The Wall Street Journal features an interview or should I say, conversation with Cormac McCarthy regarding the movie version of his novel, The Road.
What I really appreciated was that everything described in the article seemed so “in character” for what I expected of McCarthy. The author was dressed in jeans and cowboy boots and began his meal with a Bombay Gibson. Even the fact that he’s friends with actor Tommy Lee Jones seems right.
For those of us who have followed Adrian Mole from his angst as a 13 3/4-year-old, the publication of Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years is exciting news.
Now 39 1/4, Adrian, still married to Daisy, is diagnosed with prostate cancer (note, the typo in the title is intentional and that is the book’s title ). Apparently despite the typical Adrian Mole topical humour, there is a darker-side to the story than Adrian fans are used to. Happily though, Pandora is said to make the expected dramatic entrances that she is known for as do Adrian’s parents.
And in true Adrian Mole fashion, during his radiation and chemotherapy, Adrian dwells upon the fraught love-life of the hospital nurse.
No matter what, the thought of Adrian Mole makes me chuckle to myself and chant, also to myself fortunately for those around me, We shall, we shall wear red socks!
Read an interview with Adrian Mole author, Sue Townsend in The Guardian.
The National Post published an interesting interview with Welsh author, Jon Ronson. Ronson’s 2004 book, The Men Who Stare at Goats has been adapted into a feature film and the book is gaining a popularity that it didn’t really experience when it first came out.
The movie starring George Clooney (swoon), Ewan McGregor (another swoon), Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges is more of a fictional comedy than Ronson’s mostly non-fiction book which is said to contain some potentially damaging information about the U.S. Army. But come on, we all know that playing songs from Barney & Friends is sheer torture. That’s hardly a state secret.
Ronson hopes that The Men Who Stare at Goats gets people thinking about what goes on behind closed army doors. He says, “It’s all the craziest stuff that’s true. I mean, there actually were a hundred de-bleated goats smuggled into the Special Forces Command Center at Fort Bragg, N.C.; there’s a weapon called the Predator that’s much like the one in the movie; and there’s a connection between the U.S. military and the mass suicide of a cult from San Diego. ”
Bookslut has an interview with Ron Charles from the Washington Post. Ron is Deputy Editor of the Post’s Book World and you’ll also find him on Twitter, but his daughter doesn’t like the idea of her father tweeting. (We follow Ron on Twitter.)
My wife finds it really distracting! My daughter has refused to become a follower of mine; she thinks it’s completely ridiculous that I do this. It came out of that NBCC meeting. I had no idea [before that] what it was at all. I’d just gotten on Facebook to follow my daughter. Twitter sounded absurd, you know, “I had pork and beans tonight,” who cares about this? But [at the NBCC meeting I learned] that professionally you can direct people back to your own site or your reviews, so I decided I’d give it a try.
Regarding the excitement around the impending opening of the film adaptation of his book Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak comments, “I kind of want it over. I’m not used to this invasion.”
An interview with Sendak in The Globe and Mail also reveals surprising feelings of resentment towards the popular children’s book. The book which has sold more than 10 million copies since publication in 1963 and has been honoured with the prestigious Caldecott Medal, has overshadowed most of his other work. Work that may merit more attention that that of his 10-sentence tale of Max, who is sent to his room for being naughty and embarks on a marvelous adventure of the imagination.
“At one time, that was a bitter, bitter pill. It no longer is,” says Mr. Sendak. “ Where the Wild Things Are is no longer an enemy. It’s now Spike Jonze’s [the movie's director] and lots of nice people who have become friends.”
But why not do Mr. Sendak a favour and take a look at Brundibar, In the Night Kitchen, Higglety Pigglety Pop! or another one of his books and appreciate the wider talent of the author/artist?
Stuff White People Like refuses to die. Today, the book’s author, Christian Lander, is writing in the UK’s Guardian about the blog, the book and his success. I think it was February 2008 when the bloke sitting behind me said we should all take a look at this very funny blog.
Here is one of Christian’s tips for success…
Be perceived as racist by idiots This will lead to more traffic than you could ever imagine. I would, however, strongly recommend not being perceived as racist by smart people. That will end poorly.
It’s a funny book and should be read by all middle class white people. Here is our interview with Lander from last year.
I see entry #128 is camping. (Of course, I went camping twice over the summer. I also recycle, read books, put my daughter into French immersion etc etc. This book charts out my life as a middle class white person)
In theory camping should be a very inexpensive activity since you are literally sleeping on the ground. But as with everything in white culture, the more simple it appears the more expensive it actually is.
As the much anticipated The Lost Symbol hits bookstores, Dan Brown speaks about his latest book in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
When asked why there has been a 6-year wait for a sequel to the phenomenally successful The Da Vinci Code, Brown says, “The materials and the ideas are so complicated that it took me a lot of time to process it so that I could use it effectively in a story.”
In another interview with Entertainment Weekly, Brown put it this way, “I will not write a lame follow-up. It could take me 20 years. But I will never turn in a book that I’m not happy with. Four years ago, I wasn’t happy with the book. Five years ago, I wasn’t happy with the book.”