Turning over a new page, finally.
Jan. 26th, 2013 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogOfficially, I have just begun my first real read of 2013. The Books Read list will eventually document the Jim Henson diary from Emily as #1 (but I mostly read that in the last days of '12), and I've really been finishing my last two reads of 2012 over the past few weeks, but it's their stories, and my list, and I'm sticking with them.
Fortieth of 2012 was Cutting for Stone, a difficult but ultimately good read my sister recommended. Also, likely, the last audio book I will ever listen to, at least for payment of money. They just take so much longer to listen to than to read on the page or screen. Once I realized that and got the library copy of the hardcover, it went much faster, although still not without some adjustment. The story is an odd cross between Life of Pi and a late-series M*A*S*H episode, with much of the horror of the former and the black humor of the latter. It covers a 50-year period beginning five years before my own birth and captures many moments and experiences that, if unrecalled by me, were certainly relatable to things I do remember.
And yes, while I didn't much care for it as an audiobook, I think I'd enjoy a film adaptation- and there is one in the works:
Turning a novel into a movie is challenge enough, but when that novel happens to be more than 600 pages long, you've got a real uphill climb — which is why Susanne Bier, who directed the 2011 Best Foreign Language Oscar winner, "In A Better World," has her work cut out for her as the recently appointed director of the film adaptation of "Cutting for Stone."
The only troubling thing, though, is that link is from almost a year ago, and there have been no announcements of casting or other progress. It may be in Development Hell, which would suit much of the subject matter. Perhaps the African settings pose logistical problems for it. (Speaking of such Hell, we just watched and enjoyed a documentary called Soul Power, chronicling an epic concert in Zaire which coincided with the Ali-Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974. The footage didn't get released until 2008.) Making it more confusing is that there was a totally unrelated film titled "Cutting for Stone" which was released in Canada, also in 2008.
----
I closed out the 2012 list with #41, an appropriate tag for a Met-related book: Greg Prince's first of four volumes of his collected Happy Recaps of 50 years of Mets victories. This one began with their first Polo Grounds victory in 1962 and ended, 126 recaps later, with their Game Five victory in the 1973 World Series at Shea Stadium.
I remembered many of the wins from when they happened, and far more of them from when Greg blogged these entries the first time around. But having them in one place, with continuity of characters and Smells Like Met Spirit, is something I'll be happy about for years to come.
----
And what, you ask, is the first cover actually cracked in this New Year?
This one:
Discworld, it isn't. Pure Pratchett, neither. Yet only four chapters in, it's clear that the same saintly snark behind Vimes and Nobby has arrived on Earth (Wisconsin, of all places!) in the not too distant future. I read the blurb, tried to work out a bizarre graphic right before the first page, and wondered if I was about to be befuddled by another World (not disc) of this master's creation.
Befuddled, no. Already sucked into it, damn right. This one's going to go quickly, I suspect, in hopes of being back on a one-a-week pace by the end of next month.
Fortieth of 2012 was Cutting for Stone, a difficult but ultimately good read my sister recommended. Also, likely, the last audio book I will ever listen to, at least for payment of money. They just take so much longer to listen to than to read on the page or screen. Once I realized that and got the library copy of the hardcover, it went much faster, although still not without some adjustment. The story is an odd cross between Life of Pi and a late-series M*A*S*H episode, with much of the horror of the former and the black humor of the latter. It covers a 50-year period beginning five years before my own birth and captures many moments and experiences that, if unrecalled by me, were certainly relatable to things I do remember.
And yes, while I didn't much care for it as an audiobook, I think I'd enjoy a film adaptation- and there is one in the works:
Turning a novel into a movie is challenge enough, but when that novel happens to be more than 600 pages long, you've got a real uphill climb — which is why Susanne Bier, who directed the 2011 Best Foreign Language Oscar winner, "In A Better World," has her work cut out for her as the recently appointed director of the film adaptation of "Cutting for Stone."
The only troubling thing, though, is that link is from almost a year ago, and there have been no announcements of casting or other progress. It may be in Development Hell, which would suit much of the subject matter. Perhaps the African settings pose logistical problems for it. (Speaking of such Hell, we just watched and enjoyed a documentary called Soul Power, chronicling an epic concert in Zaire which coincided with the Ali-Foreman "Rumble in the Jungle" in 1974. The footage didn't get released until 2008.) Making it more confusing is that there was a totally unrelated film titled "Cutting for Stone" which was released in Canada, also in 2008.
----
I closed out the 2012 list with #41, an appropriate tag for a Met-related book: Greg Prince's first of four volumes of his collected Happy Recaps of 50 years of Mets victories. This one began with their first Polo Grounds victory in 1962 and ended, 126 recaps later, with their Game Five victory in the 1973 World Series at Shea Stadium.
I remembered many of the wins from when they happened, and far more of them from when Greg blogged these entries the first time around. But having them in one place, with continuity of characters and Smells Like Met Spirit, is something I'll be happy about for years to come.
----
And what, you ask, is the first cover actually cracked in this New Year?
This one:
Discworld, it isn't. Pure Pratchett, neither. Yet only four chapters in, it's clear that the same saintly snark behind Vimes and Nobby has arrived on Earth (Wisconsin, of all places!) in the not too distant future. I read the blurb, tried to work out a bizarre graphic right before the first page, and wondered if I was about to be befuddled by another World (not disc) of this master's creation.
Befuddled, no. Already sucked into it, damn right. This one's going to go quickly, I suspect, in hopes of being back on a one-a-week pace by the end of next month.
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no subject
Date: 2013-01-28 12:24 pm (UTC)Two exceptions I can think of... Gone with the Wind (the book was awesome, but the movie was just awesomer) and a Sidney Sheldon potboiler from the 70s, The Other Side of Midnight.
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Date: 2013-01-28 02:26 pm (UTC)I have my own images of lots of Stone (as with all books), but I'd love to get a real visual feel for Addis, and Operating Theater 3 (almost abbreviated that as OT3- I'm not cleared that high;), and especially the images of St. Theresa.