RealBooks4ever
Oh the joy of reading!
Dream Cast
And while we’re thinking about books converted to tv/movies. Do you ever sit and wonder who could be cast as your favorite characters? (Please feel free to give examples!)
What actors do you think have done particularly excellent jobs with some of your favorite characters?
I don’t generally see movies if I’ve read the book or know that I will be reading it. An old movie with Frank Sinatra, The Man With The Golden Arm, did a good job of capturing the zeitgeist of the book by Nelson Algren, one of my all-time favorite books.
If I were to cast someone, I’d like to see Ryan Reynolds as Takeshi Kovacs in Richard K. Morgan’s Altered Carbon.
As always, Booking Through Thursday is sponsored by Deb.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to simply cease believing that any destiny was hers; or to believe that love was as high a destiny as anyone could want or have, and which she did have? What if messing in it with spells and potions didn’t ward it off at all, but only turned it bitter, and sour, and cost her love as well…
~from Little, Big by John Crowley
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading.
Friday Finds 06-07-13
This past week I added the following books to my want list:
THE GIRL WHO WOULDN’T DIE HUNTS THE KILLER WHO SHOULDN’T EXIST.
The future is not as loud as war, but it is relentless. It has a terrible fury all its own.”
Harper Curtis is a killer who stepped out of the past. Kirby Mazrachi is the girl who was never meant to have a future.
Kirby is the last shining girl, one of the bright young women, burning with potential, whose lives Harper is destined to snuff out after he stumbles on a House in Depression-era Chicago that opens on to other times.
At the urging of the House, Harper inserts himself into the lives of the shining girls, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. He’s the ultimate hunter, vanishing into another time after each murder, untraceable-until one of his victims survives.
Determined to bring her would-be killer to justice, Kirby joins the Chicago Sun-Times to work with the ex-homicide reporter, Dan Velasquez, who covered her case. Soon Kirby finds herself closing in on the impossible truth …
THE SHINING GIRLS is a masterful twist on the serial killer tale: a violent quantum leap featuring a memorable and appealing heroine in pursuit of a deadly criminal.
If Mrs Tischbein had known the amazing adventures her son Emil would have in Berlin, she’d never have let him go.
Unfortunately, when his seven pounds goes missing on the train, Emil is determined to get it back - and when he teams up with the detectives he meets in Berlin, it’s just the start of a marvellous money-retrieving adventure …
A classic and influential story, Emil and the Detectives remains an enthralling read
and I purchased:
Set in a small-town North Carolina amusement park in 1973, Joyland tells the story of the summer in which college student Devin Jones comes to work as a carny and confronts the legacy of a vicious murder, the fate of a dying child, and the ways both will change his life forever.
THE ADVERSARY, review
Originally published in French, THE ADVERSARY has been translated into English by Linda Coverdale. The style is simple and uncomplicated.
The only other biography that the author, Emmanuel Carrére, has written is one of Phillip K. Dick, so I’m not sure that Mr. Carrére is the best person to have written this, although his bio states that much of his writing “centers around the primary themes of the interrogation of identity, the development of illusion and the direction of reality.”
For some twenty years, Jean-Claude Romand led a life based on lies. He said he graduated from medical school. He did not. He said he was a researcher at the World Health Organization. He was not.
In January of 1993, in a town in France on the border of Switzerland, Jean-Claude Romand killed his wife, then his seven-year-old daughter, then his five-year-old son. That evening he went to his parents house and killed his own father, then his own mother, who was shot in the chest so she saw what was coming. How can you describe anybody that does this as anything else but a monster, undeserved of life on Earth?
What’s really amazing is how he got away with having a family and no income. He was so “nice” that his family and friends trusted him to invest their money. Instead, it financed his life.
What’s missing in this book is photographs. I don’t think I’ve ever come across a true crime book that didn’t have photos. We need to put images to the names and places! What does this “nice” serial killer look like? Where did he grow up?
If you’re a true-crime buff I guess this would be ok to read. Its just not one of my favorites.
FINN FAMILY MOOMINTROLL, review
Tove Jansson’s FINN FAMILY MOOMINTROLL is a children’s book originally published in Finland in 1948. Jansson’s own 50 or so illuminating, detailed pen-and-ink drawings are a wonderful addition to the story.
The Moomins are a family of creatures who live in Moomin Valley. The son, Moomintroll, has adventures with his family and a wide assortment of friends. All of the beings have feelings that run the range that children can relate to: the excitement of finding something unusual, the sadness of friends departing, the happiness of celebrations.
There are too many adventures to name them all here, but there is an especially fanciful trip on a found sailing boat to Hattifattener’s Island, where the whole gang spends an exciting night.
My favorite character is Moominmamma, simply because she appreciates a good nap!
This is a great book to read to children, as they will certainly enjoy the varied personalities.
I hope to enjoy more of the Moomins’ adventures in the other books of the series and I thoroughly recommend this one.
Choosing
What makes you choose the books you read?
Genre? Reviews? Certain authors? Covers? Recommendations?
All of these many things go into what I choose to read next. Now, if they are in my personal library, they have already passed the reviews, cover, and recommendations (from Goodreads friends) test. I ask myself these questions to help me whittle down to the lucky tome.
- Is it already in my personal library?
- Does it qualify for a current reading challenge I’m participating in?
- What mood am I in - do I need some humor or do I need to get lost in a story on another planet?
- Is the author coming to town for an event soon?
Or, and this trumps everything: I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO READ IT NOW!
As always, Booking Through Thursday is sponsored by Deb.
Link! Zelda! I have no idea who the rest of these characters are! But there seem to be hundreds of them!
THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: HYRULE HISTORIA is chock-full of color sketches of the original ideas for characters and settings for all of the Zelda games since the 1980s. ALL OF THEM! Page after page after page. This book is so big, its really a coffee-table book. Its fun to just open it up and flip through a few pages at a time.
Unfortunately, there is one small drawback. The accompanying explanations are (to me at least) not-so-well translated. They just don’t flow. But what the heck, I don’t really need all that stuff anyway. I’m sure the hard-core fans will be appreciative of the information.
The newest versions of Link and Zelda look pretty cool in the book. One of these days I’ll have to find someone with a copy of the latest game so I can see what its like.
I recommend this book to people who love the game.
Were/are you a Legend of Zelda player? Which version of game do you like best?
~from Little, Big by John Crowley
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:
• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!
Hellboy Animated Volume 1: The Black Wedding, review.
Short, cryptic, simple. Just like my review.
It’s a BEAUTIFUL spring day here in Portland, Oregon!
From the reports from authors and publishers, the BEA (Book Expo America) in New York went well this year. I almost went but instead put the money towards buying a used car. Maybe next year. *sigh*
This month I’m going to read Little, Big, by John Crowley, along with the rest of the gang in the SciFi and Fantasy Book Club Group on Goodreads. So far, its simply magical!
I’m slagging a little in both the Mount TBR Challenge and the European Reading Challenge so I need to find some shorter titles to read to catch up. I forgot about the Worlds Without End’s 2013 Reading Challenge, which this year is “Women of Genre Fiction”, so I have to update my blog to show my progress in that one.
