Book vs. Movie

I'm back with another blog chain and this time the fabulous Michelle McLean gave us this question to chew on:

There are so many book-to-movie adaptations out there. Which are your favorites? Which are your least favorites? Why? Do you make sure you've read a book before you go see the movie adaptation, or do you prefer to read it after, or not at all?

Yes, it's the age old question: which came first the book or the movie? Okay, so maybe movies have only been around for the last hundred years - give or take a decade. But you know way back when in ancient Greece at a performance of  Sophocles' Oedipus Rex there was some jerk in the audience grumbling that the book was better.

But seriously, I love this question. Of course, as a reader, I am firmly in the "book was better" camp. However, that doesn't mean that I hate every book to movie adaptation.

For example, I thought The Hunger Games movie was pretty decent. I enjoyed it while watching it and upon leaving the movie theater didn't feel like I needed a literary chaser to get the bad taste out of my mouth. BUT, in contrast, I thought the book was great. Amazing. Something I will read again. The movie, if it comes on HBO I might watch a few minutes, but I can't really see myself sitting through the whole thing again.

I don't really know if I have a favorite adaptation. I think Fried Green Tomatoes is pretty great and did a really good job of capturing the spirit of the book without trying to stay 100% true to it's source material.

I also am a huge fan of Bridget Jones's Diary. And this is a cause where I enjoyed the book, but LOVE LOVE LOVE (omg Colin Firth as Mark Darcy - swoon!) the movie.However, when the sequel came out my feelings flip-flopped. I thought the book was enjoyable, but the movie was just awful.

For the most part I like to read the book before watching the movie. Or I like to read the book and just skip the movie entirely and save myself the pain. The Time Traveler's Wife is a good example of that. I thought the book was fantastic, but the movie looked really bad - so I skipped it.

There are times though when I see a movie without realizing it has literary roots. This is the case with one of my favorite movies ever: The Shawshank Redemption. Unlike The Hunger Games film, when this movie comes on TV, if I watch even a few seconds I get so sucked in that I end up on the couch watching it until the very end. Despite my love for Shawshank I have never read the Stephen King novella that it is based on. It's on my to-be-read pile though and I know that one day I will get to it, so that I can see if this is another case of the book being even better.

Okay, that's it from me, but this is only the beginning of the blog chain and there is a lot more book vs. movie discussion yet to come. Next up is Sandra's post tomorrow - make sure to check it out!

Class of 2K13

Hey everyone, today is the official launch day of the Class of 2K13. We are a group of 20 MG and YA debut authors with amazing books coming out in 2013. To celebrate our launch we are having a HUGE GIVEAWAY! Please check it out on our Facebook page! Or to save you some time you can enter to win right here on my blog! Just use the Rafflecopter below!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Going Visiting

Today I am taking the SAT over at Mindy McGinnis's blog Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire. Luckily, this was not the high school type of SAT where a number 2 pencil was required. Nope, here it stands for Successful Author Talk. Pretty cool, right? You can find it here.

A Rose By Any Other Name...

I read in a book once that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but I've never been able to believe it. I don't believe a rose would be as nice if it was called a thistle or a skunk-cabbage. 
-Anne Shirley, Anne of Green Gables

Today I am the first in choosing a question and getting things rolling again for the brand new but mostly old - blog chain. This is the question I came up with:


What's in a name? What if Harry Potter had been Larry Snotter? What if Edward was Jacob and Jacob was Edward? What favorite books had character names that you loved or hated? And how do you come up with your own character names? 

This whole subject of naming and what's in a name has been on my mind lately because of a certain little guy who entered my life a few months ago.

This is the puppy we brought home in early July. He was only seven weeks old. He was the cutest damn thing you've ever seen - I mean just look at that picture.

The only thing we knew about him then was that he was going to get bigger. A LOT bigger. His mom was a St. Bernard and his dad a Great Dane. On the ride home we also found out he got carsick. We actually found that out 3 times on the way home. It was a long ride home.

This wasn't a lot to go on for naming purposes and so it took us a while to settle on a name. By the end of the first day we had it. We named him Copper for his pretty fawn coloring and for The Fox and The Hound movie, which was a favorite of my husband's when he was growing up.

Time passed. Copper got bigger. On August 26th my husband and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary. Like most people who have been married for seven years, we had no idea what to get for each other. Using the power of Google we looked up the list of traditional anniversary gifts for a seventh anniversary, and they were... copper and wool. Yup, Copper. It turns out we had already given ourselves the perfect anniversary present without even knowing it.

So, that little bit of Kismet is what made me start thinking about names. About how names seem to fit certain people just perfectly, while others change your perception of what a name means. For example, prior to Twilight I'm not sure that many people would've connected the name Edward with  a guy who is sparkly and dangerous.

For ANOTHER LITTLE PIECE, I wanted to give my heroine a distinctive name. Not just a first name, but first middle and last that seemed to fit together as one whole piece. I took my inspiration from the TV show, Veronica Mars. This was a BRILLIANT series (well the first two seasons, and the last episode of the third season, anyway). I highly recommend watching it if you have not already done so. And if you do watch it, you'll notice how often the characters call Veronica by her full name. According to show creator, Rob Thomas, this is because the two names "just sound great together" and "rolls of the tongue". That's what I wanted when I gave my character the name Annaliese Rose Gordon. Maybe not quite as snappy as Veronica Mars, but it did what I wanted it to do.

And where did those three names come from? I stole the middle name Rose from my sister Amanda. I honestly can't recall where Gordon came from... But Annaliese (pronounced Anna-lee-suh) was a name that my husband and I had on the short-list for our second child. We ended up naming her Zoe instead. A good call by the way - she is DEFINITELY a Zoe. And that left me with a wonderful name that I needed to use somewhere - at the time I had a new work in progress where it fit just perfectly.

Okay, that's it for my time on the blog chain. But there's still more naming fun - to see how the rest of the chain deals with the name game, make sure to check out Sandra's blog tomorrow.

At the Lucky 13s...

 

Today I am blogging over at the Lucky 13s about books I love. Come and check it out!

Inspirational Books and Contest

So does anyone want to win some awesome books?

If the answer is yes, then don't wait (well wait until you are done reading this post), don't hesitate (except again for the finishing to read this post thing), and do hurry over the Lucky 13s blog for our SIX MONTHS UNTIL 2013 CELEBRATION!!!

If the answer is no... Um, then, urgh. Are you sick? Maybe you should think about visiting the emergency room (feel free to go immediately without finishing this blog post). I'm not a doctor, but not wanting free books seems like a potentially serious ailment.

So here's the deal (for the healthy wanting to win books people). The Lucky 13s is a group of kidlit authors whose books debut in (yep, you guessed it) 2013. A bunch of the members of the Lucky 13s (me included!) are giving away a book that is special to us or inspired us in some way.

The book that I am giving away is THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE by Jandy Nelson.

Why this book?

Because this was one of those books that I fell in love with, that I read and then wanted to go out into the streets with a cardboard sign around my neck, telling other people to read this book too.

Because I read this book over a year ago and I am still thinking about it.

Because the title rocks.

Because this book broke my heart.

Because this book put my heart back together again.

Basically, because the way that Jandy Nelson tells this story and her use of language in telling it, is everything that I as a writer and storyteller aspire to be.

If you have not read this book, you really should. And hey, wouldn't it make it easier to read it, if you won a free copy and had it delivered to your house by your friendly (degrees of friendliness may vary) neighborhood postal worker? Oooor if you don't win this book, you might win another awesome book instead. So that would be a win/win. Or you might not win anything, but you would have discovered the Lucky 13s blog, and that's pretty good too (although admittedly not quite as good as winning a free book.)

So, to recap: Books are good. Winning is good. Free stuff is good. And the Lucky 13s are just plain awesome. Sooo... head over to the Lucky 13s blog NOW (yes NOW, this blog post is pretty much over and I won't be hurt at all if you skip these last few words). Enter the contest. I hope you win.

Bad Blogger

I have been a terrible blogger lately. If this blog was a houseplant it would be dead. I know, I have seen this happen to houseplants under my care before. It is not pretty. Luckily, this blog is not a houseplant, and it will survive my neglectful care for a little while longer. Why a little longer? Well because today I am blogging over at the Lucky 13s blog and the topic is REVISIONS. Please come on over and check it out.