Posts tagged with classic-books
Carbs!
In celebration of the 50th anniversary of E. L. Konigsburg's From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs Basil E Frankweiler, the Guardian has devoted one of its ongoing "Novel Recipes" segments to New York Pretzels...
Octavia E. Butler's Kindred, adapted by John Jennings and Damian Duffy
Octavia E. Butler's Kindred is a classic for a reason: it's memorable and dramatic and utterly terrifying. And in Damian Duffy and John Jennings's excellent graphic novel adaptation of Kindred, you don't need to imagine the horrors in Butler's novel, you can experience them via full-color illustrations! (The better to keep you up at night.)
Weekly Book Giveaway: Octavia E. Butler's Kindred, adapted by Damian Duffy and John Jennings
This week's Book Giveaway is Damian Duffy and John Jennings's graphic novel adaptation of Octavia E. Butler's 1979 book Kindred. A full review will follow shortly, but take warning: this book literally gave me nightmares.
In tribute
In honor of the 50th anniversary of E.L. Konigsburg’s classic children's book From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, the Smithsonian recently published an article claiming to tell the "true story" behind the novel...
If I get very bored, maybe
There's a review up on the NY Times website of the three-part miniseries adaptation of Evelyn Waugh's novel Decline and Fall. The series will begin streaming on Acorn on Monday, May 15...
I'd go
There's an article on Catapult called "Looking for Anne of Green Gables", about a trip two lifelong Anne of Green Gables fans took to L. M. Montgomery's (and her most famous character's) home. The essayist comes across as a rather unpleasant traveling companion...
Not quite satire, but...
There's a loving tribute up on Bon Appétit to Peg Bracken's The I Hate to Cook Book, the best-selling 1960s cookbook that features step-by-step instructions like "let cook five minutes while you light a cigarette and stare sullenly at the sink"...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Alice and Red Queen, by Christina Henry
This week's Book Giveaway is actually a two-for-one deal: we're giving away Christina Henry's Alice and Red Queen. I have been burned by many an Alice in Wonderland-themed re-write, but I just keep reading 'em. Clearly, hope springs eternal: maybe this one will be the update of my dreams...
Are we leaving any classic dystopian novels out?
Man, what a good day for an announcement regarding a story in which everything goes up in smoke. According to Slate, HBO is making a new film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. The movie is set to star Michael B. Jordan and Michael Shannon (two of my favorite acting Michaels!), and Ramin Bahrani will direct...
That poster's pretty great, tho.
So, there's a movie coming out called The Little Hours, based loosely on a story from Giovanni Boccaccio's The Decameron, a 14th century collection of novellas. The movie (which stars about a million relatively big-name comic actors) is about a young man who gets a job as a gardener in a convent...
Grim AND expensive!
A British woman who recently bought a £14 box of books ended up with ridiculously valuable find: an English-language, first edition print of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. (I love that subtitle: "A Russian Realistic Novel".) The lucky woman chose...
Life in the virtual woods
I... really don't know how I feel about this. A video game based on Henry David Thoreau's Walden? It's not that I'm opposed to a game that aims to "reinforce our connection to the natural world and to challenge our hurried culture" or "achieve work-life balance", but doesn't doing that via a $20 video game...
Utterly Uncle Fred, by P.G. Wodehouse
Utterly Uncle Fred is an omnibus edition of P.G. Wodehouse's stories about the irrepressible Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, 5th Earl of Ickenham. This collection includes the novels Cocktail Time, Uncle Dynamite, and Service With a Smile, and well as the short story that introduced us to the character, "Uncle Fred Flits By"...
Hiding in plain sight
According to the Guardian, a long-lost novel by Walt Whitman was recently discovered in the archives of a Victorian New York Sunday newspaper. Described as a "rollicking anti-lawyer revenge fantasy", The Life and Adventures of Jack Engle was published anonymously...
Once and future Studio Ghibli
The trailer is out for Mary and the Witch's Flower, which I'm interested in for two reasons. First, it's based on a novel by Mary Stewart, author of my beloved Nine Coaches Waiting (which is...
Mansfield Park: An Annotated Edition, by Jane Austen
It's been a few months, and I am a huge nerd, so it's time for one of my favorite literary indulgences: reviewing annotated Jane Austen novels! Today I'll be complaining about Harvard University Press's recent edition of Mansfield Park. As always, please note: this is not a review of Austen's novel...
Around the World in Eighty Days, by Jules Verne
First published in 1873, Around the World in Eighty Days is Jules Verne's most popular work. It's the story of Phileas Fogg, an enigmatic, unflappable Englishman who bets a group of his wealthy peers that he can circumnavigate the earth in eighty days. Accompanied by his bewildered valet Passepartout (and pursued by a detective who incorrectly believes Fogg to be a notorious bank robber), Fogg sets out...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Around the World in 80 Days, by Jules Verne
In an effort to erase last week's disastrous choice from my brain, this week's Book Giveaway is a classic: Jules Verne's Around the World in 80 Days. It's been entertaining readers for nearly 150 years; I'm hoping it will be enough to wipe The Darkest Torment from my "recently read" memory bank. A full review will follow shortly...
Sibling rivalry: classics edition
Classic book nerds take note: Samantha Ellis recently wrote an interesting article about Anne Brontë ("the sister who got there first") for the Guardian. While I've never read Agnes Grey, the novel Brontë wrote about her experiences as a governess, I have read The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, and enjoyed it more than either of Brontë's sisters' novels...
Judgy
Rachel Vorona Cote just posted an essay called "The Many Bad Moms of Charles Dickens" over on LitHub. It's an interesting read, although anyone who truly wants to wrap their heads around Charles Dickens's opinions on True Womanhood really owes it to themselves to read Phyllis Rose's Parallel Lives. Alternatively...
Ambitious
[Note: due to the shortened holiday week, we won't be doing a Book Giveaway today. See you next Monday, bargain hunters!]
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paramount TV and Universal Cable Productions are teaming up to adapt Robert Heinlein's 1961 sci-fi classic Stranger in a Strange Land as...
We approve
Last week on Twitter I mentioned Australian graphic designer Jennifer Wu's amazing Tess of the D'Urbervilles cover, which cheers me up whenever I look at it. (Currently v. necessary.) Ms. Wu informs me that this cover is part of a larger project called #LoveRomance . The #LoveRomance campaign is devoted to championing romance writing and highlighting its exclusion from...
Seriously, a vast improvement
I can't find out much about this book cover mock-up (I found the original image here, but the link for artist Jennifer Wu's homepage doesn't seem to be working), but everything about it makes me...
Beach reads
In honor of Banned Books Week, Forbes put together a list of the "Top 5 Ancient And Medieval Censored Books To Read During Banned Book Week". I have no idea how they determine what makes these books the "Top 5"...
Um...
NPR recently featured an article about Missy Piggle-Wiggle and the Whatever Cure, the recent attempt to update Betty MacDonald’s beloved (albeit decidedly dated) Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle books for the modern era. I'm just not feeling this idea: I still get creeped out when I think about the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle story about the little girl who refused to take a bath...
Hmm. Maybe.
According to Lainey Gossip, there's a modern Jekyll and Hyde-inspired project in the works, possibly starring Captain America's Chris Evans. The plot sounds pretty thin...
Politeness costs nothing
Today, The Ugly Volvo posted an Open Letter to the Female Hat-Wearing Dog From Go Dog, Go that's pretty much perfection. Even as a small child, I remember being appalled by the hat-rejecting dog's rudeness. Didn't his parents ever teach him about the value of a polite redirect? Those conversations should have gone like this...
I would have pushed him down a well.
I normally avoid movies that scream OSCAR BAIT!!! this loudly, but I'm mildly intrigued by the new film Genius, about the relationship between notoriously verbose writer Thomas Wolfe and his long-suffering editor Maxwell Perkins. The trailer looks...
Maybe if I took out a loan...
I was recently introduced to the Folio Society, a London-based publisher of beautiful (and painfully expensive) books. I'm impressed by the fact that they appear to devote just as much effort—if not more—to books like Stephen King's...
Good luck
And in one last bit of movie-adaptation news, Emily Blunt and Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda have been confirmed as the stars of a sequel to Disney's Mary Poppins. I've never actually seen the original Mary Poppins, but just typing the name is enough to get some of the music stuck in my head, so...