Books into movies - take 2

What book would I most want to see filmed? The Ladies, a novel by Doris Grumbach. I've wondered often why it never was filmed. It's such a good story!

In the late 18th century, two Irish women decided to leave their family homes and create a life for themselves in the wider world. Sarah, an orphaned teenager, met Eleanor while on holiday from school. Eleanor, a woman in her thirties whose father had never forgiven her for being a daughter instead of the son he longed for, had dressed as a man from childhood and had enjoyed the kind of freedom that few traditional women could imagine. They became dear friends and companions, and their friendship was considered salutary by their families - until they eloped.

Lesbian love, even (and especially) loving relationships that were true marriages of hearts, minds, and bodies, shocked the families into allowing Sarah and Eleanor to leave their homes. They never returned. Instead, they established themselves in a small Welsh town, Llangollen, where they lived according to their own vows and beliefs. That their love was as natural as any was their first vow of binding. They vowed to create a beautiful home with bountiful gardens to sustain them, and to read and study to develop their minds and hearts.

Dressed in the riding habits and top hats that Eleanor designed as their lifelong fashion, they lived a solitary life in the puzzled town, and refused to allow themselves to be sensationalized when they attracted notice. Gradually, they received the visitors who would make them famous - Wordsworth, Byron, Walter Scott, Edmund Burke, Richard Shackleton, Josiah Wedgewood, and Anna Seward, amongst others. They grew old together, and they died together; their love never faltered.

Now, imagine the movie! Since there will be no more Merchant/Ivory productions, I would like Jane Campion to direct because of her skill in depicting women who make brave and difficult choices amidst natural or social beauty. (Think "The Piano" or "Portrait of a Lady," and imagine the Ladies against the expanses of rural Wales.) Picture Sarah's resplendent gardens, the house that the Ladies decorated, and the immense bed they shared; picture their beloved cow and the artichokes they feasted on with freshly-churned butter. The movie would be a visual treat.

Emma Thompson might be a good choice for the older, more assertive Eleanor. I can imagine Kate Winslett as Sarah, blonde and emotional, comforting Eleanor through her monthly migraines, knitting delicate stockings and gloves, and designing the gardens that would be so admired. Who would portray their famous friends? I'll leave that to you,the casting director, although I might suggest Anthony Hopkins as Sir Walter Scott, and (dare I say) Hugh Laurie as Lord Byron.

Perhaps you are puzzled, wondering why real-life luminaries are including in this fiction. Simple: Doris Grumbach's novel is a fictionalized biography of two very real, very brave women: Sarah Ponsonby and Eleanor Butler, the Ladies of Llangollen. Did Sarah suffer from debilitating dreams and lingering guilt about her sexual preference? Did Eleanor develop a passion for magic in her later years? Grumbach cautions the reader to remember that her book is fiction, her own vision, and not a faithful biography. I think it would make a splendid film, and I recommend the book as a fine romance and a vision of the lives of two pioneering women.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.

What do you read?

(Any bets on how quickly somebody says the Bible or some other religious text? A good choice, to be sure, but to be honest, I was thinking more along the lines of fiction…. Unless I laid it on a little strong in the string of catastrophes? Maybe I should have just stuck to catching a cold on a rainy day….)

This one is easy. I read Emily Dickinson. She has been through it all, and can see me through all. (Fiction Just Will Not Do!)

The soul has moments of Escape-
When bursting all the doors-
She dances like a Bomb, abroad-
And swings upon the Hours,

As do the Bee - delirious borne-
Long Dungeoned from his rose-
Touch Liberty- then know no more
But Noon, and Paradise -

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Are you a Goldilocks kind of reader?

Do you need the light just right, the background noise just so loud but not too loud, the chair just right, the distractions at a minimum?

Or can you open a book at any time and dip right in, whether it’s for twenty seconds, while waiting for the kettle to boil, or indefinitely, like while waiting interminably at the hospital–as long as the book is open in front of your nose, you’re happy to read?

I am neither Goldilocks nor the Princess and the Pea. I can read anywhere, anytime, in any situation - unless the light is bad, in which case I become The Beast (only without his more attractive qualities...)

melanie

Booking through Thursday

There was a widely bruited-about statistic reported last week, stating that 1 in 4 Americans did not read a single book last year. Clearly, we don’t fall into that category, but . . . how many of our friends do? Do you have friends/family who read as much as you do? Or are you the only person you know who has a serious reading habit?

I was not surprised by the statistic. As a librarian for almost thirty years, I have seen how reading habits have changed. Where once, patrons would stagger to the circulation desk with a dozen books to check out, now they have three or four. Where once, we would have to buy a dozen copies of the latest bestseller, now we buy three or four. Perhaps, some of this trend can be attributed to the online booksellers, whose deeply-discounted prices make it more attractive to buy a best-seller than to wait for 3-4 weeks to get it from the library. More likely, people who once were casual readers have become less likely to read for any of a million reasons - I won't bore you with my cynical list of possibilities.

One of the details in the MSN article caught my attention - the notion that women are less likely than men to read biographies . I won't generalize from myself, since I'm a fiend for biographies, especially if they're about literary or intrepid women. (I'm itching to read the new biography of Gertrude Bell, for example.) I will generalize from my women friends, though - they (we) all read history, biographies, science, all manner of nonfiction, and we discuss amongst ourselves.

Another detail - or omission - from the article made me wonder whether the survey included audio books. I've seen discussions and debates on whether audio books count as "reading" - for example, check out this excellent post by Moonfrog and the comments below - and I've been rather surprised by some of the conclusions. For the record, I think that any medium that lets you absorb the author's words qualifies as reading - and I wonder who amongst the scoffers would tell, say, blind people that they aren't reading their "Books on Tape."

So, do my friends and family read as much as I do? Friends, yes, but wouldn't you expect that we'd choose friends whose passions complement our own? In fact, some friends astound me with the number of books they read, especially since they also knit amazing things, create and sustain splendid gardens, raise excellent children, work time-intensive jobs....Would that I had the energy and time-management skills to keep up with them!

(Family - not as much. Alas.)

melanie

Booking through Thursday : Indoctrination

When growing up did your family share your love of books? If so, did one person get you into reading? And, do you have any family-oriented memories with books and reading? (Family trips to bookstore, reading the same book as a sibling or parent, etc.)

My family reads. Always read. Always will read. It's our nature to read. No matter what else we do or don't do, that remains constant.
My best family-oriented book memory is a trip to the big Barnes & Noble store on Fifth Avenue in the late 1950s. While my mother was looking for art books about The Floating World, I wandered around the used-book section, where I found a lovely Everyman's Library copy of Jane Eyre, bound in red cloth, and only a dollar or two. I had a dollar or two. Reader, I bought it, read it, and still read it.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

One book at a time? Or more than one? If more, are they different types/genres? Or similar?

(We’re talking recreational reading, here—books for work or school don’t really count since they’re not optional.)

Monogamy? HAH! No way. I have no discipline, no plan, almost no discernment. Whatever comes along, if it looks delectable, I will taste it.

As for what I read - No rhyme, no reason - No, that's not true, because I am apt to be reading poetry and non-fiction together, along with fiction, which can be anything from classics to children's books.

(In fact, I have just joined a read-and-knit-along for Anne of Green Gables, and I'm looking forward to it as I would look forward to curling up with ice water and peppermints... no, that's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I also want to reread...)

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Who’s the worst fictional villain you can think of? As in, the one you hate the most, find the most evil, are happiest to see defeated? Not the cardboard, two-dimensional variety, but the most deliciously-written, most entertaining, best villain? Not necessarily the most “evil,” so much as the best-conceived on the part of the author…oh, you know what I mean!

The worst villain: Gilbert Osmond in The Portrait of a Lady. He devours innocence and freedom for sheer sport - ruining Isobel's life, Pansy's life - even Ralph Touchett's, in a way, as his sufferings are multiplied by his generosity. Osmond's delight in the trappings of wealth and culture makes his heartlessness even more ironic.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

I had an idea for a BTT question when I was taking a peek at one of my bookcases yesterday and spotted my old copy of the Aeneid in Latin sitting there. Maybe this question has already been done—but if not… Do you have any foreign language books and if so can you (still) read them?

Beginning in 7th grade, I studied Russian for 5 years. Except for one forgettable year when the teacher was a Brooklyn gal with a heavy Brooklyn accent, my teacher was Gospodin Gogotsky, a Tatar who had been a choreographer in Russia. He fascinated me, even when he was, shall we say, impaired during his last year of teaching.

I own two books in Russian. Anyone who knows me is going to laugh, because the titles are so *me*: one is an anthology of poetry, and the other is Winnie the Pooh. The poetry is beyond me at this point. I'm sure I still could read the words, but I could not understand them. Winnie? Maybe.



melanie

Booking through Thursday

It happens even to the best readers from time to time… you close the cover on the book you’re reading and discover, to your horror, that there’s nothing else to read. Either there’s nothing in the house, or nothing you’re in the mood for. Just, nothing that “clicks.” What do you do?? How do you get the reading wheels turning again?

Nothing to read in the house? Whose house is this? Certainly not mine. Maybe I'm visiting a non-reader's house? Even she would have something to read - a cookbook, a magazine, a newspaper -- Worst-case scenario: I take out my memo pad and a pen, and I write notes for aa poem, an essay, or a blog entry. I've even been known to write little letters in my little handwriting.

Nothing in my house that I'm in the mood for? See above... If I'm too depressed or anxious for sustained reading. I can always read a poem, an essay, or a novel by Barbara Pym. If I can't read Jane and Prudence, my brain must be well and truly fried!

melanie

Harry Potter Read along

Seems as if I've been saying "I want to read the whole series" forever.





--and now I shall - one book per week, beginning 9 June. I bought the English editions for my birthday last year (cars have "bonnets" instead of hoods), and I have ordered book 7 from Amazon.uk.

Total immersion - excellent!

melanie

Booking through Thursday
So, judging by last week’s answers, apparently the question I should have been asking was:
Where DON’T you read??

I do not read in the shower, in the dentist's chair, in the car (unless I have an audiobook), under anesthesia, in a movie theater once the film starts, in a restaurant if I'm eating with someone. Really, I can't come up with that many situations where I'd never read. Or breathe.

melanie

Booking through Thursday

Reading. In. Public. Do you do it? Why or why not?

Don’t forget to leave a link to your actual response in the comments—or if you prefer, leave your answers in the comments themselves!

Yes yes yes yes. I read in public, I read in private, I read unless I'm knitting or writing or sleeping. Gracious, what would I do if I weren't reading? I'd starve, I'd fade away, I'd become someone else, I'd stagnate.

melanie

By the decade challenge: The song of the lark

The Song of the Lark - Willa Cather.

Why did I select this book? I'd never read Cather, and I knew that the plot included opera. Well, now I have, and it does.

The plot - the trajectory of a young girl's life from small-town Colorado to international acclaim as a Wagnerian diva - is almost incidental. The huge Colorado landscape will, one knows, transmute itself into the vistas of Valhalla. The landscape itself will be as much a character as any human being, and will be given a voice more eloquent and true than any human.

In fact, every character's inner life centers on the radiant promise and fulfillment of Thea Kronenborg's artistry. Even the dying thoughts of a hideously-injured trainman are reverences to Thea. Thea contains multitudes, and they all are consumed by Thea.

They all worship with the same voice, designed to express grand principles, both aesthetic and philosophic. Unless I kept track of the the "he said" antecedents, I had no idea who was thinking, talking, or observing.

Perhaps I truly began to lose heart when Theas' musical mentors steered her toward Wagner. I loathe Wagner and nearly everything his music has influenced. Certainly, I always lose interest when a novel seems to be nothing but a duck blind for the author's philosophy. I would have stopped reading well before the end, since I did not care a whit about any character except Thea's mother, but I soldiered on in the name of - oh, who cares....

I'm not sorry that I read this book, but I am glad that it's over.

Notable passages (quotation herein does not constitute approbation by Teabird):

"Though their challenge is universal and eternal, the stars get no answer but that - the brief light flashed back to them from the eyes of the young who unaccountable aspire."
"Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is."
"He was observant, truthful, and kindly - perhaps the chief requisite in a agood story-teller."
"[A rabbit] seemed to be lapping up the moonlight like cream."
"[Thea's sister had] the kind of fishy curiosity which justifies itself by an expression of horror."


melanie

Booking through Thursday

Booking Through Thursday

1. Just out of curiosity, as we enter into Passover and Easter season... have you ever read the Bible? Just the odd chapter or Psalm? The whole thing? (Or, almost the whole thing? It's some heavy reading, of course, and those "begats" get kind of tedious.) I've read the entire New Testament, but only about 2/3 of the Hebrew Bible - which is odd, since I am Jewish. (Or, should I say, I'm a Jewess. I've been called "Jewess" by more people than you would believe!)
   


2. If so, was it from religious motivation or from a literary perspective? Stuck with nothing else to read in a hotel room the Gideon's have visited? Any combination? I took a course as an undergraduate, "The Bible as Literature," which was one of the more useful courses I took as an English major. It illuminated the Biblical references in English and American lit and opened up a new path of understanding. At that point, I had never read the New Testament at all. A few years later, some friends became involved in the Christian Movement and I read it to please them before they took me to visit a Christian commune. (Loved the commune!)
   


3. If not, why not? Against your religious principles? Too boring? Just not interested? Something you're planning on taking care of when you get marooned on a desert island? Not to be controversial, but how could it be a problem to read about other peoples' beliefs? If nothing else, it may begin to illuminate the differences amongst people. (Forgive me, it's my hippie sensibility. My freak flag always will fly!)
   


4. And while we're on the subject... what about the other great religious works out there? Are they more to your liking? Neither more nor less, actually, except for the Tao Te Ching, which I almost included on my list of 10 books I could not live without. I'm not a believer, so I read all religious works (and I do, actually, read all religious works) as literature, and as food for my love of mythology and teaching stories.

melanie

Ten books you cannot live without

From Kailana's Written World -- (in no particular order)

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass- Lewis Carroll
Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
Little Women - Lousia May Alcott
Possession - A.S. Byatt
Pride and Prejudice (or Emma) - Jane Austen
Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf
Portrait of a Lady - Henry James
Frankenstein - Mary Shelley
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde

How hard to narrow it down to ten books that the world (or I) could not live without! I can presume for myself, as of this moment, but the world? The books I chose are good reads and books that (I presume) illuminate many of the aspects of the human spirit, both good and ill. They never fail me.

What would your choices be? Be sure to check out the list of participants on Kailana's blog, and comment there (and here, if you like!) if you decide to participate.

melanie

TBR Challenge : Never let me go

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

What I remember most about Ishiguro's earlier book, Remains of the Day, is that he was able to capture the nuances of language and gesture that can separate people, or define them. In this book, language and nuance are key because the characters possess almost nothing else.

When we meet Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy, they are students in a posh English boarding school. It becomes apparent quickly that the education they are receiving is not typical, and that they are being educated for an unusual purpose. They become aware that their destinies will not be chosen freely. That awareness almost becomes a character in itself, growing and becoming, simultaneously, more nuanced and more overt. The women who instruct them might be religious Sisters but for the lack of religion or spirituality in the curriculum.

These children are permitted one box of treasures apiece. The things that comprise "treasure" may have come from the trucks that bring random objects to the school - a cassette tape of an obscure singer, say, or a fancy pencil case. The treasured objects that define and separate the children are pathetic artifacts from a world they have yet to experience.

I hesitate to further define the plot. The details of these childrens' destiny are revealed fairly early in the book. How they deal with this certainty, and how their relationships change as they go through their lives, comprise most of the novel. Again, details and nuance rule until the end of their lives.

If I had to sum up the book in one phrase, it would be "mysterious dystopia." One never learns why these children were essential to the plan that their lives took, but that question (for me, at least) did not surface until I closed the book and begun to ponder. I'm still pondering, and making connections to books and films that have addressed the central issue. Ishiguro's genius in showing us the hidden corner of a dystopia is strongest in what he does not reveal. The negative space of that world is limned, delicately.

"Tell the truth but tell it slant," says Emily Dickinson. Absolutely.

melanie

Decades Reading Challenge

Another challenge! It's called By the decade. You select consecutive decades and read a book for each.

I've decided to read from 12 decades.

1890s Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
1900s Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad)
1910s Song of the Lark (Willa Cather)
1920s The Beautiful and Damned (F. Scott Fitzgerald)
1930s Murder on the Orient Express (Agatha Christie)
1940s Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)
1950s Wise Blood (Flannery O'Connor)
1960s Speak, Memory (Vladimir Nabokov)
1970s Play It As It Lays (Joan Didion)
1980s Joy Luck Club (Amy Tan)
1990s The Biographer's Tale (A.S. Byatt)
2000s The Seven Sisters (Margaret Drabble)

Since we're allowed to cross-challenge (use books that we have read/will read for other challenges in 2007), I've already read two.

Thanks, 3M, for hosting this challenge.

melanie