BTT: Movie Potential

What book do you think should be made into a movie? And do you have any
suggestions for the producers?
Or, What book do you think should NEVER be
made into a movie?

Worst is first:
Apparently Alexandre Dumas should never be made into a Hollywood movie. The Man In The Iron Mask was atrocious. I don't even know where to start with that one. The whole charm of the book is that it is the last part of the Musketeers' story. It's not uplifting or just or pat, but it is wonderful. The movie was horrible and distorted the plot and characters beyond salvage.
The Count of Monte Cristo was a tiny bit better, but the book has so much more depth and adventure and purpose. Plus they changed the hell out of the ending.

As to books I'd like to see...I want to see the recent adaptation of Captain Alatriste. Viggo Mortensen, yum.

Booking Through Thursday: Conditioning

From BTT:

Are you a spine breaker? Or a dog-earer? Do you expect to keep your books in
pristine condition even after you have read them? Does watching other readers
bend the cover all the way round make you flinch or squeal in pain?

I am emphatically not a spine-breaker. No no no. I hate that. I have been known to occasionally dog-ear books to mark a quote or something. That's mostly with non-fiction books or school books, books that I feel were made to get worn in. My fiction books are not handled with gloves on or anything, but I do treat them respectfully. The edges of covers tend to get a bit beaten up from being put in purses or balanced on a table, but nothing gets ripped or bent if I can help it.
I don't like seeing people bend the covers around unless it's a novel or something for school. Since most of us buy used copies anyway, they're already beaten up, wirtten in, etc.

BTT: Stories

If you’re anything like me, one of your favorite reasons to read is for the
story. Not for the character development and interaction. Not because of the
descriptive, emotive powers of the writer. Not because of deep, literary meaning
hidden beneath layers of metaphor. (Even though those are all good things.) No …
it’s because you want to know what happens next?
Or, um, is it just me?

Yes and no. I have read books simply for the plot (most of the Twilight books) and I have read books simply for the language (The English Patient). The thing is, while those books were enjoyable enough, I didn't love them. I didn't absorb them and rave about them. A good book, to me, needs a combination of all of these:

Characters: At least one character has to be likable. That's why The English Patient felt hollow, and why I have such a hard time reading Steinbeck books.

Language: Language can be as indispensible as the plot. What would a Wodehouse book be without the appeal of its language? I don't really care if a book is evocative and flowery, as long as it is comprehensible and more-or-less readable. I dislike the very simple and the very embellished.

Plot: There is nothing more frustrating than a good story broken to pieces by philosophical or whale-related digression.

One last note: I have no use for "deep literary meaning", as defined by critics and scholars. Reading books not for enjoyment but for some other hazy academic reason is something I don't have any interest in doing. (I'm looking at you, James Joyce and Mrs Dalloway.)

BTT: Libraries

Whether you usually read off of your own book pile or from the library shelves
NOW, chances are you started off with trips to the library. (There’s no way my
parents could otherwise have kept up with my book habit when I was 10.) So …
What is your earliest memory of a library? Who took you? Do you have you any
funny/odd memories of the library?

I did go to the library when I was a very young girl. I remember the children's section because it had a cushioned window seat that I loved to sit on. As I got older I didn't really go to the library. I mostly borrowed books from the shelves of my teachers in school.

Now, as a college student, I go to the library usually once a week. My local library is superb, with a wonderful media section and lots of room to sit down and read. They even have a small coffee shop! Last fall I would go down to read the library's copy of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, a book too big to tote back with me. I would sit on a bench by a window on the second story, overlooking a tree and small pavillion. It was heaven.

BTT: Beginnings

What are your favourite first sentences from books? Is there a book that you
liked specially because of its first sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you
didn’t like but still remember simply because of the first line?

P.G. Wodehouse's The Luck of the Bodkins is as hilarious at the beginning as it si the rest of the book. Behold:

"Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel
Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty,
hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk
French."

BTT: Fantasy Worlds

From the awesome Booking Through Thursday:

Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?
Or where
you certainly would NOT want to live?
What about authors? If you were a
character, who would you trust to write your life?

The first, most obvious thought I had was that I could die happy if I lived in Middle-earth. Middle-earth has gorgeous scenery, loads of history, and is populated by handsome, chivalric men and elves. Maybe I would even be an elf! Sure, it's a little dangerous, but I could count on Tolkien to either see me through tough situations with grace and courage, or at least give me a rockin' death scene.

I think I would like to experience life in the 1800s or early 1900s. It seems like a very cool time to be alive, fictionally speaking. Oh, I almost forgot! The world of Wodehouse. That is my ultimate fantasy world. The old-fashioned feel, without those pesky things like wars and poverty and sufferage and stuff. To live at Blandings would be heaven, especially if Bertie and Jeeves came for a visit. :-)

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I would never choose to live in a dystopian novel, or anything by John Steinbeck. Things just don't end well for his characters.

Booking Through Thursday: Endings

From Booking Through Thursday:

What are your favourite final sentences from books? Is there a book that you
liked specially because of its last sentence? Or a book, perhaps that you
didn’t like but still remember simply because of the last line?

I've always had a fondness for the closing lines of Around the World in 80 Days. The narrator has just finished telling us that, although Phileas Fogg won his bet, he was left with none of his winnings. What did he gain from his around the world travels?

Nothing, say you? Perhaps so; nothing but a charming woman, who, strange as
it may appear, made him the happiest of men!

Truly, would you not for less than that make the tour around the world?

Abandonment

From Booking Through Thursday:

I would enjoy reading a meme about people’s abandoned books. The books that you
start but don’t finish say as much about you as the ones you actually read,
sometimes because of the books themselves or because of the circumstances that
prevent you from finishing. So . . . what books have you abandoned and why?

Great question. The most recently abandoned book was The Grapes of Wrath. I got to about page 60 and put it down to start another book. It's not as though I hated it or anything; it was readable enough. It's just that I find Steinbeck so...cold, I guess. His books are depressing, but that's not a problem for me. It's just that his characters aren't ones that I feel connected with, and the stories themselves are so bleak. I've read East of Eden, and while it was a good book, it wasn't one that resonated with me. I read it and recognized that it was a good book, but then I put it on the shelf and didn't pick it up again.

Other books that have been abandoned due to "lack of connection": Anna Karenina and The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. I've also dropped Mrs. Dalloway. I didn't have any animosity, I just didn't care how it ended. I stopped reading it literally a few chapters from the end.

There were a few that I probably would've abandoned in high school if I had read them on my own, like:

Heart of Darkness- I consider myself a pretty proficient reader, but yikes, that was a tough one to get through. So boring.

Moby Dick- Here's the thing. The story itself is fantastic, and the writing is great. But by the end of the book there's about three chapters of pointlessness for every chapter of actual plot. I don't really care about harpoon types, or how to butcher a whale. If there had been more plot than filler, I would've liked it a lot.

There are a few that I may or may not have read on my own, like The Great Gatsby and Crime & Punishment. Gatsby seemed stupid to me (I was only 15, though, maybe now I would feel differently) but it was short and an easy read. C & P was a book that I enjoyed, but holy cow, was the protagonist whiny. [Spoiler alert!] He does his murderin' early in the book and then spends the rest of the time being mopey and getting brain fever or whatever. That's all well and good for awhile, but virtually the whole book is his kind of self-indulgent inner struggle.

Booking Through Thursday Medley

Okay, there must be something you read that’s a guilty pleasure . . . a Harlequin romance stashed under the mattress. A cheesy sci-fi book tucked in the back of the freezer. A celebrity biography, a phoned-in Western . . . something that you’d really rather not be spotted reading. Even just a novel if you’re a die-hard non-fiction fan. Come on, confess. We won’t hold it against you! Sometimes when the kid I baby-sit is napping, I’ll read some of the trashy romance novels his mom has lying around.

Love stories? Yes or No? As I look back on my favorite books, I don’t think any of them are love stories. I’m not adverse to them, but I think the fact that I’ve never been in a relationship removes me from the emotion of it. It’s a little out of my scope of experience, so I don’t connect to it as much.

Do you use bookmarks? Or do you dog-ear the corners? If you do use bookmarks, do you use those fashionable metal ones? Or paper? Sometimes I dog-ear passages that I love, and often I’ll leave a book open, face-down to keep my spot. I own bookmarks that I use, but often I’ll use some ratty piece of paper.

Audio Books. Yes or No? Depends on who is reading it. As a rule, I don’t like audio books. I much prefer to control the pace of my reading, and my own inflections. However, I do own some audio books. I have John Hodgeman reading his book The Areas of My Expertise in his dry, deadpan way, and I have some books read my celebs that I like. Robert Sean Leonard in particular is an amazing reader. He has such a great, sexy voice and perfect inflections.

But, enough about books. . . what else do you read?? Magazines? Newspapers? Professional journals? Cereal boxes? Phone books? Purchase invoices? Homework? Everything. I was “that kid” who would read cereal boxed. I’m compulsive: if there is something in front of me with words on it, I will read it.

Do you tend to read more books written by one gender over the other? If so, which one? Men? Or women? Is this a deliberate choice? Or just something that kind of happened? I guess I read more books by men. It’s certainly not a conscious choice. I think it’s because I seek out classics, and most of them are written by men. I do have books that I enjoy that are written by women, of course.

Have you read Lord of the Rings? If so, how many times have you read it? Just once? Or so many you can’t count? If not, why not? Not your cup of tea? And, while we’re on the subject, did you see the Oscar-winning movie(s)? What did you think? I have read it, and with skimming back through and all that, I’m sure I’ve read it more than twice, probably more than three times. I need to reread it sometime. I saw the movies an embarrassing number of times. Truly, it’s obscene. I could probably quote them by memory.

Do you read non-fiction books for pleasure, not counting books required for courses or for work? If so, what areas of non-fiction interest you the most? If not, why not? What are some of your favorite books from those areas? I don’t typically read non-fiction books, for purely cynical reasons, really. I like to be immersed in a story, to accept the situation and the characters. With non-fiction, I spend the whole book wondering what actually happened and what didn’t, so I find it hard to get involved with the people and situations in it.

How do you decide to read a book by an author you haven’t read before? What sort of recommendations count most highly in making that decision? I am such a cautious person. I stick with authors I’ve read and liked, or go with the “tried-and-true” classics. Sometimes if I hear enough good things about a book from friends or reviewers I’ll try it out.

What author that you remember having read does the best character development? What book/series do you think is that author’s shining work with regards to character development? What was (were) your favorite character(s) in that book or series? Do you ever find yourself really liking a character in a book that you’re certain you would never be friends with in real life? Do you ever re-read a book to visit a character because you miss him/her? Alexandre Dumas is great at character development. If you trace the development of the characters from The Three Musketeers to their final book…it’s kind of incredible. They stay completely true to form while changing and maturing. Dumas’ plot and secondary characters leave something to be desired, but he was a genius with his beloved main characters. I really liked Athos as the fallen nobility, the brooding man of dignity, but I also liked Aramis, who was the least likeable. He had flaws and was more cunning than the other three, but he was endearing to me. The characters I like in books, and other works of fiction, are most certainly people that I probably couldn’t be friends with in real life. It’s like women falling for the “bad boy” in movies because it’s safe, except my bad boy isn’t some leather-wearing jerk, it’s usually some broody, introverted, extraordinary guy. Hellooo, Athos.

Do you enjoy reading mysteries? What’s your favorite kind of mystery? Do you like plenty of blood and guts, or do you prefer the details to be left to the reader’s imagination? Do you prefer mystery stories based in the author’s time or in previous centuries? Do you prefer mysteries based in your own country, or in distant lands? Do you like to figure out the solution, or do you allow yourself to be carried away with the story? I typically don’t read mysteries, or at least I don’t usually seek them out. The mysteries I am crazy about (the Sherlock Holmes stories, And Then There Were None, the Lord Peter series) are more about characters and their psychology than the actual mystery. I don’t like figuring things out myself because I’m truly awful at it, so if I figure it out on my own, I don’t have much faith in the hero detective. I don’t really have a preference on time or setting, I guess. I suppose I prefer period pieces, and apparently I like British mysteries the best.

Do you buy the books you read, or do you borrow them from the library or from friends or from somewhere else? Do you prefer new or used books? If you buy them, do you keep them? If you don’t keep them, how long do you hold on to them before letting them go? What do you do with them? I prefer buying books myself, for whatever reason. I used to buy exclusively new books, but now that I’ve discovered HalfPrice Books…well, you just can’t beat those prices. I’ve also started embracing books that look well-used. I keep all of my favorites, those books that are a part of me, even if I probably won’t be rereading them anytime soon. But I’ve been trying to eliminate clutter and simplify my life, so books that aren’t integral to my library and won’t be read again get sold. Usually to buy new books.