Top 5: Books to (Re)Read Before The Movies Are Released

Some people get annoyed when all the new Hollywood movies are adaptations instead of originals, but I love it! I have so much love for my favorite books, and finding out that they are coming to the big screen means that what was once only in my imagination can be shared with the world. I can finally see the places I've been picturing and put a face to the characters I've come to love. Over the next year a lot of great novels are being adapted into movies, and these are the top 5 that I need to read or reread before they hit theaters.

5. Warm Bodies
Novel by: Isaac Marion
Opening: February 2013

 

I've been following writer Isaac Marion for years, first through his blog and later his Twitter account. Embarrassing story: I first learned about him through a note posted by band Relient K (a high-school favorite) on MySpace, back when it was cool to have a profile there. Don't worry, I've moved on from the band and the site, but I still loves Marion's work. I've read his short stories and a novel called The Inside about a young man who escaped reality by going to sleep and meeting a girl in his dreams - I loved it and hoped it would become a movie (this was way before Inception). Then in 2011 he published Warm Bodies, a zombie love story, which is being made into a movie with stars including John Malkovich and Rob Corddry. I own the book but haven't read it yet, and I'm already excited!

4. Anna Kerenina
Novel by: Leo Tolstoy
Opening: November 2012

This is a classic novel, telling a love story about a passionate young woman who abandons her stifling marriage for an affair with a count. I tried to read it once, my freshman year of college, and while I enjoyed the storylines surrounding Anna there was also a secondary tale about a young man writing a book about his experiences as a Russian potato farmer that I just couldn't get through. Maybe I've matured enough in the past seven years to be able to enjoy it now. The film stars Keira Knightly in yet another period piece (she is so good at those!) along with heartthrobs Jude Law and Matthew Macfadyen (her beloved Darcy in Pride and Prejudice). And the screenplay is by renown playwrite Tom Stoppard (Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead). I'm thinking this is one I'll want on DVD.

3. Life of Pi
Novel by: Yann Martel
Opening: November 2012

I read this book one summer in high school and loved it. It's about a boy, the son of a zookeeper, who travels with his family on a boat from India and after a tragedy ends up alone in a lifeboat with a hyena, zebra, orangutan, and a Bengal tiger. Pi spends over 200 days lost at sea, and when he finally turns up on shore, tells fantastic tales of his trip, full of hallucinations, adventure, and survival. The once passage I can remember is where Pi ends up on a mysterious island with a foreboding tree that he belives to be carnivorous, with a particular hunger for humans. It was fantastically weird - very Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Marquez - and should make for an interesting film. The only star I recognize in the IMDb writeup is Tobey Maguire, who plays the author.

2. The Perks of Being A Wallflower
Novel by: Stephen Chbosky
Opening: September 2012

I read this title in high school, also - probably the same year as Life of Pi. There was one summer that I didn't have an assigned reading list from my English teacher so I created my own list, and this was one that I chose. It's a small but challenging novel about a boy in high school who is taken under the wing of a couple of upperclassmen. I found that it had a lot of parallels to another book about a troubled young boy, The Catcher in the Rye. Both were told from the boy's point of view and revealed and interesting and devestating twist at the end. I've always wanted to write a paper comparing the two books. The movie adaptation stars Emma Watson, Paul Rudd, Mae Witman (from Parenthood)  and Logan Lerman (Percy Jackson and a young Ashton Kutcher in The Butterfly Effect).

1. The Great Gatsby
Novel by: F. Scott Fitzgerald
Opening: Christmas 2012

Oh, The Great Gatsby! What sounds like a better premise for a movie than love, gin, and the jazz age in 1920s Long Island? It's been since high school that I read the novel, and I need to take the time to revisit the classic featuring Jay Gatsby and Daisy Buchanan. The Amazon.com description calls it "Spare, elegantly plotted, and written in crystalline prose," which sounds poetic in and of itself, and I know the book really was that wonderful. I am already anticipating delicious art deco sets and the glamorous fashions of the bobs, flapper dresses, and dapper suits. Title roles go to Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan (Pride and Prejudice, Drive, An Education), and Tobey Macguire.

Top 5: Comfort Reads

Everyone has a list of their favorite comfort foods, the tried-and-true dishes for when you're sick or having a bad day. On those days when things seem to be going terribly it's nice to sit down with a big bowl of ice cream and tell yourself that everything is going to be okay, even if just for the amount of time it takes to finish an entire pint of Cherry Garcia.

Because I'm a weird person, I have favorite comfort books that I like to read when things start looking bad. It doesn't matter that I'm stuck on the couch with a fever or having a bad day, things are always going to end up the same in the books I've read so many times the covers are falling apart. Do you have a book that you turn to when you need a pick-me-up? These are the top 5 that I reread when everything else is going to hell in a handbasket.


5. Anything from Janet Evanovitch's Stephanie Plum series

If you ever have a day when you just need to laugh about something, these books are the ones to turn to. I have literally laughed out loud while reading every single book in this series. It's about a girl working as a fairly terrible bounty hunter, the two guys who love her, her best friend the ex-stripper, and her crazy Jersey family. She's also clumsy, blows up a car at least once every book, and has a pet hamster. It's the perfect mindless distraction. The first in the series of 18, One for the Money, was just made into a movie starring Katherine Heigel. I can't wait to see it!




4. The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

I love this novel by Welsh writer Jasper Fforde - partially because it revovles around Jane Eyre, and partially because it has everything you need in a book all wrapped up in one. Romance, mystery, science fiction, relateable characters, humor - not to mention lots of literary puns and allusions. I have read it multiple times and never ceases to entertain me.







3. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

This is my favorite book of all time. I've read it nearly a dozen times by now. I think the familiarity is part of its charm - I know exactly what is going to happen when, and no matter what is going on in my life Jane is always going to be on the road that day on the way to town when Rochester comes home to Thornfield Hall.  It's just lovely. This was also made into a movie recently (it has been many times before, but the newest one came out this past year). I finally watched it a few weeks ago and it was so beautiful and wonderful, I'm already looking forward to watching it again.




2. Conversations with the Fat Girl by Liza Palmer

I found this book randomly on the rack at Target and have never regretted buying it. It's about a young woman watching her best friend get married while trying to land her dream job, be less insecure about her weight, and get the cute guy at work to notice her. It isn't literary genius by any stretch of the imagination but reading about a normal person struggling with normal issues makes me feel ... normal. The ultimate comfort.






1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This, coincidently, is also my go-to movie when I've had a bad day and want to feel better (although the new Jane Eyre will give it a run for its money). I've read the book and seen the film so many times over the years that the Bennets practically feel like family.

And if you're feeling particularly down and not even a classic romance will make you feel better, there's always Seth Grahame-Smith's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Reading about Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth beating off the undead with their bare hands is always a good time.

Brian Jonestown Massacre

I’m a sucker for stop motion film, especially with Legos.

In the Eye of the Beholder

One of the many things I love about college is the constant flow of things to stimulate your mind. I'm in a class on Aesthetics right now, and it is making me think about things like what makes things beautiful, how do you define art, and what it means to be truly alive. We've been reading a lot of different essays, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hume to L'Engle (of A Wrinkle in Time fame). Needless to say these have brought up more questions than they have answered. Can you create a formula to define art? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder or are there some who have better opinions than others? Are things only beautiful because we have decided they are beautiful or would they be beautiful if there was no one to look at them?

In Aesthetics last week our professor had us watch the movie My Dinner with Andre. It's a fascinatingly simple movie, with two men sitting down to dinner discussing what they've been doing with their lives since they last saw one another. They talk of how it sometimes feels as if they are living in a dreamworld, nothing more than zombies, in a world that is nothing more than a play. The question comes when Andre argues that there must be more. Wally, on the other hand, believes that the simple things are all you need. He is happy with an electric blanket and a cup of coffee in the morning, while Andre wants to dive into the world and find everything it has to offer. I suggest watching it, not because it has great cinematography (it doesn't) but because its lack of visual interest will force you to think.

"Comfort can lull you into a dangerous tranquility."

Andre says this at one point, and I think it's true. I have experienced it first hand. We all have. You get into the routing of something, and the next thing you know, three months have flown by and you have no idea where they have gone. You are so comfortable in your ways that nothing matters anymore. It's like the narrator at the beginning of Fight Club. I freaking love that movie. I'm getting ready to read the book, which I have been told is even better. But I digress. At the beginning of the film, Edward Norton's character has gotten to the point that he can't even sleep at night, he is so discontented. He tries to fill his life with Ikea furniture and support groups but even that doesn't seem to fill the void. He realizes that his life is passing him by and uses Tyler to try and fill it. To some extent each of us have a Tyler.

So I am hearing about beauty and love and art from all different directions right now. The speaker in Chapel on Monday spoke on "the presence and possibility of beauty in our lives" and how being close to Jesus and letting his beauty into our lives can transform us from ugly to beautiful. The Lecture Artist Series on campus included guest speaker Dr. Walter Brueggemann, who was here on Tuesday March 4th. The series this year is on Imagination and the Kingdom of God, and Dr. Brueggemann spoke about the fact that believing in Jesus takes a lot of imagination, among other things. Some other lines of his that I wrote down:

"The kingdom of God is ultimate, and all else is penultimate."

"The real stuff by which we are human comes in elusive artistic form."

"It is hard for us to embrace God's kingdom because we like to think we can do better."

and finally, my favorite line,

"Our society does not need anymore educated conformists."

I love that. A big frustration of mine is conformity. I do not think it is worth it to pretend to be just like everyone else just to be liked by others. And I see that happening around me all the time, especially with girls here on our campus. It is sad how many of them come here not to get an education but find a husband. I actually know young women who are majoring in Family and Consumer Sciences just to learn how to be a wife and mother. That really bothers me. If you meet someone in college that you fall in love with and marry, that's all fine and well, but college is not a $20,ooo a year dating service. Personally, individuality is a big thing for me. I get really annoyed when a girl changes her entire character just to impress a guy. A friend of mine started dating a guy a few months ago and since then has changed her wardrobe, her sense of humor, her whole outlook on life. We, her friends, are frustrated because wanting the admiration of this one guy has completely changed her.

I don't know where I am going with all this, or what conformity has to do with beauty. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. It doesn't matter. I've rambled on long enough.