Now that the summer blockbusters are winding now, we can all focus on book-to-film adaptations. Kirkus Reviews has a list of new books that would make for great movies, some of which, like Christopher Beha‘s Arts & Entertainments, The Millions has reviewed. Pair with our dream casting of a film version of The Goldfinch.
New Books and Great Movies
Sense and Senility
What kind of writer would Jane Austen have been if she’d lived beyond her forties? We can never know, but Freya Johnston has some ideas.
East of Hollywood
Jennifer Lawrence is putting down Katniss’s bow and arrow for another literary adaption. She will star as the malevolent Cathy Ames in a new adaptation of John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Gary Ross, who first teamed up with Lawrence for The Hunger Games, will direct. Pair with: Our essay on vile women in fiction, which features the infamous Cathy.
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Game Over
Ever thought that writing a novel was like a video game you just couldn’t win? In the new video game The Novelist, players count pages not bodies as they try to help the protagonist balance writing with his family life. “There’s no winning or losing,” designer Kent Hudson said. “[M]y hope is that as you’re presented with the same fundamental question … over the course of the game, that you start to learn about your own values.”
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Bill Watterson Speaks
The Cleveland Plain-Dealer published an interview with Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, reportedly his first since 1989. The Washington Post talked to the Plain-Dealer reporter about how he scored an interview with the reclusive cartoonist.
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Appearing Elsewhere
Ever wonder what writing contests do with the money they earn from entrance fees? Poets & Writers has posted detailed 2011 budgets from three of the country’s most prestigious book prizes, collected as part of my piece in the May/June issue of the magazine on the economics of writing contests.
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Stop reading this immediately
“Internet reading takes up my time without my setting that time aside for it, and fills me with images and thoughts that I don’t perceive going in, like radiation… In these online minutes or hours, I drift along with my mouth open, absorbing whatever’s floating by, never chewing or even swallowing, just letting it all seep pre-chewed into me”: an elegant argument against reading about books before you read the books in question at Electric Literature. (But we hope you’ll continue to read The Millions anyway.)
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As the Cock Crows
It’s that time of year again – our good friends at The Morning News are back with their annual epic, the Tournament of Books! Head over to TMN now to read round 1, which pits award season favorite Lincoln in the Bardo against Samantha Schweblin‘s Fever Dream (and read our own review of George Saunders‘s much-lauded novel here).
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