Coming in the next year we are excited to see films/TV adaptions of The Hunger Games, The Hobbit, The Great Gatsby, Great Expectations, Life of Pi, The Borrowers, World War Z, and others.

A few of my  all-time favorite movies-based-on-books are:

The Princess Bride, based on The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure by William Goldman. This is one of those movies that I’d seen several times and never even knew it was based on a book until I saw the book in a library one day.

Julie & Julia, based on Julie and Julia by Julie Powell and on the delicious, heartbreaking, and hilarious My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme. What I knew about Julia Child was based mainly on occasionally watching re-runs of her cooking show, and reading her autobiography made me appreciate her for her wit, her kindness, her sass, and for lack of a better word, her awkwardness.  Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci are utterly lovable in the movie as Julia and Paul.

The Sound of Music, based on Maria Augusta von Trapp’s memoir, The Story of the Trapp Family Singers. It’s a classic.

I could go on… there’s also The Virgin Suicides; Girl, Interrupted; Water for Elephants; any number of movies based on comic books, The Wizard of Oz; etc., etc.

What are some of your favorite movies based on books? Which books do you think should be adapted for film? Which have been adapted but really shouldn’t have been? Which movies ended up being better than the book? (I have a strong vote for one of those: The Devil Wears Prada)

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This is my last post on the Just the Right Book blog – but our new blogger, Whitney, will be taking over soon. Welcome, Whitney!

Here’s a little more guidance on which books to choose…

TO ENTERTAIN:
Just Kids by Patti Smith
Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger
A Reliable Wife by Robert Goolrick

TO CELEBRATE A DIVERSITY OF CULTURES:
The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Absolutely True Diary of  Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie

                    
Go to  www.worldbooknight.org for the full list of books and to sign up!

TO EDUCATE:

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot

TO INSPIRE:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving
My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

TO THRILL:
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Bloodwork by Michael Connelly
The Stand by Steven King

TO MOVE:

Little Bee by Chris Cleave
Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson
Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

Here’s a chance to give your favorite book* to 20 people – for free! World Book Night started last year in the UK, and this year the U.S. is involved, too. Here’s how it works: You sign up to be a volunteer book giver (sign up here by Feb. 1st). You choose a book from the approved list of 30 books, answer some questions, and, if you’re approved, the World Book Night people will ship you 20 copies of your chosen book (books will be shipped to bookstores and libraries throughout the country, so you’ll have to go pick up your books at one of your local establishments… but you were already going there anyway, weren’t you?) On April 23, 2012, you take your books to a public place and hand them out, spreading the joy of reading!

What for? From the WBN website: “It will see tens of thousands of people go out into their communities to spread the joy and love of reading by giving out free World Book Night paperbacks. World Book Night, through social media and traditional publicity, will also promote the value of reading, of printed books, and of bookstores and libraries to everyone year-round.”

I can’t think of a much better way to encourage people to read and to remind them of the value of the printed book than to actually put a copy of a book in someone’s hand and say “Read this book. It will make you [laugh/cry/think, etc.]” While World Book Night is being actively promoted through social media, it in and of itself is almost the anti-social media–or perhaps the original form of social media: people going outside and talking, face to face, with other people.

Now the hard part is picking which book to give! Over the coming weeks, we’ll be highlighting some of our favorite books from the World Book Night list. But for now, don’t forget to sign up by Feb. 1st!

*Choose your favorite book from the list – but it’s an extensive list, with something for nearly everyone, and there’s a good chance your favorite book might actually be on it! If not, maybe you’ll find your second-favorite book instead.

Many of us here at Just the Right Book have recently enjoyed The Time in Between by Maria Duenas. This is the perfect kind of novel to sink your teeth into this time of year–it’s long (624 pages), has a strong, likable protagonist who you’ll root for, and an engaging, compelling story–set against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War and then World War II. The sense of time and place is vivid–you’ll be transported to Spain, Morocco, and Tunisia in the 1930s and 40s and immersed in the culture, the landscape, and the fashions of the time. The Time in Between is the author’s debut novel, a bestseller in Spain, and was translated from Spanish.

 Click here to view photos of locations featured in the book, with captions written by the author.

Learn more about the book in these two videos of the author discussing her book:

In a book club, or want to discuss this book with friends? Here are some questions to get you started.

And here I’ve been thinking all these years that I’m the only one who can never seem to remember the endings of books (and movies, too). The beginnings and middles of novels are where the “meat” is – they’re where we readers are concentrating so hard on getting into the book, immersing ourselves, absorbing everything that happens and anticipating what might happen next. Perhaps one reason why beginnings and middles stick with us more easily, and for longer, than endings do is because we invest so much thought and focus into them. Also, they just take longer. I might be “in the middle of” a  great novel for a week or two–but typically I’m only “at the end” for a short few hours, or perhaps the last 50 pages. Sometimes it’s the journey, not the destination, that sticks with us as readers.

Or, is it the writing itself that makes us forget or gloss over endings? Grossman writes, “Nowadays when I’m chatting about a novel with friends, I almost don’t bother to add, ‘it kind of fell apart towards the end,’ because I’m a bit surprised when a book doesn’t. Again: not a disaster. A novel with a bad middle is a bad book. A bad ending is something I’ve just gotten in the habit of forgiving.”

Read Lev’s full essay here.

Is the ending any more or less important than the rest of a book? What do you think?

In his article for The Guardian, Robert McCrum reflects on Somerset Maugham’s notion of “the useful art of skipping.”

I’ll admit to having skimmed (or skipped altogether) parts of novels I’ve read over the years, mostly books assigned for school. The phrenology chapter of Moby-Dick? I skipped it in tenth grade and then again in college. “The Pension Grillparzer,” the story-within-a-story in The World According to Garp? Skipped that too, the first time I read it. (In my defense, I did later go back and reread the entire book, including “Pension”). I’m positive I’m guilty of skipping even more parts of more books that I don’t even remember.

Should we be ashamed of skimming or skipping parts of books? As McCrum asks, “Does the urge to skip feel like a defeat, or a necessity? Which books are best skipped vigorously (Maugham said he would never have read Clarissa if he hadn’t found an abridged edition)? Which books simply must NOT be skipped? Does an e-reader encourage the act of skipping?”

What do you think?

Read previous recaps: Week 1, Week 2, Week 3

Day 23:  Alexis Moniello, illustrator, “Everything Butt Art” series
I’ve always loved to read and always hoped to be a professional doodler, so its only natural that my favorite books tend to be fantastic and illustrative. The words turn to pictures as soon as they hit my brain. A few Christmases ago, my brother, remembering my obsession with Wicked and children’s tales, gave me every book written by Gregory Maguire. The first of the pile I read was Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister, classic Cinderella told from the point of view of her very artistic stepsister, Iris. Its about beauty, both physical and intangible, and paints a picture as exquisite as the one Luykas Schoonmaker paints of the beautiful, yet helpless, Clara. (Thanks, Anthony!)

Day 26: Chad Peeling, contributor to Cane Toads and Other Rogue Species
A couple of years ago, someone gave me YOUR INNER FISH: A Journey Into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body by Neil Shubin. As someone who spends much of his time explaining the origins of life, this insightful book gave me a fresh perspective on anatomy and physiology and the origin of our bodies. Shubin made me rethink the inconveniences of middle age in a new light, showing how we’re all living historical documents (complete with lots of mistakes), and how our bodies convey modified pieces of our ancient ancestors. It’s a wonderful thing to get to see ourselves as a window into time in this way.

Day 26: Phil Rossi, author of Crescent and Eden
If i had to choose, I’d say one of my favorite books received as a Christmas gift was Stephen King’s On Writing. Part memoir part and part “best practices”, I instantly related to the author’s take on the process as well as his outlook on creating. Needless to say, this book has provided a lot of inspiration and I re-read it on a yearly basis. When I need a boost–some aid to help me through a creative rut–Stephen King’s On Writing is just the right book for the job!

Day 27: Mary Carlomagno, author of Give It Up!: My Year of Learning to Live Better with Less and Live More, Want Less: 52 Ways to Find Order in Your Life
The best gift book I ever received is Adriana Trigiani’s Don’t Sing at the Table: Life Lessons from my Grandmother. My dear friend Judi gave it to me, mainly because of our shared Italian heritage and because one of the grandmothers in the book shares the same name as my new baby daughter, Lucia. I specifically chose the name Lucia for it’s meaning. In Italian, Lucia means light. Light by definition makes things visible. As I read the book, I was reminded that good friends, like good books do the same thing. They make the important things in your life visible by shining their light on the lessons that you are to learn, when you are ready to learn them.

Day 28: Valerie Peterson, author of Peterson’s Happy Hour and Peterson’s Holiday Helper
My first favorite gift book was The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen. I was very young and it was from my godfather, my Uncle Louie. I loved looking at the book and, later, reading it—and I credit The Snow Queen (and all those other early books) for my lifelong love of reading… Today, “the best book I ever received as a gift” is usually the latest one I’ve been thoughtfully given. So right now my favorite is Hopper, a slim volume about the paintings of Edward Hopper by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, Mark Strand. I’ve been on a Hopper kick and this year visited both the artist’s Nyack home and his Greenwich Village studio. My friend Andrea remembered my mentioning those visits and gave me that “just the right book” this holiday.

Day 31: Jeff Sharlet, author of Sweet Heaven When I Die and The Family
 In 2004, my in-laws gave me Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead for Christmas. They didn’t know how much Robinson’s first novel meant to me, so it was a lucky choice. Not a hard one, though — it was one of the big books of the year, Robinson’s only fiction since her amazing debut, Housekeeping, in 1981. That, incidentally, is the single book I’ve given as a gift not once but multiple times — I should buy it in bulk. Or stand on street corners passing it out like a religious tract. Anyway, Robinson’s new novel should have been just the right choice.

Earlier that year I’d found myself in Iowa City on a book tour. My host says, “What do you want to do while you’re here?” No question about that — I want to meet Marilynne Robinson. My host, the poet and children’s author Laurel Snyder, had heard Robinson was teaching a Bible class in a church. But which church? Compounding the problem was the fact of a blizzard. But we marched out into the snow, moving from church to church, looking for lighted windows. And we found her! We stomped in, covered with ice and snow, shaking our jackets and hats like wet dogs. We’d arrived mid-class, a meeting for bearded poets who wanted to understand scripture. Robinson didn’t seem to find our presence strange, at all. She directed a man to find us some chairs and Bibles, and we were in. But here’s the thing — it was kind of disappointing. The book I was touring on is subtitled “A Heretic’s Bible.” What Robinson delivered that night was some pretty orthodox liberal Christian teaching. Nothing ugly, just nothing startling, either.

So, anyway, Christmas — Gilead — my in-laws. “Thanks,” I said, caressing the book’s beautiful, textured cover, sure I’d never read it. I was going to stick with Housekeeping. I don’t think I read Gilead until my wife was pregnant with our daughter. And then I read it, at first, like a how-to book. A very, very slow how-to book. It’s an epistolary novel, a series of letters from an old and dying preacher to the young son of his late-life marriage. The preacher lives in a small town in Iowa. He’s led a quiet life. There’s not much to say. His interpretations are orthodox liberal Protestantism. Except, except — they are and they aren’t, and the moments of the book that linger are the most ordinary ones, not the words you go searching for in a blizzard — though there are some of those, too, from the “shining star of radicalism,” as Iowa was once known — but the words that fall like snow on a flat field, no wind, accumulating, until the landscape is transformed. Not blanketed, but, strangely, revealed.

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A HUGE thank-you to all the very talented authors who shared their thoughts with us this month, and to Laura Rossi of Laura Rossi Public Relations for making it all happen,  to Whitney Peeling, and to all of our Facebook fans, new and old!

Click through to see the official list: Some of Our Favorite Books of 2011

Day 15: Sandra Beasley, author of I Was the Jukebox: Poems and Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life
The best book I ever received for Christmas is a first edition of W. S. Merwin’s THE FOLDING CLIFFS, “a narrative of 19th-century Hawaii”–in other words, one of the great epic poems written in our time. In elegant, urgent verses Merwin tells the story of a family determined to stay together as they flee government capture during a quarantine effort on Kauai. Woven in amidst the action is an appreciation of the native culture, mythology, and landscape of this gorgeous island. The book is dedicated to Olivia Breitha (1916-2006); Breitha was known as an outspoken advocate of those discriminated against for leprosy, and her firsthand experience resonated with later generations affected by the AIDS epidemic.

It would be enough to appreciate this gift in terms of its literary merit…but the real reason I share it with you is because of the spirit in which it was given. It was the first Christmas that I had chosen to spend away from home to be with a love, and I was on the eve of making a trip to Kauai myself–without him. He was a huge Merwin fan. The day after Christmas, after all the “official” gifts had been opened, I was packing to make the 15-hour drive back to see my family for a day and catch a plane to Hawaii. That was when took his own copy of this book, signed it to me, and told me I must read it. I carried this spontaneous gesture to Kauai’s beaches.

There is a second signing in the book–”To Sandra and her own poetry. All good wishes, William Merwin.” Merwin came to DC, where I live, to serve as Poet Laureate. Earlier this year after one of his readings I nervously waited in line with THE FOLDING CLIFFS. When I handed him the hardback, still in its original 1998 slipcover, his face softened. He said it was one of his favorite of his books, but it had never found much of a reception outside the West coast. I told him it had been given to me, a DC girl, from a guy who’d read it while in Vermont, on a day spent in Mississippi: proof these poems had reached well beyond Hawaii and California.

The tale of Pi`ilani and her family does not have the happiest of endings. But you can have a great love without a happy ending. This profoundly moving collection reminds me of poetry’s highest ambitions: to illustrate fundamental truths through small, human moments. I will never know a purer form of loyalty than the moment when Pi’ilani struggles up a mountainside under the moon, through the rain, so she can stand at her husband’s grave–which she dug with her own kitchen knife–

“she stood watching the ragged light scattered across the leaves
tears were running down her face and under her breath
from the center of her body she chanted to the place
Kalua i Ko`olau nobody knows where you are
nobody has found you nobody has found you.”

–and I will never know a purer form of generosity than to take a beloved book off the shelf and press it into someone else’s hands. 

Day 16: Sandra Brown, author of Lethal, Rainwater, and others
My husband, Michael, gave me my best Christmas present book: a rare copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, printed in Florence in 1928 because it was banned in England and the United States. In pristine condition, my copy is number 841 of only 1000 D. H. Lawrence signed. This beautiful story wasn’t published in the U.S. until 1959.

Day 17: Elaine Hall, author of Now I See the Moon and co-author of Seven Keys to Unlock Autism
The best book I ever received for a Hanukkah Gift was To Begin Again by Naomi Levy. In this beautiful, soulful memoir, Rabbi Naomi Levy tells first her own story – being part of a very loving family and having a close relationship with her father – and then living the horrors of his being murdered shortly before her 13th birthday. That she dedicated her life to being of service to others as a Rabbi and how she has helped others “begin again” inspired me during a very dark time in my own life. My son, Neal was six years old, diagnosed severely autistic; he was unable to attend public school due to intense sensory sensitivity and challenging behaviors so I had to homeschool him; my husband left us penniless and we were about to be homeless. Reading Naomi Levy’s beautiful book gave me Hope to begin again.

Day 18: Diane Isaacs, co-author of Seven Keys to Unlock Autism
I was tomboy growing up, spending my free time climbing trees, playing kickball at the end of Cedar Lane or catching frogs in the lily pond. As in my favorite classic, To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout and I shared the barefoot and overall fashion statement. In fact, I had a full piggy bank by kindergarten because I would chargemy parents serious coinage to put on a dress. And more, to keep it on. As an adult, my sporty nature developed into a competitive amateur Ironman triathlete. I loved the extreme challenge of pushing my body to its edge…and beyond- and was quoted in an article for Muscle and Fitness, “Ironman is not a day in my life, but my life in a day.” A few Christmas’ ago, my sister gifted me the book, Explorers of the Infinite, by Maria Coffey, that fearlessly explores the psyche of extreme adventurers and athletes, weaving between the intensity of high risk and the serenity of finding a spiritual connection. I am humbled by the outrageous conquests of these extreme athletes, and yet, could tap into the diverse descriptions of how they touched something beyond the mountain peak, the dangerous expeditions or the finish line.

Day 19: Jessica Francis Kane, author of The Report and Bending Heaven
Three books come to mind. (I’m sorry. I’m chronically unable to list just one of anything.) My first Christmas in college, my parents gave me The Chicago Manual of Style. My mother’s inscription said something about how they believed I was a writer and this book would help—a boost of confidence I’ve never forgotten. That orange-jacketed hardback has anchored a corner of my desk ever since. My senior year in college, my boyfriend gave me a copy of The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald edited by Matthew J. Bruccoli. He’d heard me go on about how much I loved The Great Gatsby in high school, and he thought someone serious about literature ought to have the complete works. He was right. Then a few years ago, this same wonderful man (now my husband) gave me The Final Solution by Michael Chabon. Our daughter was almost two and we were visiting my husband’s parents. I’d finished very few books since she was born, the sleeplessness and demands of parenting interfering with the part of my brain that loved to read. When all the presents were opened, my husband put the book in my hands and said, Go. Go read. With that, he gave me a day of uninterrupted time. It was glorious.

These Christmas books were not rare or particularly expensive, but each one changed my perception of myself, or reminded me of something I’d forgotten, and that is a wonderful gift, indeed.

Day 20: Amy Wilson, author of When Did I Get Like This?
When I was a little girl I wanted to be an actress– a typically grandiose career aspiration for a youngster (see also: astronaut; Yankees pitcher). Unlike most other kids, my overambition never corrected itself, and when I was seventeen, I told my nonplussed parents that I would be pursuing a life on the stage. That Christmas, they gave me Uta Hagen’s Respect for Acting, which taught me not only how to act but also how to hold my head high with my career choice in the years to come. As I told my parents, I didn’t “want to be” an actress; I was one, even if I wasn’t Julia Roberts. And to my parents’ great credit, they gave me that respect– even when they must have been certain I was throwing away my $80,000 college education. Now that I think of myself more as a writer, I still think of Ms. Hagen’s words of wisdom– like when I’m told that blogging isn’t real writing, or that writing about motherhood is not to be taken seriously, or that choosing life as an author is fighting a losing battle in today’s marketplace. Thanks, JTRB, for including me!

Day 22: David Ebershoff, author of The 19th Wife and Pasadena
William Trevor: The Complete Stories. 
I had just graduated from college and my dad knew I wanted to be a writer. He also knew I didn’t have a clue of where to begin. I had a notion of myself as a writer although in fact I wasn’t actually writing all that much. On Christmas morning he handed me a present. It was obviously a book but especially heavy and dense, nearly four pounds. I was thinking Dad got me a bible? It wasn’t a bible, although for the next five years or so it became mine. I studied almost every story in that book to figure out how Trevor did it. Underlines, dog-ears, asterisks in the margin – each marking a turn of phrase or plot that showed the master, as many call Trevor, subtly at work. I analyzed his Irish oddballs and lonelyhearts, his farmers and bachelors and sales ladies and old maids, to break down how precisely Trevor broke their hearts – and mine. I lugged the book around as I moved from one AC-less apartment to the next, propping it on windowsills, radiators, atop the microwave. It became my MFA degree (minus the department parties with the greasy pizza and warm merlot). The dust jacket was white with red letters. Wherever my dad had bought it, probably at Hunter’s Books in Pasadena, they had cut the price off the flap on the diagonal. I found that gesture touching and appropriate because you can’t really put a price on a bible – although of course people do. I don’t know why my dad chose this book over all the others. A review? a bookseller? because he’d read a few stories in the New Yorker? My dad is the quiet, sit-down-and-do-it type and maybe he realized that this book, with its 1300 pages of stories, could teach me as well as any that there was only one way to become a writer: you sit down and you begin.

Day 22: Walter Kirn, author of Lost in the Meritocracy, Up in the Air, and Thumbsucker
At Christmas time in 1978, when I was a junior in high school, a favorite English teacher — the one with the long hair, the eight-cups-a-day black coffee habit, and the Dire Straits tapes in his car — gave me a copy of Naked Poetry, a paperback anthology of contemporary free verse. I didn’t know what free verse was at the time, nor did I know that English teachers were allowed to break certain sacred classroom boundaries and give a student a book. I was flattered to an almost tearful level. I read the poems in the barn on our small farm, afraid to take the book inside the house because its title suggested revolutionary content. And so it was. The poems by Robert Bly, Adrienne Rich, Robert Creeley and other visionaries cracked open my head like a geode full of crystals. I sparkled inside, I realized as I read. I was full of crazy, lovely, colored light. Later, I noticed the book had an inscription. It was something like “To Walter, Who Wants to Write.” How had my teacher known? Why did he care? And what if he hadn’t acted on what he’d known? I dare not think about even now.

It turns out, though I didn’t know it when he gave me the book, that my teacher had attended the Iowa Writers Workshop but had dropped out when he learned that his girlfriend was pregnant, and he made a hard decision: give up his writing studies to concentrate on preparing for and supporting a new family. When he met me, he said, I reminded him of himself as a very young man and so he passed his dream to me. It was an “I am not worthy moment,” devastatingly touching. And isn’t it true that for all the schooling we undergo, it always comes down to just one or two teachers when the question of our true destiny is concerned?

One more thought: good books are like good deeds. You never know what wonderful repercussions they’ll have. But to do their work someone first has to liberate them from the bookstore and get them out there into the world of readers where they can do their stuff! (Come to think of it, good books aren’t like good deeds — good books are good deeds.)

Next > Read the Week 4 Recap