Library Elf

Library Elf is an interesting service I just discovered. You set up an account, select your library from a list, and enter your card # and PIN. When your books are due, it sends you email reminders and text messages! I really need this. I have paid about $20 in library fines this year already for overdue books. With that much money I spent I could have bought a Barnes and Noble membership!

Blog Crushes

Most of us are here because we are a little bit addicted to blog reading, blog writing, blog commenting, or all three. Like memoir, the essence of blog isn't really the quality of the writing, or the meaning of the story. It's how much you like the author. As a reader, you find a voice you like, that makes you feel good, that you want to check in with every day, maybe joke around with in the comments if you're feeling daring. And when you post your comments? You spend 30 minutes editing 30 words. OK, maybe you all don't. But that's kinda how it is for me. Sounds a lot like . . . a crush! Blog crushes - we all have them. Who are yours?

My top blog crushes of the moment:
Mike Doughty, rock star. Most endearing post - confessing that he didn't vote in the primary.
Matt Raymond, Library of Congress director of communications. I just learned about this site this week as it was nominated by South by Southwest for a best blog award.
Mrs. Furious, stay at home mom. She's been documenting her cooking, housekeeping and weight loss for about a year now. And she totally cracks me up! (See this post on one of her most memorable gifts from her husband.) I love any SAHM who curses as much as she does.
Gretchen Rubin, founder of The Happiness Project blog. This is like one of those intimidating crushes on a professor. I can't quite keep up with her life improvement tips. But she's really cool.

Snow Flower and Secret Fan Author in Durham

Lisa See, author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is going to be at the Regulator Bookshop in Durham on March 13th. I would like to go if anyone else is interested. Here are the details:

LISA SEE
Thursday, March 13, 2008, 7:00 p.m.
Lisa See will read from and sign copies of her bestselling (New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, and Entertainment Weekly) book, Peony in Love, newly available in paperback. Publishers Weekly writes, "A coming-of-age story, a ghost story, a family saga and a work of musical and social history...Peony's vibrant voice, perfectly pitched between the novel's historical and passionate depths, carries her story beautifully-in life and afterlife." See is also the author of the bestseller Snow Flower and the Secret Fan.

VALIS?

So did anyone else watch Lost last night? I'm trying to read Internet comments but am annoyed by all the comments about Sawyer's bedroom scene (not that I didn't enjoy it) and people gloating that they caught the twist all along. I for one didn't see it coming, but I've read enough online to know that the book featured in the beginning, VALIS by Philip K. Dick, holds clues to the episode and series ending overall. So, has anyone read this book? I glanced at the Wikipedia entry and promptly decided even that is too complicated for me to understand, so I was hoping for a simpler summary. Judging from the description, I'm glad we read A Scanner Darkly because Dick seems to get way more complex in his other works.

April Book Pick

I have chosen Kate Vaiden for our April meeting. It is by Reynolds Price who just celebrated 50 years of teaching at Duke.

On a side note, Powell's Books is an excellent resource for reading about books and helping decide which books to choose for book club. There are usually multiple reviews and first chapters. I find reading first chapters most helpful when narrowing down books.

Anna Karenina: Final Results

didn't like it - 0
it was OK - 1
liked it -1
really liked it- 1
it was amazing - 0

3 votes total.

I didn't vote because I still haven't finished it yet! I may come back and comment if/when I ever finish.

U2 3D

If you're even a moderate U2 fan, and you haven't been to see U2 3D, you should go. Russ took me last night for Valentine's Day (we celebrate on the night we can get a babysitter!) and it was so good. It's like being at a concert, but with an omniscient perspective - you can see all Bono, Larry, Edge and Adam's pores, hair follicles, sweat beads, etc. You see the enormous Argentinian crowd from their perspective.

It's interesting to see how they have their work stations set up around the stage. Also you get to see how they interact with each other, to me which is the real artistry and beauty of U2, the connection that these 4 men have been able to build and maintain for 30 years now.

Seriously, go see it, it's not something you'll be able to experience at home on video.

Allison's Favorite Book-to-Movie Adaptations

As you're reading a book, do you visualize how you would film it if you were making it into a movie? I usually think about which scene I would open with. The only movie I can remember actually matching up with what was in my head was A Thousand Acres. But I can't remember enough about the movie or book to add it to the following list:
1. Cold Mountain. I loved this book so much that I was afraid to watch the movie, especially when I heard Nicole Kidman was cast in the lead role. But happily, I loved the movie too. Points deducted though for filming most of the movie in Romania rather than North Carolina.
2. The English Patient. Another Anthony Minghella movie. Was Truly Madly Deeply a book first? If so, I should read it. I actually saw The English Patient before reading the book and I liked the movie better perhaps because the love story is more prominent in the movie. I'm curious how I would have felt if I read the book first.
3. The Secret Garden. The version of this movie I liked best was a 1987 Hallmark Hall-of-Fame TV movie that added a nice little epilogue that I don't think was in the book. I have not seen this movie in probably 20 years though so take this recommendation with a grain of salt.

... So I'm stuck. I can't think of any more book-to-movie adaptations that I liked and where I had also read the book (a rule I imposed for myself). So instead, here are two book-to-movie adaptations I'm excited about:
1. The Time Traveler's Wife
2. Shutter Island

Podcasts

Since I got my lovely red iPod Nano for Christmas, I have been listening to podcasts. I love listening to them while on the treadmill at the gym or while folding and putting away laundry. Apparently, Slate produces audio book club podcasts and they've just released one on Eat, Pray, Love. It looks interesting. I think I'll listen to it at the gym today and will report back later this week.

2001 Book List

January: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver and Sister of my Heart by Chirta Divakaruni
February: Green For Danger by Christiana Brand
April: Waiting by Ha Jin
May: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant
June: Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje
July: Taller Women by Laurence Naumoff
August: The Color of Water by James McBride
September: Kindred by Octavia Butler
October: Immortality by Milan Kundera
November: Bee Season by Myla Goldberg

Friday Five: Book to Movie Adaptations

Allison had this great idea for a Friday list. What are your top 5 book to movie adaptations? I'll have to do some more thinking about this but here are my initial thoughts:

1. A Room with a View. Best movie adaptation of a book ever. Period.
2. Bridget Jones' Diary. Can't top casting Colin Firth as Mark Darcy. Although it results in the loss of some of the best jokes. And I always have to chuckle when I remember that that's Tom playing the evil genius Gaius on Battlestar Galactica!
3. L.A. Confidential. Curtis Hanson made a good pulpy noir mystery a literary masterpiece, and gave Russell Crowe his career.
4. Little Women with Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Claire Danes and Christian Bale. I always wanted to love the book but found it sooooo dull! Then I saw the movie. Love it!
5. Lord of the Rings. The whole trilogy. It took me 4 months to read the trilogy, and about 3 of those months were spent dragging through The Two Towers. But somehow Peter Jackson made it my favorite of the 3 movies! I can watch the battle at Helms Deep over and over and over again. I still get emotional when the elves show up to aid the men.

Now post your own! Happy Friday, everyone!

Graphic Novels

I've always been interested in graphic novels and comics in general but have never really read either. My favorite blog (pop candy) is posting lists of recommendations for those of us who are new to the genre. Today's list is the 25 essential graphic novels:


I just might choose one for my next book club pick!

September 2000: The Sparrow

In the fall of 2000, we read one of the most provocative books I think we've ever read. I noticed it wasn't on anyone's Top 10 list. It's not the kind of book that's lovable, like The Time Traveler's Wife, or Eat, Pray, Love. It's not really beautiful, either, like Lolita or Atonement. It's a book with a compelling mystery and an interesting problem that leads to a horrifying resolution. Really, I can't remember ever being so shocked by a book.

The story is: humans pick up audio signals, breathtakingly beautiful music, indicating sentient life on another planet. First contact is made by a team of Jesuits led by a Puerto Rican priest, Father Sandoz, the main character of the book. But something goes wrong on the expedition. Father Sandoz is the only survivor. When he returns he's been tortured, has lost the use of his hands, and he's lost his faith. There are two narratives working both backwards from Sandoz's account and forwards from the departure of the Jesuits to the culmination of the story and the explanation of what went wrong.

The Sparrow made me wish I was more religious. (A lot of books make me feel that way, really, but this one even more so.) It powerfully addresses the question of what it means to have faith and that idea I find fascinating, that doubt is perhaps the most important element of faith. I especially think it's interesting to hear what Catholics think of the novel. It's very Catholic in that the meaningfulness of the story hinges on a confession.

The author has had an interesting religious life. She writes that after being raised Catholic (nominally) and living her young adulthood as an atheist, she saw purpose for religion. From her website:

"In 1986, I became a mother and began to realise that I wanted my son to be raised in the kind of solid moral and ethical framework that had served me well, even as an atheist. Nevertheless, I could not return to Christianity in any of its forms. For me, the Incarnation was and is an insuperable barrier to faith.

After years of reading, thought and study, I made a formal conversion to Judaism in 1992. Judaism is, in essense, about raising children who will want to be good, without the bribe of heaven or the threat of hell. It proved to be a wonderful framework for our family. My son has grown up to be a mensch -- a good and strong man. He is about to found his own family with my darling almost-a-daughter Jessie. I look forward to having Jewish grandchildren someday, but that's up to the kids now."

2000: The Food Comes First

As Edith commented on November 21, the year 2000 was when we started to be all about the food in book club. That might have even been the year we gave our book club its name. Once we made our way through the basic book club ethnic food themes (Indian, Italian, and Mexican seem to be the most common . . .) we tried to get more creative, for example:

The Power and the Glory - Mexican
The Kitchen Gods Wife - Chinese
100 Years of Solitude - Mexican again
Lost in Translation - We ate out at a Mongolian wok restaurant. (Unfortunately after we got our bowls, we saw it had a B grade.)
Beloved - We recreated the feast in a key scene in the book. That was actually a really great meal: we had cornbread, fish, collard greens. Yum!
The Sparrow - We had a mix of Italian and alien food. Laura and Tajhia made jello shots! (Seriously, the alien race drank something that sounded very much like them.)
Corelli's Mandolin - Italian and Greek?? Michele had the zany idea of making a bottle of wine look like pee, because one of the characters pees in a bottle at some point, I can't remember but I think it was a drunk priest. Or maybe I'm mixing that up with The Power and the Glory.
A Widow for One Year - ? Can't remember what kind of food we had. Maybe we tried for a New England theme?

In later meetings, we did things like foods with a mystery filling for the mystery book, and black and white foods for The Color of Water: A Black Man's Tribute to his White Mother. For Fast Food Nation we made homemade versions of fast food.

I think we should go back to wacky food themes - maybe for Water for Elephants we could have circus food: peanuts, cotton candy, and hot dogs!

Miss Austen

Liz mentioned in her previous blog that Masterpiece Theater's next Austen movie is "Miss Austen". Check out a review on USA today
http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/reviews/2008-01-31-miss-austen_N.htm

Lost

Hey, did anyone watch Lost last night? What did you think? If anyone wants to discuss, please feel free to do so in the comments section! (That way those who haven't seen it can avoid spoilers.)

Update: This is a great summary of all the questions on EW.com.