Get Lost in Literature

 Today's topic for TopTenTuesday hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl  was listed as Throwback Freebie and I decided to continue my list of  Top Ten Favorite Movie Adaptations . 1. The Hobbit J.R.R.Tolkien. 60 years before Frodo's trek, Bilbo Baggins receives an unwelcome invitation to go on an adventure, where he'd be required to steal from a greedy dragon. 2.  Life of Pi by Yann Martel . It's Castaway  meets The Jungle Book  as a young man is lost at sea with a hungry bengal tiger. 3.  The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. An actress's daughter becomes possessed, and the only one who can end the horror is Father Karras, a priest who is beginning to question his faith. 4.  Jurassic Park: The Lost World by Michael Crichton . Ironic it's called The Lost World when everyone knows where it is. The dinosaurs survived the fall of Jurassic Park and have begun to populate the island Isla Sorna. Are they an opportunity to study long dead species, or a...

  I normally open with a book quote, but today I'm skipping that because I thought a sound effect might be silly. This book was probably wasted on me. I've never read a graphic novel before and was recently inspired to do so. I'm a big Walking Dead fan (tv show) so I thought this would be the perfect first graphic novel. Rick Grimes wakes up from coma to find the world he knew is gone. The dead are walking, his family is missing, and the fight for humanity has begun. The artwork is way more sophisticated than I thought it would be, but because this is the only graphic novel I have ever read there's no comparisons to be made. So I liked the artwork, the attention to detail. The artist's ability to direct your focus is absolutely wonderful. I appreciate how hard it must be to draw all these different characters' faces and make sure to draw them exactly the same each and every time. As a diehard fan of the tv show I'm a bit biased on the quality of the book (I...

  “The sun sinks to rise again; the day is swallowed up in the gloom of night, to be born out of it, as fresh as if it had never been quenched.”― William Peter Blatty, The Exorcist I would like to start by saying two things: 1. I know using Ex instead of X isn't quite the same thing, Ex being a sound and X being an unloved letter of the alphabet...And at least on my blog, this year, it's going to remain underappreciated because Ex was the best I could do. 2 Do not read this book before bed, unless you're the kind of person that enjoys sleeping with the lights on. The story opens with Father Merrin, who is working on an archaeological dig in Iraq and is overcome with a feeling of foreboding as he discovers a statue of the wind demon, Pazuzu. Miles away, in Georgetown, Washington DC, Chris MacNeil is finishing up the filming of her next movie with director Burke Dennings before going home to her daughter, Regan. A normal life in the day of an actress except for the Jesuit pri...

  “There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear.” ― Peter Benchley, Jaws Amity Island thrives off tourism. The local businesses are run off of "summer people" who are visiting for the beautiful beaches. But when a Great White chooses Amity as its new hunting ground, people die, tourism fails, and the economy stumbles. The responsibility falls to Amity Police Chief Martin Brody to protect the people and figure out how to get rid of the shark. The book is decidedly not that scary by modern day expectations. There's an anti-elitist theme underlying the work; Brody's a working-class man with "traditional values" and he doesn't particularly care for the rich tourists his town depends on for survival. His wife Ellen, is a "traditional housewife" from an affluent family and he's become resentful that she might miss...

Fantastic Fungi: Expanding Consciousness, Alternative Healing, Environmental Impact   by  Paul Stamets, Louie Schwartzberg, Eugenia Bone, Suzanne Simard, Roland Griffiths, Jay Harman, William Richards, Andrew Weil, Michael Pollan...  We can’t get stuck in the past; we need to be grounded in the present but not stop looking ahead. If we can visualize a better future, we can achieve a better future. No summary is necessary to introduce this book, if you've read the title then you've read the synopsis. This book is about fungi, more specifically mushrooms.  I am aware this is a film, but I've never seen it and I can't tell you how the book compares to the documentary. I can tell you that I never knew how much I didn't know about mushrooms until I read this book. They can detoxify the planet, they can be nutritional, medicinal, or deadly. They can help with decomposition and rebirth. It seems like the secrets to the universe are held inside the fantastic fungi Paul Stam...

  Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch   by Terry Pratchett ,  Neil Gaiman “Hell may have all the best composers, but heaven has all the best choreographers.” The end is here...or nearing here. Heaven and Hell are quite excited about the apocalypse but they're the only ones. Demon Crowly and Angel Aziraphale have been sent to Earth to meddle in the affairs of humans for thousands of years...and they don't want the world to end... We have crapes, Queen, and books. The Antichrist is here to bring in the end of times but where exactly is here? Charged with watching over him, Crowly and Aziraphale are left panicked when they realize they lost the Antichrist. And a witch named Anathema Device teams up with luckless witch hunter Newton Pulsifer to find him. So this is to date, one of the funniest books I've ever read, which maybe isn't saying too much because I don't read a lot of comedies. But I laughed so hard I nearly wet myself. I feel l...

 Today's Top Ten Tuesday hosted by  hosted by  That Artsy Reader Girl  was listed as "Freebie." I've chosen to list my Top Ten Favorite Movie Adaptations.  1.  A Time to Kill by Josh Grisham. A terrible crime is committed by White Supremacists and followed by a swift act of vengeance by a grieving father. This is one of the rare occurrences where the movie is better than the book.  2. Jaws by Peter Benchley. A monster shark is terrorizing the beach just in time for 4th of July. Probably the only shark movie that isn't B-rated. Peter Benchley was good, but Steven Spielberg was better. 3. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist. Two kids with dark secrets and a serial killer terrorizing the suburbs. There were two movie adaptations of this, Let the Right One In was the Swedish version, and later the US produced one called Let Me In.  I've seen the both. If you're going to watch one, pick the Swedish version (with English subtitles). It was ...

"Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish." Ian Malcolm, presumed dead at the end of Jurassic Park , is alive and giving a lecture on Chaos Theory and Extinction when overzealous paleontologist Richard Levine shows up. Levine is tired of studying bones; he’s heard rumors about strange animals in Costa Rica and about Ian Malcolm’s extended stay there. He wants to put together an expedition to locate a “Lost World” where animals survived extinction and are still living in seclusion. Malcolm says no such place exists, but he’ll be happy to help if it’s ever found. As Levine begins to track down the last known rumored site of his Lost World he realizes he’s being monitored and all his careful planning means nothing if he isn’t the first one there. Lewis Dodgson is back and he wants what he paid for: dinosaur eggs. Levine rushes unprepared into the Lost World, forcing Malcolm to organize a rescue party… This was...

"...you cannot make an animal and not expect it to act alive. To be unpredictable. To escape. But they don't see that." Before I say anything about the book, I need to say Jurassic Park and Jurassic Park: The Lost World, are probably two of my all time favorite movies so I can’t really help but compare the books to the movies. I’ve probably watched those a thousand times. The movie were perfection and set the bar high; I never read the book because I was afraid it would suck and then how would I view the movie? Alternatively, what if the book was better and then the movie suddenly sucked? The third movie was a total disappointment. It would be a long time before I figured out the third movie had no book to support it, and I would then attribute the bad plot to the fact that the story had been nothing more than box office fan fiction. Now with advertisements for a fourth Jurassic Park , and a second fan fiction, I found myself once again intrigued and captivated b...