Books and Movies

Is everyone else as ready for the weekend as I am? I’ve had so little time for reading lately. I have finished a few essays and read some short non-fiction from In Short, but I haven’t finished a book in what seems like ages! Maybe this weekend.

In case you have some time for web-surfing this weekend, I have lots of links to share with you:

~ Devourer of Books has a guest post by Robin Maxwell, author of Signora da Vinci. She’s also giving two copies away, so be sure to click over.

~ Between the Covers has 26 Neologisms for Booklovers. You must click over to this link. Just one sample to whet your appetite:

Jugglelitting: The fine art of keeping on top of fourteen library books with three due dates between them, the books you’re reviewing on LibraryThing, the latest book club selection, and the technothriller you borrowed from your brother.

~ Beth Fish Reads has a review of Igraine the Brave by Cornelia Funke. We, as a family, love Funke’s work, and my daughter loved this book.

~ The Book Giveaway Carnival starts on Monday. Click over to Bookroom Reviews for details.

~ Bookroom Reviews has a review of My Little Red Book, which I will be purchasing for said daughter very soon.

~ Deborah Dewit Marchant: Art for readers and writers.

~ My Friend Amy has a post about book signings that sparked some great discussion.

~ The “I Can Read Movies” series: faux book covers based on famous films.

~ Wendi’s Book Corner has a review of Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn, the third book in the Lady Julia Grey mysteries. I’m going to see if the first one in the series is available on audiobook.

~ Literate Housewife has a post about fiction about actual historical figures - how accurate should it be?

~ Write for a Review has a review of the picture book A Carousel Tale. Sounds like a great choice for a read-aloud.

Title: Cry of Justice
Author: Jason Pratt
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Bittersea Publications

I posted on Tuesday about the epic fantasy novel, Cry of Justice. Author Jason Pratt has been gracious enough to give in-depth answers to my interview questions. Enjoy!

I’m always interested in finding out a little bit about an author’s personal life. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

– I’m pretty sure I’m not nearly as interesting as my novels. {lopsided g} But: I’m a 38-year-old single geek (no surprise there, I guess) who has lived most of my life in the West Tennessee town of Dyer, where I help manage the family business (a small factory). I graduated with a broadcast communications degree from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville back in 94 (if I recall correctly), but I haven’t done much with that degree. (And probably never will; it’s very outdated now.) I used to teach all three fencing weapons, and probably still could if I had the time and energy to do so. (That really is me striding toward the camera in my recent author’s promo shot on Amazon and elsewhere. {g} And yes, that silly looking sword happens to be real. Also totally impractical, as the pommel would chew up anyone’s hands who tried to use it in a fight. Though that may count as a visual parable about the cost of war.) I’m an orthodox Christian universalist theologian, and have been spending a lot of time in the past few months serving as one of the guest authors at www.evangelicaluniversalist.com. And I’m eagerly awaiting Western Civ Software’s upcoming _Crown of Glory: Emperor’s Edition_ strategy feast, which may be ready in the next few weeks.

All of which helps explain being 38 and single, I guess. {g!} (Though I have to say the promo photo came out rather nice… {lol!})

Continue Reading »

I finished two more essays from Essays of the Masters by Charles Neider - and as I was searching for it on Amazon so I could add a link to the bottom of this post, I see that he also edited a book called Great Short Stories of the Masters. I am such a book geek, cause that just made me so happy - I added it to my wish list.

Title: Chesterton on Shaw
Author: George Bernard Shaw
Style: Literary
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This essay was George Bernard Shaw’s reponse to G. K. Chesterton’s essay about him. To read the essay, you’d think they hated each other, but they actually called each other “friendly enemies,” and enjoyed debating about their widely divergent world views: Shaw was a socialist; Chesterton was an Orthodox Christian. This essay was entertaining, but nothing profound.

Title: On Being Found Out
Author: William Makepeace Thackeray
Style: Definition Essay
Source: Essays of the Masters, edited by Charles Neider
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

In this essay, Thackeray writes about the idea that we all have things to hide in our lives, and discusses the horrible place society would be if everyone’s habits and past mistakes were exposed to all to see. Interesting topic, and it made me think, but it didn’t make me pull out my pencil to underline any passages.

If you read essays - or would like to - click on over to the Essay Reading Challenge and sign up.

Kathy at Bermudaonion hosts Wondrous Words Wednesday, a weekly meme where book bloggers talk about the unfamiliar words they came across in their reading.

Here are the unfamiliar words I found - both in the short essay “Nostalgia” by Richard Shelton, published in In Short: A Collection of Brief Creative Nonfiction (which I am finding brilliant, by the way):

crepuscular: of, relating to, or resembling twilight

bucolic: (1) of or relating to shepherds or herdsmen; (2) relating to or typical of rural life

Click over to Bermudaonion to see the other new words people are learning.

Update: If you’ve had trouble commenting in the past couple of days, that has been fixed - so comment away!

The arrival of the March/April issue of Bookmarks Magazine was one of the only things that happened last week that didn’t stress me out or make me crazy. It was just one of those kinds of weeks. But what better therapy than browsing through the pages of a magazine filled with delicious books?

Here are the books that I circled with my Sharpie marker:

Sag Harbor by Colson Whitehead: “This coming-of-age novel, set in 1985, centers on teenage Benji, who shuttles between two very different worlds. During the school year, he’s one of the flew black kids at an elite prep school in Manhattan, but he spends his summers on the East End of Sag Harbor, a community of African American professionals.”

The Song is You by Arthur Phillips: “When Julian Donahue’s family falls apart, his love for music goes, too. Then he hears a band in a bar that rekindles his love of music, and he starts corresponding with the lead singer, Cait. They trade messages, lyrics, and videos without meeting as Cait travels her path to fame.”

In Pale Battalions by Robert Goddard: “In this gothic novel, Goddard weaves an arabesque, byzantine tale with a marvelously intricate plot. A young soldier, who has survived the holocaust of World War I’s Battle of the Somme, visits his dead captain’s family. A murder and a suicide thrust him into a complex drama.”

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm During the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish: “In this captivating, clear-eyed memoir, peppered with Depression-era photographs and recipes, retired English professor Mildred Armstrong Kalish recalls her 1930s childhood on a farm in central Iowa.”

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary, translated from the French by Alison Anderson: “A precocious 12-year-old girl befriends the middle-aged concierge of her Paris apartment; they soon recognize their kindred intellectual spirits.”

Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini: “Jay Parini, a professor at Middlebury College who has written novels, poetry, critcism, and literary biographies of Frost, Faulkner, and Steinbeck, examines how 13 works of literature have affected America.”

Title: Cry of Justice
Author: Jason Pratt
Genre: Fantasy
Publisher: Bittersea Publications

Monsters wander the world of Mikon.

Caught in the aftermath of a vicious international war, thousands of refugees have fled the Coastal States, bringing their dangers with them into the wilderness near the untamed Middlelands.

Castaways from an imploding civilization - fighting to find and to understand the most dangerous of treasures…

Portunista: innovative, ambitious, intemperate; a maga seeking her path to Imperial glory…

Seifas: dark and lethal, alienating, poetic; a hunter whose words are his tears…

Gaekwar: lanky, laconic, sardonic; ‘only a cowherd,’ yet wielding exotic weaponry…

Othon: the Implacable One; a quiet, quick-thinking giant of a man…

Dagon: arrogant, insecure, buffoonish; a miserable commander with a knack for solving puzzles…

Pooralay: ruthless and compassionate, loud and brusque - when he wants to be; a thug on a mystical quest…

Bomas: renegade killer planning a subtle genocide; Artabanus: self-procalimed Arbiter, drawing every power to himself; Praxiteles: incompetent madman, possessing and possessed by the Roguent Gamin…

In their increasingly desperate struggles - for food, for knowledge, for life itself -

-what will make the diference between brigades and bands of brigands?

I have been suffering from a surplus of guilt this past weekend, knowing that the date of my post for Jason Pratt’s book tour was coming up, and yet I hadn’t finished the book. I’m further along now than I was over the weekend, but still not finished, and so I cannot give a full review. I will say, though, that while I initially felt lost and confused by the story, I am now intrigued and excited to see how it ends.

The reviews coming in from other bloggers have been highly positive:

Curled Up With a Good Book says, “Open your mind to a story so real you face culture shock when you lay it down. The raw emotions on these pages, the internal honesty, can be overwhelming and a bit humbling. This is a book with layers of depth, allowing the reader to enjoy the superficial action, but inviting deeper introspection into why the characters do what they do.”

Rebecca’s Reads says, “There were many creative elements in the book that sets this fantasy novel apart from the pack and I think those interested in epic fantasies will enjoy Cry of Justice.”

Mom of 2 Dancers says, “It was really fun for me to get back into a Fantasy novel. I can’t wait for the next two books in this trilogy!”

Front Street Reviews says, “It’s daunting, but worthwhile and fortunately readers who are drawn in to Pratt’s dream will have additional chances to visit as there are more books to come.”

Medieval Bookworm has links to even more posts and reviews on Cry of Justice.

Be sure and check out some of the reviews above, as well as Jason Pratt’s author journal on Amazon. Then come back here on Friday for an interview with Jason Pratt (who has been very gracious about the fact that I haven’t finished his book yet) about Cry of Justice.

Mailbox Monday is a weekly feature hosted by The Printed Page in which bloggers talk about the books that came into their house during the previous week. Click over to read other blogger’s entries and add your own link.

The Knitting Circle by Ann Hood
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Year of Pleasures by Elizabeth Berg

I purchased three more books that arrived last week. I know, that brings my total books purchased for the year to 10, and my (self-imposed) limit is 20. And it’s not even the end of February. But, I do have an excuse. You see, I bought these three books used - and they’re all the large print edition.

No, I’m not losing my eyesight, but I do have a reason for wanting a few books with large print. Kevin and I take the kids to a local indoor pool and hot tub to exercise and play in the evening a few times a week. Kevin and I swim laps while the kids play, and then I reward myself for doing laps by reading in the hot tub. The lighting in the pool room really stinks, though - thus, the large print books.

I also took the kids to Barnes and Noble last Sunday and they each picked out a book.

Peculiar Treasures by Robin Jones Gunn (Natalie’s choice)

The Fire Within by Chris D’Lacey (Noah’s choice)

Kidnapped #1: The Abduction by Gordon Korman (Jonathan’s choice)

Bakugan Battle Brawlers: The Battle Begins (Josiah’s choice)

Any books come into your house this past week?

I was hoping to post today about finishing two books: Cry of Justice by Jason Pratt, and The Love Letters by Madeleine L’Engle. And then life intervened, with computer crashes, plugged toilets, migraines, and sinusitis - all of which made it impossible to spend any significant time reading. The worst thing is that I’m hosting a stop on Jason Pratt’s blog tour on Tuesday, and I don’t think I’ll have the book finished. Sigh.

So instead of telling you about the books I finished this week, I’ll point you to the posts I managed to get written:

~ Oscar-winning films based on books: part one and part two.

~ A list of the books I’m coveting from the January/February issue of Bookmarks magazine. (I’ll be posting about the March/April issue sometime this week.)

~ A review of the film version of Inkheart.

~ A review of a magnificent essay about sentences. Eight down, twenty-two to go to complete my Essay Reading Challenge.

Tonight, I will be at my parents house watching the Oscars. This is an annual tradition, since my husband hates awards programs and is not nearly as movie-obsessed as my parents and sisters and I are. I’m taking Natalie with me, since I heard that Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart are presenting an award. When I told her, you could have hard her “SQUEEEE!” all the way to Canada.

Hugh Jackman is hosting, which is another reason I will be watching every minute of the show, even though I haven’t seen a single one of the Best Picture nominees. Will you be watching? Which movie, actor, or actress are you particularly rooting for? Or will you spend your Sunday reading instead?

Please stop by on Tuesday for my spotlight post on Cry of Justice, so that I won’t feel so guilty about having to do a “spotlight” post instead of a review. And then on Friday, come back for an author interview with Jason Pratt.

When I was at Barnes and Noble a couple weeks ago with Kevin, I picked up a copy of The Believer, and was absolutely blown away by the first essay.

Title: The Sentence is a Lonely Place
Author: Gary Lutz
Source: The Believer - read it online
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

This essay is a lecture that was delivered to college creative writing students by short story writer Gary Lutz. The writing in this essay is simply brilliant. Lutz begins by explaining that language didn’t come naturally to him - he didn’t come from a family who loved words and books and reading. This is how he described his first encounter with the wonder of words:

I can’t remember reading anything with much comprehension until eighth grade, when, studying for a science test for once, I decided to try making my way quietly through the chapter from start to finish—it was a chapter about magnets—and found myself forced to form the sounds of the words in my head as I read. Many of the words were unfamiliar to me, but the words fizzed and popped and tinkled and bonged. I was reading so slowly that in many a word I heard the scrunch and flump of the consonants and the peal of the vowels. Granted, I wasn’t retaining much of anything, but almost every word now struck me as a provocative hullabaloo. This was my first real lesson about language—this inkling that a word is a solid, something firm and palpable.

He puts you right there in his head as he experiences the words and their magic. He goes on to talk about the wonder of the sentence, and how some authors seem to write sentences that vibrate with intensity - not a word out of place, nor an extra or missing word. I found myself wanting to write and read and write some more after reading this essay. I recommend that you click over and read it for yourself.

The sentence is the site of your enterprise with words, the locale where language either comes to a head or does not. The sentence is a situation of words in the most literal sense: words must be situated in relation to others to produce an enduring effect on a reader. As you situate the words, you are of course intent on obeying the ordinances of syntax and grammar, unless any willful violation is your purpose—and you are intent as well on achieving in the arrangements of words as much fidelity as is possible to whatever you believe you have wanted to say or describe. A lot of writers—many of them—unfortunately seem to stop there. They seem content if the resultant sentence is free from obvious faults and is faithful to the lineaments of the thought or feeling or whatnot that was awaiting deathless expression. But some other writers seem to know that it takes more than that for a sentence to cohere and flourish as a work of art. They seem to know that the words inside the sentence must behave as if they were destined to belong together—as if their separation from each other would deprive the parent story or novel, as well as the readerly world, of something life-bearing and essential. These writers recognize that there needs to be an intimacy between the words, a togetherness that has nothing to do with grammar or syntax but instead has to do with the very shapes and sounds, the forms and contours, of the gathered words. This intimacy is what we mean when we say of a piece of writing that it has a felicity—a fitness, an aptness, a rightness about the phrasing. The words in the sentence must bear some physical and sonic resemblance to each other—the way people and their dogs are said to come to resemble each other, the way children take after their parents, the way pairs and groups of friends evolve their own manner of dress and gesture and speech. A pausing, enraptured reader should be able to look deeply into the sentence and discern among the words all of the traits and characteristics they share. The impression to be given is that the words in the sentence have lived with each other for quite some time, decisive time, and have deepened and grown and matured in each other’s company—and that they cannot live without each other.

This is a continuation of yesterday’s post: Oscar-winning films based on books, part one.

1975: One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - based on the novel by Ken Kesey

1979: Kramer vs. Kramer - based on the novel by Avery Corman

1980: Ordinary People - based on the novel by Judith Guest

1983: Terms of Endearment - based on the novel by Larry McMurtry (Saw the film; cried.)

1985: Out of Africa - based on the autobiographical book by Isak Dinesen

1987: The Last Emperor - based on the autobiography by Puyi, the last emperor of China

1991: The Silence of the Lambs - based on the novel by Thomas Harris (Saw the movie - wish I hadn’t, because it really freaked me out.)

1993: Schindler’s List - based on the novel Schindler’s Ark by Thomas Keneally (I haven’t read the book, but the movie is brilliant.)

1994: Forrest Gump - based on the novel by Winston Groom (Liked the movie; never read the book.)

1996: The Engish Patient - based on the novel by Michael Ondaatje

2001: A Beautiful Mind - based on the non-fiction book by Sylvia Nasar (Brilliant film.)

2003: The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien (Have seen this film several times - love it just as much as the first. I honestly can’t remember if I ever read the entire trilogy, though.)

2007: No Country for Old Men - based on the novel by Cormac McCarthy (Saw the movie - absolutely hated it.)

I found it interesting that the percentage of Best Picture winners based on books went down significantly from my first post to this one, even when taking into account the smaller amoutn of years listed in my second one. Does that mean that there are less great books out there? Or are they not being adapted as well? Or are there just more writers writing specifically for film? I have no idea, but it’s interesting to ponder.