There’s hardboiled fiction, which portrays crime and violence unsentimentally, and in which the detective is usually cool, cocky, and flippant, but relatively honest. Then there’s noir fiction, in which the protagonist is usually not a detective at all, but a victim, a suspect, or a perpetrator — something like James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings [...]
Archive for the ‘Bookish films’ Category
L.A. Confidential
Posted in Bookish films, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mysteries on October 19, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Wives and Daughters (film)
Posted in Bookish films, Classics, Fiction on July 22, 2009 | 8 Comments »
Earlier this summer, I read Elizabeth Gaskell’s lovely long novel Wives and Daughters (you can read my review of it here.) In the comments, several of you told me that I would enjoy the BBC adaptation of it, so when I had a sick day last week, I got in bed with my knitting and [...]
Gone, Baby, Gone (film)
Posted in Bookish films, Contemporary, Fiction, Mysteries on July 6, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I read Dennis Lehane’s mystery-thriller Gone, Baby, Gone back in 2004. I was on something of a Lehane kick that year: I read all four of his Kenzie-Gennaro private eye novels, plus his standalone novel Shutter Island. The books are great — well-written, solidly plotted, with a keen sense of place and an unequalled ear [...]
About a Boy
Posted in Bookish films, Contemporary, Fiction on April 22, 2009 | 7 Comments »
This has to be the most light-hearted book about severe bullying, dysfunctional relationships, and suicidal depression I’ve ever read.
You have to hand it to Nick Hornby. About a Boy reads as if he went out into the street in London sometime during 1998 and took a snapshot of the emotional life he found there, and then [...]
The Tale of Despereaux
Posted in Bookish films, Children's / YA Lit, Speculative Fiction on March 29, 2009 | 10 Comments »
I got out of the habit of reading children’s books years ago, not because I decided I outgrew them or lost interest, but mostly because they weren’t on my radar. A children’s book would have to become a phenomenon for me to notice it. So even though Kate DiCamillo’s novel The Tale of Despereaux won [...]
Bleak House (miniseries)
Posted in Bookish films on March 21, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Even while I was reading Bleak House a couple of weeks ago, I found myself looking forward to watching the recent (2005) BBC adaptation of it. Several people had recommended it to me (including Teresa), and I had had a great experience recently with the BBC adaptation of Our Mutual Friend, so I was eager [...]
Don’t Look Now
Posted in Bookish films, Fiction on February 21, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Before last year, I’d never read anything by Daphne du Maurier except the ubiquitous (and wonderful) Rebecca, but I’d read that about ten times. (Really. At least.) In keeping with my recent tendency to choose new books over re-reading old favorites, I read My Cousin Rachel last year, and loved it. This time, I chose [...]
Barchester Towers
Posted in Bookish films, Classics, Fiction on February 20, 2009 | 5 Comments »
It’s TrollopeFest here at Shelf Love! (Boy, that doesn’t sound as good as I’d hoped.) Teresa and I have had some near misses, reading the same books just a few months apart, and this time we have managed to read two different books by the same author at the same time. Always nice to co-author [...]
Coraline (film)
Posted in Bookish films on February 12, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Sometimes you know you’re going to be disappointed by a book-to-movie translation, especially when you loved the book. I mean, let’s face it, that’s most of the time. The characters aren’t the way you imagined them (or sometimes they’re missing altogether), or the plot got Hollywoodized, or you wonder why the main character had to [...]
Our Mutual Friend (miniseries)
Posted in Bookish films on January 30, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Our Mutual Friend is my very favorite of the Dickens novels I’ve read (and out of 19 of his complete novels, I’ve read eight.) It’s a tale of love, revenge, redemption, class struggle, hidden identity, and most of all, money: the way poverty grinds people down, the way an inheritance corrupts, the way an occupation forms a [...]
