Books into Movies

Book Club Buddies have read many books that have been made into movies. It is always been fun to take a field trip to see the movie after the book club discussion.


One of our earliest and my most favorite book-to-movie was: Like Water for Chocolate: A Novel in Monthly Installments with Recipes, Romances, and Home Remedies, by Laura Esquivel




Like Water for Chocolate, the movie - I remember there were 5 of us who drove into Chicago to see the movie, it had not been widely released yet, and it was in Spanish with English subtitles! We read each other exerpts from the book in the car on the way into Chicago. We giggled like high-school girls during the steamy parts of the movie, the other people in the theater must have thought we were really wacky! It was soooo fun!

What were some of the others? 

The Hours, by Michael Cunningham


 

Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austin at Nancy's house!
 

Young Adult books

Recently I have had the pleasure of reading several young adult (YA) books and have loved them. Over the past years, I have also read some wonderful YA books.  I know we read Harry Potter as a book club selection, but there are many more out there....

Have you? What ones would you recommend?

I would highly recommend the following! This author, Blue Balliett is from Chicago, and these stories are based in Chicago, with three school age children solving mysteries in and around the city with an artist's theme intertwined. Fun reads!!

I just finished reading the 3rd book of this series;


Book 1 in the series


and Book 2 in the series



Also, I recently read this book for  tutoring assignment, and I was just blown away with the power of the story! It is a true story of a young boy growing up in Germany during the Hitler regime, ...a must read, similiar to the Anne Frank genre!




This is a sweet and wonderful story about a young girl, from a wealthy family growing up in Mexico, when her world is turned upside down and she has to escape to the US and become a farm worker to survive. Loved it!

So many books, so little time!!!!

Delighted and Disappointed

Have you ever read a book that you loved, and eagerly awaited another one by the same author,only to be disappointed?

This just happened to me! I loved "Sarah's Key" by Tatiana de Rosnay

Excellent story, very engaging, and I would highly reccommend it to my buddies. Based upon this seldom mentioned, little known piece of French history,that alternates between the past in 1942, and the present. The past centers around a 10 year old Jewish girl Sarah Strazynski who is forced to go to the Velodrome d'Hiver with her mother and father, innocently leaving behind a 4 year old brother Michel locked in a secret cupboard with the assurance that she would return to let him out when it was safe.

So, when I saw her newest book on the shelf at the library, I was so excited to get it home to read it. "A Secret Kept"

was a huge disappointment. It was drudgery reading through it, and did not have any redeeming qualities. I would not recommend it to anyone. I will await her next book, and try her once again, but if it doesn't have a better story next time, I am taking her off my list!

My friend Marcia just reminded me of another example. We loved, loved, loved


But was really dissapointed with her follow up book;

How about you, have you ever been disappointed by a favorite author?

Buy, borrow, check-out?

Do you buy, borrow or check-out books?

If you read as much as I do, it gets too expensive to buy books. So I love the library and visit it often. I even remember very vividly as a kid, going to the Dekalb Public Library to check out books on my own, and sitting on the cool curved walls of stone outside on the west side.  Sycamore Public Library is my current favorite and the best place in town to peruse and find great books among the shelves to read and enjoy. Their staff is so helpful and can get any book for you if they don't have it in their location. Their Prairie Cat book search is really user friendly and I use it alot!

I also love to visit book stores. I feel bad because I probably contributed to the closing of the Junction in Dekalb and Borders too, because I would visit the stores regularly, hunting for the latest best-sellers and wandering through the book shelves. However, then I would go home and call my library to check it out.

I still love wandering through used book stores. It is like sorting through a treasure chest and special to find a used book that you want to keep and share. One time, when we were on vacation in New Orleans, I found a used copy of Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austin. Our book club was reading it at the time and this copy was a student version that had lots of footnotes and underlined passages, it was perfect for keeping and sharing with the club! (on the right in photo). I also watch for used books at garage sales and rummage sales.

How about you?


http://www.sycamorelibrary.org/

http://www.dkpl.org/

Next month' s selection

Thanks Irene for choosing Unbroken! We all gave it a thumbs up and enjoyed reading about this amazing man and his life-long, inspiring journey.

 

Nina has chosen the next book selection from one of our favorite authors;

Barbra Kingsolver: The Lacuna --- contains two very distinct parts. One features a vibrant Mexican landscape with the equally colorful personalities of Rivera, Kahlo, and Trotsky. The other centers more on Harrison's reclusive existence in small-town America and his battle with the House Un-American Activities Committee. Despite the prodigious research that both parts exhibit, critics clearly preferred the former, marveling at Kingsolver's lyrical passages and her expert recreation of 1930s Mexico. A few reviewers also noted instances of sermonizing and inaccurate history. However, the novel's compelling, engrossing story certainly outweighed these minor complaints, and in the end, Kingsolver has created a convincing "tableau vivant of epochs and people that time has transformed almost past recognition" (New York Times Book Review).

 

Another book we have read from Barbra, is one of my all time favorites;