Category: Books

Books made into movies: Summer 2011

- Ann 1 Comment

This summer there are some major movies coming to theaters that were originally books!  Here are a few of them:

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin – This one is already in theaters!  It is about a girl who falls in love with her best friend’s husband-to-be after a one night stand, and the movie stars Kate Hudson, Ginnifer Goodwin, and John Krasinski. Guest blogger Bethany wrote about it just yesterday.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling – The final part of this saga is finally coming to an end with the epic battle between good and evil.  Before the midnight showing of the movie, I might have to flip through a copy of the book again.  After all, I have to get my costume just right!

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay – This book club favorite tells the story of a journalist writing about a girl caught up in one of the raids of World War II.  The movie will star Kristin Scott Thomas. Ann blogged about this book here.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett – Set in Jackson, Mississippi during the civil rights movement, this bestseller is about a girl fresh out of college who has taken on a writing project about the experiences of African-American maids.  The film version boasts an all-star cast, including Emma Stone, Viola Davis, Sissy Spacek, and Allison Janney. Read Ann’s blog about this book here.

If you want to read the book before heading to the theater, stop by the library to see if there’s a copy available!

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin

- Ann Leave a comment

submitted by guest blogger Bethany

There have been books I’ve loved and books I’ve hated; but never has there been a book where I disliked every character and continued to read….until now. Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed did just that to me. Though the story is about a 30-year-old-lawyer, Rachel, having an affair with her best friend’s fiance, it actually delves into the complexity of female relationships. With flashbacks of Rachel and her best friend’s relationship, starting from their childhood, Giffin explores the world of female competition, rivalry and approval. There was not one person I was cheering for in the book. Their morals were astonishing and their mental justifications were far off based; however, I kept turning the pages and ended up finishing Something Borrowed in three days. I needed to know what would happen, and how Giffin would do it. Giffin ended the book in a way that pleased me; without giving anything away I’ll just say this: the ending was fairly realistic and believable.

New resources for your book club!

- Ann Leave a comment

The library is in the process of adding 15 new kits to our Bookclub in a Box collection!  If you haven’t used them before, the kits are filled with multiple copies of a book (and even the audio version for some), a list of discussion questions, and other resources to build up your book discussion group.  We now have the kits at all three locations (Main Street, Fairmount Street, and Eastern Avenue), so stop by any of our locations to pick one up today!

Here are the newest titles that have been added to the Bookclub in a Box collection:

The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

Escape by Carolyn Jessop

The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

No! I Don’t Want To Join A Book Club! by Virginia Ironside

Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Save Your Own by Elisabeth Brink

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver

The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

Last Night at the Lobster by Stewart O’Nan

And additional kits coming soon include:

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld

A Mercy by Toni Morrison

Lethal Legacy by Linda Fairstein

A Version of the Truth by Jennifer Kaufman

Deer Hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant

The Armchair Traveler – I Love L.A.

- Lynn Leave a comment

Iconic movies  about Los Angeles are:

L.A. Confidential, based on the book by James Ellroy. 1950’s Southern California in all it’s noir glory. Three cops are drawn into a complicated web of crime involving prostitutes and plastic surgery. Heavy hitters like Kevin Spacey, Guy Pearce and Russell Crowe are fun to watch, even as the plot gets more and more challenging to follow.

The Player, based on the book  by Michael Tolkin. In typical Robert Altman fashion, the film is jam-packed with movie actors playing themselves (over 65 of them). Part of the fun is spotting them as they pop up in the background. Tim Robbins is “the player”  – a movie executive who is in constant negotiations with screenwriters and actors.

L.A. Story, screenplay by Steve Martin. One of Sarah Jessica Parker’s breakthrough performances; she plays a bouncy, free-spirit named SanDeE*, who has a life-altering effect on weatherman Steve Martin. Like The Player, this is a satirical look at the L.A./Hollywood lifestyle, though more affectionate and celebratory.

Last Full Measure

- Ann Leave a comment

2011 marks the beginning of the Sesquicentennial of the American Civil War. Even though it is 150 years in the past, it remains the pivotal, defining event in American history, an event that people come back to time and again. Alistair Cooke once said that to understand America, you had to study the Civil War. While we’ve always had a lot of books about this popular subject, the Sesquicentennial has spurred the publication of many more. Here’s a selection of some of the newest.

Discovering the Civil War from the National Archives. Photographs, reproductions of handwritten records and personal stories.

America Aflame: How the Civil War Created a Nation by David Goldfield. A sweeping history of America from the 1830s through Reconstruction.

The Union War by Gary Gallagher. Why we fought the Civil War, from the Northern perspective.

The Civil War: the First Year Told by Those Who Lived It. Drawn from letters, diaries, speeches, articles and memoirs creates a firsthand accounting of the war.

The Civil War: a Visual History by the Smithsonian Institute. This coffee-table worthy book is packed with photographs and maps drawn from the Smithsonian’s extensive collection of artifacts.

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand by Helen Simonson

- Ann Leave a comment

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand is a delightful little love story.  Judging from the cover art,  I was expecting it to take place earlier in the century, but it is definitely set in the present day, in a charming English country village called Edgecomb St. Mary.

Major Pettigrew, though retired, is the personification of a very proper English gentleman, fond of all things British, including a cup of freshly brewed tea.  When his brother dies unexpectedly, he is surprised to find himself drawn into a friendship with Mrs. Ali, a local Pakistani shopkeeper.  As their friendship develops into something more, they discover that many of their friends and neighbors have trouble accepting their new relationship.  Throw is some scenes from some recalcitrant family members and you’ve got yourself a full-fledged drama.  Well, okay, it’s not a tragedy like Romeo and Juliet, but it is sweet, it is sensitive and it is a refreshingly real love story featuring more “mature” participants.  But then, love is not only for the young — and we can all choose to be young at heart.

The Informationist by Taylor Stevens

- Lynn Leave a comment

Have you zipped through Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series? Are you looking for a heroine as tough and scarred as  Lisbeth Salander? Well, look no further.

The titular Informationist, Munroe (aka Michael and Victoria) is a very high-priced gun-for-hire. Because of her facility with languages and insight into the politics and economics of other countries, she acts as a quasi-spy/private eye for governments and corporations.  She grew up in Cameroon, the daughter of missionaries, and rebelled against their religion and neglectful parenting, by going to work for a local cartel of criminals. There she learns many survival skills, useful in her current line of work.

The most interesting aspect of the book are the settings of Equatorial  Guinea and Cameroon. Munroe and her minder navigate the bureaucracy, politics and culture of these countries trying to find the daughter of a billionaire oilman.

Her job as an “informationist,” is to get the information her employer requests. In this case, whether the missing girl, Emily, is dead or alive. Such a remote part of the world is fascinatingly revealed – the climate, history, and customs are incorporated naturally into the story. The pages nearly drip with the heat and humidity.

The author herself grew up  very non-traditionally, in a “communal apocalyptic cult,” as she says. It wasn’t till she was in her twenties that she escaped. The cult traveled all over the world, including West Central Africa, which accounts for her gifted depiction of this area.

I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a series of Victoria Munroe books in the near future.

The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown

- Michelle 1 Comment

The three Andreas sisters, Rosalind (Rose), Bianca (Bean), and Cordelia (Cordy) grew up like no other sisters you have ever met in The Weird Sisters by Eleanor Brown.   Their father, a college professor who speaks to them the majority of the time by rattling off Shakespearean quotes, instilled a love of books in his three daughters.

Raised in the college town of Barnwell, Ohio, the sister’s lives took dramatically different directions after leaving their childhood home.  Their lives are as different as their personalities and although they are sisters, they realize that they truly love each other, but actually don’t like each other that much.  The three reunite back in Barnwell for a variety of reasons, most importantly, their mother’s battle with cancer.

In addition to their mother’s illness, each of the Andreas sisters has their own personal struggle to deal with whether it be running away from their past lives or struggling with their future and its choices.  The engaging characters and witty dialogue make The Weird Sisters a treat to read.  You will find yourself immersed in the lives of the sisters as a member of the Andreas family and you will find yourself caught up in their triumphs and in their failures.

Great Philosophers who Failed at Love by Andrew Shaffer

- Ann 5 Comments

Although Philosophy often intimidates me, I have to be honest, and say that I never have taken the Philosophers too seriously. This most likely stems from my Introduction to Philosophy course in college where my professor spoke constantly of driving his Porsche, ended every sentence with “and I have written a paper about that so see me after class if you would like a copy…” and did not appreciate my brilliant final essay that featured a conversation between myself and a Philosopher-like character who frequently declared “and I have written a paper about that so see me after class if you would like a copy.” (He apparently did take Philosophers, and himself, very seriously…)

So I was very excited when I discovered Great Philosophers who Failed at Love by local author, Andrew Shaffer–now whenever a Philosopher evilly asks me about Dualism just to see me squirm, I can just casually lean against a door frame and reply “Nevermind that, so how is your love life?” Because, judging by the love lives of the Philosophers included in Shaffer’s book, they won’t be able to resist changing the subject to their scandalous romantic escapades. Just how saucy are these philosophers? Here are a few examples:

♥ French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau apparently enjoyed flashing.

♥ Ann Rand dedicated her masterpiece, Atlas Shrugged, to both her husband and her lover…but then had her lover’s name removed when she found out he was cheating on her (with a woman other than his wife).

♥ French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre liked to call himself a “literary Don Juan” and, at the age of 74, remarked to one of his lady friends that he was currently dating nine women (not counting his long-time lover, Sylvie Le Bon and her girlfriend, of course)!

Wowza!

Although all the tawdry details kept me turning the pages, it is Shaffer’s snarky comments that truly make this quick read absolutely delightful. And the text is printed in navy blue which was super neat and lovely to read.

I highly recommend Great Philosophers who Failed at Love as well Shaffer’s multiple other personalities found here: www.orderofstandrew.com
and here: www.evilreads.com
and here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-shaffer
and here: http://twitter.com/andrewtshaffer
and a few other places as well.

It’s All About Mom

- Ann Leave a comment

 

Here are some new books that should tie-in well with Mother’s Day.  After reading the reviews, I know I’m looking forward to reading both of these titles.

In Daughters-in-Law, author Joanna Trollope explores how Rachel’s life has changed since her three sons have grown up and married.  Once accustomed to being the center of her family, she now finds her position as matriarch slipping away.  She also realizes that other women — the daughters-in-law — are now the main focus in her children’s lives and it’s a bit disconcerting.  Will she be able to find a way to still preserve the relationships she’s held dear for so long?

Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin received a starred review in Library Journal, which declared that it “should be one of this year’s most deserving bestsellers.”  Basically, the story concerns a family’s search for their mother, who has gone missing in a crowded Seoul subway station.  In probable fashion, the children argue over how best to find her, while her husband returns to their country home in hopes she’ll return there.  Meanwhile, each recalls their own memories of her and wonder if they have lived up to her expectations.  The book concludes with Mom’s own version of the story, and the reader learns what really happened that day.  Sound intriguing?  Check it out and have a Happy Mother’s Day!