Top Books I'd Like to See Made Into Movies

It's Tuesday again so again we have a Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by the ladies over a The Broke and the Bookish. This week's question is what are the top 10 books I'd like to see made into movies. 

1. A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore - Chris Columbus, he of movies and not of misguided spice trade navigation, actually owns the movie rights to this so I have a small glimmer of hope that this will get made into a movie. A Beta Male becomes a death (not the Death) and tries to navigate his new condition while raising his daughter and running his second-hand shop which comes complete with characters like Abby Normal.

2. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde - I don't think my favorite series, Thursday Next, will transfer well from page to screen. There are too many jokes and plot points that require you to be a reader and not a viewer. Shades of Grey however, would be fantastic to see since the whole society is based on the fact that people can only see a single color and other than that everything is just various shades of grey. I'd love to see the world through Eddie Russett's eyes.


3. Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card - Another one that's been in the talks to get made into a movie, so another small possibility of actually seeing this on the big screen. I'd love to see how the Battle School is rendered but I still think they need to age Ender and the other kids up or else I'll never be able to take the movie seriously.


4. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clark - Look how much people like British wizards in the Harry Potter world. Now it's historical fiction mixed with fantasy. They would need to cut the story down to get it to fit, or else split it over two movies, but I'd see it. I imagine there would be some beautiful settings.


5. World War Z by Max Brooks - Well look at this, another one that's in the talks to get made into a movie. Now I understand there is a vast difference between rumors of a movie and something actually getting made but I'm getting my hopes up for this one. I'm not exactly sure how they'll weave a narrative out of the collection of "survivors stories" but I'm looking forward to it. Even if it means lot of zombie nightmares.


6. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahme-Smith - Oh hey, more zombies! And it's another one that is supposedly in the talks of being made. There are plenty of versions of P&P but I think the world can accept one where Lizzie and Darcy are both champion zombie killers.


7. Fool by Christopher Moore - I'd love to see this as a movie. King Lear, told from the Fool's point of view, with a typical Moore twist. It's a hilarious, sometimes dark retelling of Shakespeare's play and has the Fool as the driving force behind everything that happens, along with a back-story and name, Pocket, for the courtly jester.

I was really thinking I could make it to 10 this week but alas, it appears not to be. What are some books you hope get make it to the silver screen?

More than 300 million people in the world speak English and the rest, it sometimes seems, try to.

I've already written about two Bryson books on this blog, his domestic history At Home and his European travelogue Neither Here Nor There, and I wasn't originally planning on reading another Bryson so soon. But I was wandering around a lovely independent bookstore and found a copy a The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way on sale for $5. Couldn't pass that up! I've actually read this before but to be honest, I don't remember it. I had bought a copy of this at some point back in college. And also at some point in college I lent the book out to someone and never saw it again. I'm not sure who has it, but I hope they're enjoying.

Bryson's skill is taking a dry topic and making it interesting. How else does a book that goes over phonetic topics such as aphesis, apocope, syncope (which by the way, spell check does not recognize) make for something I want to pick up and pick up multiple times at that? I think there are two things Bryson does that make the everyday exciting: he approaches each topic with enthusiasm and from an amateur's standpoint. It would be easy for a book like this to veer off into the very technical aspects of the history and phonetics of the language and end up requiring the reader to be an expert. You never get the feeling you need to be taking notes, because you're going to be tested when reading Bryson. Even the terminology above is given to sate any curiosity about the technical terms he's describing, but could easily be left out without leading to confusion about the topic at hand. By the way, those terms refer to the dropping of sounds during normal speech, for example looked being phonetically pronounced "lookt", Australia being shortened to "Stralia" and the street in London Marleybone becoming "Mairbun" or even "Mbn". "For the record, when bits are nicked off the front end of words it's called aphesis, when off the back it's called apocope and when it's from the middle it's syncope". (88) For a further (and more amusing) example of this, Bryson uses his humor (the best teacher) to give further example:

"Where the British will say howjado for 'how do you do,' an American will say jeetjet for 'have you taken sustenance recently?' and lesskweet for 'in that case, let us retire to a convivial place for a spot of refreshment.'" (89)

The book discusses the history of English from the time our (very distant) ancestors began making guttural noises, through the Saxon and Roman occupation in England, the dynamic development during Shakespeare's day, the influx of various languages into English during the mass immigration to America in the early 20th century, and through to present day, or at least 1990 when the book was written. "Swearing" might be my favorite chapter, because I have the sense of humor of a 13 year old boy. The first line of the chapter is "Among the Chinese, to be called a turtle is the worst possible taunt," (214). I told Boyfriend he was a turtle, but he just looked at my confused. Apparently he is too far separated from his roots to appreciate such an insult. It is interesting to see what words have always been curses, what words have developed their taboo and which have lost it. Fuck has always been pretty bad, cunt was once "relatively harmless" and used by Chaucer (and spelled queynte and queinte, as well as the typical spelling, which I find fantastic) and in "nineteenth-century England puppy and cad were highly risqué" (217).

If you want to know more about the history, quirks and direction of the English language, you could do a lot worse than this one. It's funny and you don't need a linguistics degree to understand it. I'm pretty sure I've said it before, but I would read a book about paint drying if Bryson wrote it.

Title quote from page 11

Bryson, Bill. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way. HarperCollins Perennial, 1990.

Book Blogger Directory

Fellow book blogger Bev over at My Reader's Block has a post about a new (to me anyway) Book Blogger directory. The blogs are split out by genre they discuss so it looks like a good place to find some more book bloggers, beyond the typical hops.

If you'd like to add your blog to the list, check out their site Book Blogger Directory! I just added my blog.

Do you review everything you read?

Greg over at The New Dork Review recently asked the question about if it was worthwhile or not to review an obscure book he didn't like which kind of lead to a discussion about if one should review every book they read, regardless of their opinion or how obscure the book may be. In an effort to put in my two cents worth, or like 5 dollars worth since I guess my 2 cents are over in his comments (I don't understand money), I thought I'd continue the conversation here.*

Do you feel obligated to review every book you read? Are there any types of books (crappy, obscure, boring) that you won't review?

Personally, I don't feel any obligation to write about any particular book or in any particular format. I started this blog as a means to get back into writing, since I'd mostly let that skill atrophy since college, and I picked book blogging because that was the topic I was most interested in and I figured I read enough I wouldn't run out of topics. I'm not being paid for any reviews so I certainly don't feel any responsibility to review everything I read. All the books are ones I'm reading for my own enjoyment.

Having said this, I do write about all of the books I read. I'm spending my time to read it so I figure I may as well write something, be it that I like the book, don't like the book or the book makes me think of some more interesting topic. Not having something to say has never stopped me from prattling on before, and I'm not letting it stop me now. But this is a personal choice and I admire the bloggers that are able to resist posting when they have nothing to say, even if that means skipping a review.

Going beyond what you do with your own reviews, what do you like to see from book blogs you follow? Do you want bloggers to review everything? Do you want them to only review the books they liked? Do you want them to avoid reviewing obscure titles?

*This is a nicer way of saying "I'm stealing the topic Greg already wrote about over at his blog, and if you want the original you could just go over there and see what he says."

You can never hide as long as there is parsley nearby

In an effort to read a more diverse selection of literature, I've picked up The Farming of Bones by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat . I bought the book for a class sometime back in college, judging by the "used" stickers on it, yet I believe it was one of the books we never got to. I'm glad I did buy this, even if we never got around to it in class, because it's definitely a book I wouldn't have otherwise picked up. Not without some very strong recommendations from trusted sources anyway.

The book deals with the Parsley Massacre, the months leading up to the killings and the years after as the survivors try to come to terms with the grief they've experienced and the people they've lost. The Generallissimo Rafael Trujillo ordered the deaths of some 30,000 Haitians living in the Dominican Republic. In order to determine who was Haitian, Trujillo's soldiers would ask people to pronounce the Spanish word for parsley, perejil, knowing that Haitians "did not trill their r...or pronounce the jota" (304).

The story is narrated by Amabelle, a young Haitian girl who was orphaned when a raging river took her parents. Amabelle was rescued by a wealthy Dominican family and raised with Papi's daughter, eventually becoming a house servant in the Dominican Republic. During the day she is happy with her life, caring for Senora Valencia and hoping to one day marry Sebastian, a fellow Haitian who works on a sugar cane plantation. At night she's haunted by the deaths of her parents as her dreams keep taking her back to the day they died. One day Senora gives birth with Amabelle acting as midwife. As Senora's husband Pico, an officer for Trujillo, rushes home to greet his newborn children, he runs over a Haitian. Anxious to get home to his family, he refuses his father-in-laws pleas to stay and see who was hurt and if there's anything they can do. It turns out the man he hit was Sebastian's friend Joel. Sebastian and Yves were able to jump out of the car's way in time, but Joel wasn't so lucky. Pico mimics the general sentiments of the Dominican population, that a Haitian life isn't worth a second thought. Eventually the El Corte killings reach Amabelle's town and the people must flee if they hope to survive.

I tend to stay away from summaries in my reviews because I'd rather discuss pieces of the book and leave a summary for any of the other million places you can get one. However, I'm having trouble coming up with something to say. This book is certainly not light and I can't put my finger on any particular problem, but I wasn't moved by the story as I thought I would be. I like the characters, I think they're well-rounded and well-described. But I never got a chance to connect with them. Perhaps the problem is the story feels rushed. It's not a long book, only 310 pages, yet it seems to cover so much. Just as I'm getting used to normal life in Alegria, the cuttings start. Various characters say there are rumors of soldiers killing Haitians with machetes but the story never makes it feel like this is a real rumor touching on the characters. I needed to be shown, not told that these rumors were floating around. I never feel the suspicion, the worry that many of the characters say they're experiencing. Likewise, it feels like the journey to Haiti ends so abruptly. The only time I feel like the characters get a chance to tell their story is as the years go by and the survivors deal with their grief.

That said, Danticat has some beautiful prose that almost makes up for the quickness of the story. As a matter of fact, I was so taken by her writing that I didn't really notice how quickly we'd moved on and how much more I wanted to read until the moment had passed. There's a part where Amabelle, during a fever dream, sees her mother

"I was saving my smile for when you needed it," she says, in a cheerful voice I do not remember, for she had always spoken so briefly and so sternly. "I didn't want you to think that love was not scarce because it is, that it flowed freely from everywhere, or that it was something you could expect without price from everyone"..."You were like my shadow. Always fled when I came to you and only followed when I left you alone. You will be well again, ma bell, Amabelle. I know this to be true. And how can you have ever doubted my love? You, my eternity." (208)

I haven't found a new favorite book or a new favorite author, though I'm not opposed to trying out something else Danticat has written, I'm glad to expand my reading circle beyond the sarcastic dark humor that is my usual go-to. And of course reading something out of the white, European-American, male literary canon is nice as well. If only this was written sometime before the 1970s I would have fulfilled all of my goals from my March reading wrap-up. Don't worry, this doesn't mean I think I'm done reading non-white, non-American authors (just as it doesn't mean I'm never going back to those guys), it just means I'm moving in the right direction.

Title quote from page 304

Danticat, Edwidge. The Farming of Bones. Penguin Books, 1998.

March Reading Wrap-Up!

March has ended, and bookishly speaking, this month kind of kicked my ass. Actually, it's not the month's fault, it's Jonathan Bate and his Soul of the Age that I'm still making my way through, thus not making my way through a lot of other books. I will persevere though! Because I am stubborn and I don't want to lose a fight with a book.

I figure in addition to doing my normal monthly wrap-up, I thought I'd see how I'm doing for the quarter, because I work in corporate America so my life is split into quarters like that.

March
Number of books read (meaning completed this month)
4
Reduced Shakespeare by the Reduced Shakespeare Company
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
You Suck by Christopher Moore
Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde

Total pages read (from the books above)
1,334

Percentage of fiction read
75%

Percentage of female authors
25%

Percentage of white authors
100% - lame. This will need rectified

Percentage of authors from the US
50%

Percentage of eBooks
25%

Percentage of re-reads
50%

Books written by decade
1810s - 25%
2000s - 75%

OK, I need to work on non-white authors. Let's see how I'm doing for the quarter

Q1
Number of books read
14

Total number of pages read
4,975

Percentage of fiction read
71%

Percentage of female authors
43%

Percentage of white authors
93%

Percentage of authors from the US
79%

Percentage of eBooks
29%

Percentage of re-reads
29%

Books written by decade
1810s - 7%
1970s - 7%
1990s - 14%
2000s - 57%
2010s - 14%

Alright, so from these I'm thinking I need to work on the following:
Read more books by non-white authors
Read more books written before the 1990s
Read more non-US authors

How are your reading stats looking (if you're anal enough to be keeping reading stats that is)? Do you have any reading goals?