.  For this one, I was interested in the movie first because of the two main actors.  I have a not-so-secret crush on James McAvoy (see earlier blog on Dune) and Keira Knightley is one of my favorites too.  I will admit that I did not watch the entire movie (once the sister does her whole betrayal thing, I stopped).  Interestingly, my brother watched the entire movie (totally not his thing), and told me what happened.  I didn't want to read the book, but I wanted to know how it ended "for real" (I'm bad that way sometimes), so I read the last couple chapters.  Not good.  Writing a book with a happy ending does not count as atonement.  All that does is make you look better.  It doesn't change the reality that you ruined multiple people's lives because you were a vindictive, petty child.  I would not have forgiven the sister either.  I'm kind of Count of Monte Cristo that way, I think.  :)

In Her Shoes

I definitely liked the book better than the movie here.  Cameron Diaz's character (Maggie) was not well developed in the movie and Toni Collette's character (Rose) seemed so whiny and petty, a lot different than how they were in the book.  I thought Jennifer Weiner did a really good job making both characters sympathetic to the reader and the final conclusion was a nice compromise.  I don't have a sister, so I'm not sure what a sister-sister relationship is like, but from the books I've read, they can be sort of turbulent...  :)  I've read other Jennifer Weiner books, and I like this one the best.

Harry Potter!!!

I decided to counter my disappointment with Extremely Loud by writing a post on Harry Potter.  :)  Besides having a strong preference for fantasy books in the first place, I was surprised how sophisticated the books were.  Unlike some other young adult fantasy series, the characters in Harry Potter were well developed and the plot was quite thorough (a little cheesy at times, but thorough).  The movies were well produced and they interpreted the books nicely.  The acting was OK...but I could have done with more chemistry between Harry and Ginny.  Those scenes are soooo awkward!  The Weasley twins are my favorite!

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

I gave up on this book last night.  I was trying to read it for the book club meeting, but it's not happening.  It's like reading a reeallly looong poem that makes no sense.  Maybe I'm just a lazy reader.  I have no idea how they made this book a movie.  At least not one that has an understandable plot.  This book got rave reviews from professional critics and from friends.  I just don't get it - I feel like I need Cliff Notes!  If someone can explain that book, that'd be great!

The Secret Life of Bees

I read this book a couple years ago - it was one of my first forays into actual literature.  I thought the characters were memorable (really touched by May's wailing wall), and the story actually got me interested in beekeeping!  :)  Given what we talked about with "The Help," it's a different take on race relationship in the same time period.  Now that I think about it, race isn't really the central issue at all - it's more a novel on domestic violence.  I haven't watched the whole movie, but I've seen a bunch of clips from TV airings. I think the casting was well done - I wasn't distracted by the fame of the actors and they seemed to fit their roles nicely.

Heidi

My all-time favorite kid's book!  I've seen three of the movies - a cartoon called "Heidi's Song," the Shirley Temple one, and a more recent one with Jane Seymour as Fraulein Rottenmeier.  I think the last one was the most faithful to the book, but the cartoon version had some great songs!  Well, they were great when I was a kid.  :)  The Shirley Temple version just made me upset - too much running around at the end and she was a little too pouty for Heidi.  Meanwhile, Heidi was supposed to have black hair, and all of the Heidi's I've seen are blond!  I guess short black curly hair doesn't fit Hollywood's view of a little Swiss maid.  The Alps is one of my other top-ten destination places.

The Colour Of Magic

This is a very early novel by Terry Pratchett. I will admit upfront that this is a bit of a stretch since there is only a very old made for TV movie about this (starring Sean Astin and Tim Curry), but I have been a bit busy and so I dug through Billy's books to find something that fit the category. I will also admit that I am only half way through it right now. So with all my excuses out of the way, I must say so far the book is great. I have only read one book by Terry Pratchett before (Good Omens, co-written by Neil Gaiman). I can now see where the odd, ironic humor in Good Omens comes from.

The Colour of Magic is based on the Disc World (apparently there is a series of books that call Disc World home). It is quite a funny book. There is a wonderful relationship between a character Rincewind and Death that often causes me to chuckle out loud. The only thing I am not thrilled with so far is that the book jumps around a lot. The jumping seems to be chronological, so I don't mean flashbacks, but it does get a bit confusing. I will say my confusion could also be a result of only reading 3-4 pages at a time before I fall asleep. Anyway, if you are a fan of fantasy or you like a funny read, so far this seems to be a good choice.

As for the made for TV movie, I saw part of it streamed from NetFlix, no need to add it to your queue.

Band of Brothers

This book has been criticized by some WWII afficionados for focusing on an elite group. As I see it, the book was timed perfectly for the first wave of WWII recognition in the 90s--the 50th anniversary of the War. It gave faces to the soldiers, and while they were not the dogfaces slogging it out in the foxholes across Europe or island-hopping across the Pacific, they were riflemen who saw serious combat. It is an honest book based on a lot of primary sources including extensive interviews.

It's fairly well written and follows the group from training until they were disbanded at the end of the war. It follows up with brief descriptions of the survivors PostWar stories (where available). One of the advantages of following such a group as this is that they were among the strongest and most fit of their generation, so in general, their survival rate is pretty good. Dick Winters only died last January (1/2/11). There's not a lot of fancy writing...no poetic descriptions. It's a practical book, relaying information about the men and what happened to them. As with much of history, the survivors get to shape the story. However, Ambrose did a good job of covering all the bases and tried hard to be objective. If you are at all interested in the European Theatre of Operations of WW II and have not read the book, you should. If you have seen the TV series, you should read the book as there is a lot more detail.

As for the series--Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks made it after Saving Private Ryan, again during the peak of the 'Greatest Generation' fanfare. Hanks and Spielberg are of my generation. Most of the boys growing up in the 50s played WWII games. The early 60s marked the 20th anniversary of the War and this greatly influenced the children, especially boys, of this generation. This was a childhood fantasy realized (okay--that's a little simplistic, but I can see where this actor and producer were coming from). A chance to do a really good, bang up job of showing the war, 'The Good War', the one where the US was on the side of the angels and we won.

They did a TV miniseries (on HBO so they could be accurate as to violence, language, and sex) so it could show the entire scope in great detail. They re-interviewed the surviving members of the unit multiple times ('How did you feel when this happened? Did you smile?') to get real accuracy. They (producers) spared no expense having replicas made of everything, sometimes using the original molds or Army specs. The costumes, equipment and events were as perfectly true to the real ones as they could possibly be.

As for the acting/casting. They got young actors who resembled the real men as closely as possible. They underwent a grueling boot camp to learn to act like young soldiers instinctively. It paid off, the show/movie was incredibly realistic.
Differences between the book and the movie? Well, they had pinpoint accuracy on equipment and settings and, for the most part, historical events. They did not show the stories of the people with 100% accuracy. For example, the show implied that Blithe died in 1948. He actually survived until 1967. Eugene, the medic, did not find Renee's scarf. The book never mentions any direct interaction between Debs and the nurses, although the nurses were there and Renee was killed in the Christmas bombing of Bastogne.

However, this is not actually a criticism. They had to focus on individual characters and tell a 75 minute 'story' with each episode in a way that the book didn't. They did a good job making the show watchable and compelling while being true to the overall truth.

I have to say that reading the book made watching the show easier--it is difficult to tell the men apart for a while. They all dress alike, they all are white and young. I've watched the series 3 times, and I'm only just getting so I know who everyone is in all the scenes.

Anyway, this is one of the bestest war 'movies' ever made. The book was an excellent source of detailed description(s) of the lives of these young men who were went through excruciating experiences that we can never really understand.... les

Seabiscuit

I read this book twice -- when it was published and then again recently for my book club. I also saw the movie, which is good, but not nearly as impressive as the book. I never thought I would be as interested in horses and horse racing as I was. Hillenbrand's style of writing is a great blend of nonfiction (lots of facts) with literary elements. Her development of the main characters, including Seabiscuit, is amazing; you really get to know the people/horses. The book gave me a respect for horses, jockeys and trainers that I never had. This book is a winner, as was Seabiscuit!

Dune

I watched the 1984 version of this film with Kyle MacLachlan and Sting (lol!) before reading the book.  Then I read the book and really had no idea what was going on.  It was too political for my teenage brain.  :)  Then the Sci-Fi made-for-TV version of the first three books came out and  I reread them.  Honestly, because I had a crush on James McAvoy.  :)  They made more sense and Frank Herbert's got a very interesting imagination, but then I read the next three books in the original series and my brain imploded.  I had no idea what was going on and I was mad that 3000 years passed between the third and fourth books. 

Time Traveler's Wife

I was mad at this book when I finished it.  I really liked it for 98% of the book and then the ending, which I didn't see coming at all, knocked me over.  It's the reason I didn't see the movie, even though I like Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams.  Did anyone see the movie and like it?  Or not get knocked over by the ending of the book?

Little Women

Lots of classics have been made into movies.  I thought of Little Women because they were playing the movie a lot during the holidays (and, no laughing, it's the first book in my bookcase that fits the theme).  :)  Anyway, the version with June Allyson and Elizabeth Taylor is the best.  Which little woman do you connect with?  I've always loved Jo, but I think I'm the most like Meg.  I'm not rebellious enough for Jo.  :)  I didn't get into too many of Louisa May Alcott's books.  My favorite is actually one that very few people have read, I think.  It's called "Eight Cousins."

Angels and Demons

I read Angels and Demons because of the hubbub over The Da Vinci Code.  But I like reading books in order and A&D came first.  Subsequently read The Da Vinci Code and The Lost Symbol.  I think my favorite was The Da Vinci Code.  A&D was gruesome, although the palindromic writing was totally cool!  Yesterday, one of my students asked me what the Illuminati was.  :) 

DVC was like a treasure hunt - more fun, with a touch of suspense.  The Lost Symbol was...disappointing.  I gotta say, I wasn't as upset at Tom Hanks being cast as Robert Langdon as most people seemed to be.  I didn't watch the movies though.  I've seen clips of them on TV, and they don't seem to convey the level drama and suspense that my imagination conjures up when I read the books.

Something Borrowed

So I bought Something Borrowed cuz the cover was a pretty pink.  :)  I am guilty of judging books by their cover.  And I was starting a chick lit phase in my reading choices.  I find the way they write girls in chick lit both fascinating and completely obnoxious.  Sometimes it makes me embarrassed to be a girl.  Are we really that ditzy?  Whiny?  Selfish?  I sort of got sick of the whole "martyr-act" by Rachel too.  Meanwhile, Emily Giffin's a really engaging writer and I've read all her books except one.  I saw the movie with Audrey and surprisingly liked it.  They nailed the casting - John Krasinski was perfect as Ethan.

Lord of the Rings

I have always been a fan of the fantasy genre, but I never read this trilogy until the movies came out.  As much as I admire Tolkein's creativity, I think it's agreed that the writing is fairly archaic and stilted.  There's a lot of detail about scenery and whatnot that's beautifully written, but sort of takes away from the adventure story.  Anyway, I thought the movies really enhanced the books and helped readers visualize Tolkein's world.  And who doesn't love Orlando Bloom as Legolas?!  :)

The Help

I know quite a few of us have read this one already and seen the movie, but I don't want to spoil the book for others who haven't finished it yet, so I'm not going to go into too much detail here.  Bottom line: LOVED IT!  I was a little confused when I first started reading it.  I don't know why, but at first, I didn't realize that all the "Ms. So-and-so" were really young girls.  I envisioned them as being older until they got to Skeeter and how she just got out of college.  And the movie was probably one of the best adaptations of a book I have ever seen!  Iw as really nerbous about seeing it at the beginning too, cuz I thought the tone was too cheerful compared to the book.  I was very happily wrong about that!

Anne of Green Gables

I love when PBS is doing it's fundraising thing and they broadcast this movie!  It's one of the few movies that got me into a book.  Usually it's the other way around for me.  I do hate what they did with the third movie though.  The first two were so good and followed the books so well!  But I thought the third movie messed up not only the story, but the whole feel of the books too.

The Adventures of Tin Tin

This isn't the book I'm reading for the book club, but we just went to see the movie yesterday and my husband has all of the original comic books!  I never read these when I was a kid; never even heard of it until I saw my husband's collection.  Have any of you read them before?  The movie was entertaining and the animation was AMAZING!  The movie was based on three of the comics: The Crab With the Golden Claws, Red Rackham's Treasure, and The Secret of the Unicorn.  Like most comic books, they're sort of a social commentary - there are some stereotypical racial references and lots of east vs. west cold war stuff, but they're still fun to read.  If I knew more about history, I'd probably get more out of them.  :) 

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

So I've heard rave reviews about this book and since the movie just came out, I figured, sure, why not?  I like reading the book before I see the movie.  Sometimes it's worth it (The Help) and sometimes it's not (Lord of the Rings trilogy).  Anyway, back to this book - I hated it.  The writing was AWFUL and the story was not as original as everyone made it seem.  Anyone with me here?  I think I'm the only person I've talked to who didn't like this book.  :)

January Book Club

Welcome everyone!  I'm so excited about starting this book club!  I am starting a blog so we can start discussing our books as we read them and so people who may not be able to come to the book club meeting can still participate and weigh in with their thoughts.

This month's theme: books that have been made into movies

If you know what book you want to read, are reading, or have already read, go ahead and start a post. You can choose to read the same book as someone else or not - read something you find interesting!