Teaser Tuesday (52)

Can you believe it's been one whole year of Teaser Tuesdays? A year?

It feels like I was just starting out a month ago, with my first teaser from He Forgot To Say Goodbye by Benjamin Alire Saenz, on August 10, 2010. Ah yes, the good old days . . . and then there's my second teaser, and third, which I clearly remember posting. (I can't believe I formatted them like that.)

Yes. Right. You didn't stop by to listen to me reminisce, did you?

This weekly, bookish meme is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

The familiar Rules:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week, my teaser is from The Best of the Best Volume 2: 20 Years of the Best Short Science Fiction Novels, edited by Gardner Dozois.

(SOURCE)

"Oh no. Hemingway forgery. You figured out a way to make it legal. Go ahead. I'm all ears."
   "See, you tell the publisher first off what it is, that you wrote it and then had it typed up to look authentic."

-p. 101 "The Hemingway Hoax" by Joe Haldeman

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Got a teaser, or thoughts on the book you're reading? Feel free to leave them in the comments!


-----The Golden Eagle

A Writing Update

Since it's been a month from the day I started my current WIP, I thought an update would be in order.

Current word count: 24,565

24565 / 90000 words. 27% done!

Well, it isn't the 29,000 I wanted by now, but it's close enough. Progress is okay, not great--I keep writing in fits and spurts, 3,000 one day and barely a couple hundred the next. I do think finishing this story by November (and NaNoWriMo) is possible, though; I'm about a quarter of a way through the plot outline I made, and I can catch up during the next two months.

At least, that's what I'll be trying to do.

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How are your projects going, bloggers? Good, bad, so-so? Do you have any deadlines/goals you're trying to meet (self-imposed or otherwise)?


And if you were hit by Irene, I hope the hurricane didn't cause too much damage to your area. The news I've been seeing isn't too good.


-----The Golden Eagle

For Those Of You Along The Atlantic . . .

Stay safe this weekend, whether you're in the direct path of the storm or set to get some heavy rain.

(SOURCE)

For everyone else, hope you have a calm, safe weekend, without any hurricanes.


-----The Golden Eagle

The Traveling Smoothie Tag!

Okay, a little slow to do this one, but better late than never, right?

Mercy Vaughn at Not At All Stupid tagged me (thank you, Mercy!) and here are the rules for this Traveling Smoothie Tag:

1. Put an uncolored copy of the smoothie into the post (for video bloggers, print it out or insert it into your video).

2. Color in another copy of the smoothie. Be creative and color the smoothie, straw, and background, if you wish.

3. Insert your colored smoothie in your post/ video/ webpage. If you wish, you may include the location of the smoothie. Be as general or specific as you wish.

4. Name five blogging/ video blogging/ DeviantArt friends who will then have to fill out the smoothie, too. Also remember to link to them, because linking to people makes sad people happy.

This has to be one of the more interesting tags I've done. :)

But I'm going to have to break the rules a bit. While Mercy printed hers out (view her awesome smoothie and description HERE) the printer's out of ink, the scanner doesn't work with the computer that's connected to the Internet, and I don't vlog. Hence, I decided to go digital.

Ta-da! My Sumopaint-enhanced smoothie:

The smoothie for those days when life needs a bit more bright blue drink in a glass decorated with purple and silver flowers, and a slight drop-shadow.

About the drop-shadow: I spent way too much time fooling around with Sumopaint's layers and effects and whatnot. It is one of the best image editors I've found (though Flame Painter is still unrivaled when it comes to playing around with color), with hundreds of options. Have I mentioned it's free, too?

Now, for the people I tag (not to say they're sad people, but because I think it will be fun to see what they'll come up with):

Memzie at The Last Memzie
Madeline Bartos
Emily Rose at Mist of the Blossom Rain

(And I'm cheating here and listing only three. If you want to make up the fourth and fifth, go ahead . . .)

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What kind of smoothie/drink are you in the mood for right now?

Also, I'm a featured blogger over at Ali Cross's blog! Hope you'll stop by.

-----The Golden Eagle

Teaser Tuesday (51)

Book time! Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at the blog Should Be Reading.

Rules:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser is from The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. I read a couple of books in the Discworld series completely out of order, loved them, and since the library had the first I figured I should start at the beginning. :P

(SOURCE)

There was a clink.
   Withel's snarl of triumph died in his throat. He drew the sword out and prodded again at the wizard, who was rigid with terror and guilt. There was another clink, and gold coins began to drop out of the hem of the wizard's robe.

-p. 57

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Have a teaser, or thoughts on the book you're reading? Feel free to share them in the comments!


-----The Golden Eagle

Rachael Harrie's Third Platform-Building Campaign

It's time for another Campaign!

Once again, Rachael Harrie at Rach Writes... is hosting this event, meant to help boost your online platform, connecting you with other writers throughout the blogosphere. Find out more about how it all works HERE.

This Campaign is running from August 22-October 31, and the List of Campaigners closes August 31, so there's still time to sign up.

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Are you going to join in for the Third Platform-Building Crusade?


-----The Golden Eagle

War and Peace: A Review

As mentioned in this post, I was reading War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy. I finished it yesterday (taking me almost a whole month to get through it, which is a terribly long time for me) and decided to give you a review of what I thought of this famous novel.

Note: This does not contain major spoilers, but if there are any of you who haven't read it (I wasn't the last person in the world to pick this up, right?) and don't want to know anything about the book before you do, considered yourself warned.


(Also note that this is not as short and tight as a regular book review. I didn't think I'd be able to condense my thoughts into just a few lines per category, so I'm going with a more informal post. Hope you don't mind.)

I expected that I would slog through the book. The version I took out of the library is 885 pages long, small text, large paragraphs, and there's relatively little dialogue. I did end up slogging through bits, but it wasn't as much of a "loose, baggy monster" (Henry James) as I'd thought. Yes, Tolstoy does go off on tangents and gives long explanations and goes on to tell the reader why the war was absolutely inevitable and so forth, but it wasn't entirely boring. A lot of it was interesting enough to keep me from skimming, which is a habit I get into when there's tons of text in a novel.

The characters were also interesting. I read several other books while tackling War and Peace, and I couldn't help comparing the contemporary characters to the ones in a classic like this. They're very different. Tolstoy gives you many descriptions of what the characters are like, and it's not just physical appearance, which (it seems to me) is how most people are described today--he describes how attractive the characters are, how their appearance relates to their personality, what is reflected on their faces, the different body language and what it means to the social circles they're in.

The changes (or lack of them) in the characters played an important role. They're quite different at the beginning than they are at the end, seven years later in 1812. It was sad to see how relationships changed, fell apart, and formed over those years, some things seeming hopeful at the beginning but completely unraveling later on. Some ties seemed doomed to fail from the start--and there's really nothing that compares to waiting for things to come crashing down on everyone's heads.

Of course, there's also the war part of the story. Much of the social interaction happened in peaceful areas, far from the fighting. There was lots of military strategy and violence, and this is where Tolstoy seemed to most often get off track from the main story. He went to great lengths to describe the mindset of the generals, the other officers and military, and the inevitability of war. (I disagree with Tolstoy here. If you ask me, everyone makes decisions that lead to war, so you can't really argue that it's just part of a sequence of events no one can stop.) He doesn't really spare you any details, from the characters' mixed emotions about being in battle to the letters between Napoleon Bonaparte and Tsar Alexander.

So, was all this peace and war, war and peace worth the time spent reading? I would say yes. I plan on reading this again, in fact, sometime in the future; I can see why they called this book a classic.

But.

Allow me to digress and point out one grievance I had with this novel, which was the dominant thought in my mind when I finished: the ending is unfair.


Well, you say, did you expect it to be fair?

Kind of. At least for this one character. I felt bad for her--she hadn't done anything special in the story, but while the other characters were having affairs and flirting and falling in and out of love and jumping into doomed marriages and dueling and just generally acting up, she sat through it all, rather calmly and quietly and reasonably.

Of course, she didn't get a happy ending. The OTHER characters got their happy(ish) endings after making all kinds of mistakes, but she didn't.

Fiddlesticks, Tolstoy. It wouldn't have been so hard to leave her content.

Sigh.

(To learn more about War and Peace, visit the Wikipedia article HERE.)

**********

Have you read War and Peace? If not, do you plan to read it?


If so, what did you think of it? And were you frustrated for said character at the end?


-----The Golden Eagle

You Pick Up A Book. You Read. You Come Across Something That's Very Similar To A Bit Of Your WIP

Only one conclusion can be made.

The author stole your idea.

Disregard the fact there's a chance you picked the word up and don't remember where.

Never mind the author died 8 years before you were born.

Surely the fact their book was published 24 years before you even thought of yours doesn't matter.

They must have future-reaching, idea-stealing machines that rip the only brilliant pieces of insight away from innocent writers.

And, obviously, the only thing left to do about this travesty is . . .

Sue their estate
Sigh and do something else, and/or hope your readers haven't come across the book you're reading.

**********

Have you ever found a device/phrase/term/etc. in a book that's like something in your own novel? If so, how did you react?


-----The Golden Eagle

Teaser Tuesday (50)

Hello, everyone! It's time for Teaser Tuesday again, a weekly meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Rules:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week, my teaser is from Waifs and Strays by Charles de Lint. I've been reading a lot of anthologies lately, and this one is SF/F YA. I love the worlds and settings in this book--they're amazing.

(One of my favorite covers. SOURCE.)

"I must go," he said. "I must stop him before he grows too strong."
   Tetchie could see the doubt in his eyes and understood then that though he knew his brother to be stronger than him, he would not admit it, would not turn from what he saw as his duty. She tried to stand, but her strength still hadn't returned.

-p. 125

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Got a teaser, or thoughts on the book you're reading? Feel free to leave them in the comments!


-----The Golden Eagle

So, I Finally Read Something By Stephen King

As I mentioned I was planning to do in THIS POST (based on comments HERE) I read Pet Sematary by Stephen King.

Let's break it down:

Plot:

Part One

I found the plot for Part One rather slow. I plodded through some tension, read through the events that made me wonder what their significance was supposed to be, and generally hoped things would get moving.

The story starts out with a "Pet Sematary" where children have buried their pets for centuries. The main character senses something strange about his family's new home and the neighbors warn the family about the surrounding forest. A strong enough beginning . . . but then nothing happens for a while.

I expected the first death, and expected there to be consequences, but there were none immediately apparent. Just foreboding and foreshadowing, but nothing really happened to the main character or his family. Then it started to kick into gear, but that fizzled, too, until another plot twist--which I had kind of been waiting for.

Part Two

Based on previous events, it was clear what the MC was going to do. Less clear were the horrible consequences and how the twisted logic was going to go.

Part Three


There was no conclusion to the story. That's what really bothered me about the plot of Pet Sematary--there was no conclusion to events. People die, the MC gets worse, the situation deteriorates. And then the book ends. It was rather unsatisfying.

Writing:

This was what I really wanted to get to. You can hardly go anywhere without seeing the name Stephen King, so I wanted to find out what made his writing so popular and if I would like it.

I found it . . . interesting. Interesting in the sense that it doesn't really strike me as spectacular. That's not to say it's bad writing, at all--it's effective (though I do think he could have cut down on Part One and consolidated things a bit). But there are writing styles I find much more attractive, so my thoughts on his writing are mostly *shrug*.

On the overall Horror-ness:

I don't read much Horror, so I can't really say how this compares. Several of the scenes in this one were disturbing--but they didn't give me nightmares or any of that sort. :P

Verdict:

I was a little disappointed in Pet Sematary, since there's all the hype around Stephen King's books. The plot was slow (predictable in places) and the writing didn't amaze me. I don't particularly recommend it, though it's not a terrible book or anything.

I do plan on reading The Stand, however, despite my thoughts on Pet Sematary, since that was the most popular book based on the number of comments it got in my previous post. (It's already in my library stack of TBR . . . and gosh, it's huge. I took out the Complete & Uncut edition, since that's the one they had.)

**********

Have you read Pet Sematary? If so, what did you think of it?


-----The Golden Eagle

On The Death Of Important Characters: How Do You Feel About It?

You pick up a book.

You read for a while.

A major character dies.

(SOURCE)

It always bothers me when a character (particularly when it's the main character) dies in the end. And not only when the character's someone I'm fond of. Most of the time, I have to wonder: what is so great about their death? What spurred the author to kill off an influential person in the story?

Even if they do succeed in their goal, it often just seems too abrupt, violent, and saddening. Unless the death is handled well--when it comes to the main character--it's even come off as annoying, when it's there just for the sake of itself. There are many instances where I thought the book/story would've been improved without that plot twist.

What do you think? Can you think of any books where you thought the MC's death was a good thing for the story? Does it matter if it's one of the main supporting characters, rather than the main character who dies? Have you ever written the death of your MC in one of your novels? If not, would you ever consider it?


-----The Golden Eagle

Teaser Tuesday (49)

Time for a bookish meme! Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Rules for participating:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser is from Black Hole Sun by David Macinnis Gill. Barring scientific impossibility (a black hole is a black hole, and while it swallows stars, you can't see anything) I love this book. I want to know what happens to the characters. The SF world is great. The plot? It looks like it's going to be good so far.

(I like this cover. The red and black fits well with what I've read. But did they really have to slap on the review by Suzanne Collins at the top? SOURCE.)

"They demanded," she answers, "six children. You've heard of the Dræu. You know what they do with children."

-p. 67

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Got a teaser, or thoughts on the book you're reading? Feel free to leave them in the comments!


-----The Golden Eagle

An Update: Poll Results, Writing, And Random Stuff

I haven't done one of these kinds of updates in a while. Here we go:

As for the poll "Do you think people will ever live someplace other than Earth?" I had up for July, here are the results, out of a total of 62 votes:

Yes--and I think it's important that we do (17 votes, 27%)
It's possible (28 votes, 45%)
No, not really (12 votes, 19%)
No--and I don't think we should (4 votes, 6%)
I don't know (1 vote, 1%)

Thank you for voting, to the readers who did--62 is the most votes a poll on my blog has ever gotten.

I hadn't expected so many of you to think that moving off of Earth was important. Personally, I agree with the majority--I do think it's possible (even likely) that humans will be living on other planets or in spacecraft or in orbit; and in the very, very long-term (should an asteroid hit Earth or there's some kind of other disaster which is not impossible), yes, moving off the planet might be a good idea. Someday. But regardless, should technology reach that point where we can move elsewhere, I hope to be around when we're traveling to new frontiers.

*********

I started a new novel on Monday.

It's going well so far, and I've got the plot for the story set out from beginning to end. I'm excited about the project, since it's in first person, present tense, something I haven't tried before. And in case you're wondering, it's SF, Young Adult, and the main character is a girl. The antagonist is a tyrant who took over the city in a coup de tat over twenty years ago and now aims to control the planet.

Yes, he's just a lovely fellow.

I want to finish this novel by November, so I can start something brand new for NaNoWriMo. (Hey, it's only three months away! Not too early to start planning for it . . . right? I have even come up with a potential idea for that story.)

(SOURCE)

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The grass is probably thanking the sky right now. It's been hot and dry and hot and sunny and also warm for the past week(s), and it's finally cloudy and rainy, so the water doesn't just run off without being absorbed.

(SOURCE)

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Well, at least the stock market went down only 500 points. It wasn't the enormous percentage drop that happened in 2008 . . . though it came pretty close. Thank you, Washington D. C., for stalling until the very date USA was set to default on its 14+ trillion dollar debt. It certainly helped the stability of things. Not.

**********

I have decided I really like Blogger's new format. It's faster and sleeker than the old one, and while I sort of wish there were scroll bars in the Post Editor, I do like that the edges shift as a part of your window does. The old one didn't go anywhere. I keep forgetting to add tags, though, since they're over to the right and not below anymore.

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So: what do you think of the idea of living on another planet, or in space? How's your writing going--have you got any new projects in the works? Is the economy getting better, or do you think we're going into a double-dip recession? What do you think of Blogger, now that it's been around for a while?


Finally, have you done anything exciting lately? :)


Hope you're all having a great weekend, bloggers!


-----The Golden Eagle

The United States Customary Units vs. The International System of Units: Which To Use?

All except for the USA, Liberia, and Myanmar (Burma), the world, the scientific community, and the military uses the metric system, also known as the International System of Units, or SI.

Now, my question is: what system do you use in your writing?

Say you write for an audience that's global--if you live in the USA, Liberia, or Myanmar (Burma), (the last two are rather unlikely, I admit, for readers of this blog) you will probably think in the United States Customary Units. (According to Wikipedia, Canada also uses them for some things, though they've legally switched).

Unfortunately, a lot of other people do not. I would imagine it would make it harder for readers to get a sense of proportions and could be confusing.

Conversion to inches/cm or feet/meters is notoriously difficult unless you're an absolute whiz with numbers (in which case, kudos). 2.54 and 0.3048 just aren't easy units (and along that line, neither is 5,280, the number of feet in a mile) to multiply or divide by. 5/9 for Fahrenheit to Celsius is a bit better, but still. Then there's time as well, such as 16:00 instead of 4:00 PM.

Because I write Science Fiction that usually takes place among different planets, I figure a more widely-used system would make more sense, and so the figures stated are in the International System of Units. Or I just make up units, if that's the kind of SF I'm writing, such as Galactic Measurement Standard or what-have-you.

Which system do you use in your writing? US Customary Units or SI? If it's Fantasy or Science Fiction, do you make up units or use ones in the real world? Or is this something you don't think about, or figure readers will understand?


-----The Golden Eagle

Novel Films Blogfest Day 3

The Novel Films Blogfest continues today! This time it is:

Tell us which books you have read that you want to see the film versions for or which films you've seen that you plan to read the books on which they are based.


(I didn't post yesterday for the blogfest--my apologies. I had gotten the dates on which to post terribly mixed up.)


So, here's my list:


The Princess Bride
I really enjoyed the book; rather funny.


The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Ah yes, the good old trilogy . . . that somehow managed to have six books.


The Help
I wouldn't say The Help is one of my favorites, but it was interesting--I'd like to see how they did the movie.


The Invention of Hugo Cabret
If it turns out they took apart the book and turned it into something awful, I'll send them a personal letter of dislike. I love that book. :) The trailer doesn't look so bad, though. (It isn't out yet.)


The Tale of Despereaux
At first when I heard there was a movie, I didn't really think about it much. But now I'd like to see just what they did to one of my favorite MG novels.


Mr. Popper's Penguins
Jim Carrey as Mr. Popper? Hmph. I can see it (based on his performance as Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events) but just from the trailer it looks like they changed the whole plot . . .


Stardust
I adored the book Stardust, by Neil Gaiman. It was a great story.


2010
I hadn't known there was a movie made of this until I read other blogfest posts.


Les Miserables
I watched the musical once, but they did make a movie of this one, didn't they?


Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
Geez, I feel like the only person in the blogosphere who hasn't seen it yet. LOL.


As for books I want to read that I've seen the movies of . . . er, I can't think of any. Really. I almost always read the book first, and if I watch the movie, I try to read the book as soon as possible. I'll probably come across some visiting people, though, which I will add to the list.

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So, which movies would you like to see, and/or which books do you want to read?




-----The Golden Eagle

Teaser Tuesday (48)

Meme time again. Teaser Tuesday is hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading.

Rules:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

This week, my teaser is from Bestest. Ramadan. Ever. by Medeia Sharif. I had to stop myself from jumping up and down when I saw this on the New Books shelf in the library. A book! By an author I know! That I've wanted to read since I first heard about it! I actually just finished it, but I'm going to share a teaser anyway:

Malik? I wonder if she's Middle Eastern. I hope she is, because then I won't be the only Muslim in the school. It isn't like I'm lonely or anything, but to know someone else who shares my culture seems comfortable to me, the same way many of my classmates speak Spanish to each other all the time.

-p. 79

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Have a teaser, or thoughts on the book you're reading? Feel free to leave them in the comments!


-----The Golden Eagle

Novel Films Blogfest

The Novel Films Blogfest is hosted by Madeleine at Scribble and Edit.

The objective?

How many works of fiction have you seen BOTH the film/TV drama and read the original book, play or comic story?

I love getting the chance to talk about books and movies. So, here I go, in the random order I remembered them:

City of Ember
Not crazy about this one, mainly because the person they had playing one of the MCs looked twenty, and I believe he's twelve in the book. But otherwise, it did stick to the plot.

Inkheart

Changed some things around here, but good overall. They did change around the ending, so it was more like a standalone than part of a series.

A Series of Unfortunate Events

I love this one. It mixed up, combined, and generally chopped up the first three books in the series, but it's funny and stays true to the humorous/weird/mysterious air of the books.

I, Robot

AHEM. That is not Susan Calvin. And who is this detective guy? He doesn't even exist in the original book. In addition, the logic they base the story on is faulty. For example, why on Earth would a robot lean out of a line of identical robots? They're robots. They don't need to see with physical eyes. Unless they're still in the beginning age of robotics, and it certainly didn't seem like it. End rant.

The Rats of NIMH

Another (IMO) flop. They changed the plot--and they changed the message of the story. There's all this magic and fantasy hanging around the science to the point where they practically changed the whole genre. And the characters . . . ack.

Anne Frank

Actually, I only saw part of the PBS Masterpiece show. I turned off the TV when they got to the tooth-pulling part. Also, I don't really like Anne Frank.

Harry Potter

I haven't seen the last one . . . but, overall, I love these movies. My favorites? The Prisoner of Azkaban and The Chamber of Secrets. Go, HP!

The Da Vinci Code

Meh. It wasn't bad, just not my thing. I was more interested to see if/how they changed the book.

Howl's Moving Castle

Hooray for Hayao Miyazaki. I love his movies.

The Lord of the Rings

Great movies.

The Hobbit

The animated one. It wasn't great; I think I've only watched it once . . . I am looking forward to the one coming out in 2012.

Kiki's Delivery Service

I love watching this one. Again, Hayao Miyazaki, and again, it's excellent.

Mary Poppins

Yes, I've read the books. I like the movie better than the books, too. :P

The Chronicles of Narnia

The BBC version, and the ones by Disney, except for The Dawn Treader. Which I want to see.

The Polar Express

They really extended this one. I like watching it once a year, around Christmastime.

The Kite Runner

Got to this one last Saturday, actually. They did a very good job. It lives up to the book.

Twilight and New Moon
Ah yes . . . notice I gave up on New Moon.

Charlie Brown

Does this count? I've read the comics, and we have the holiday videos.

2001: A Space Odyssey

Man, this one is long. But worth it.

The Wizard of Oz

I never particularly liked The Wizard of Oz. It always kind of disturbed me.


Macbeth
BBC Shakespeare; I've watched several others in the series, but not read the plays.

. . . and I'm pretty sure there are more than that, but I can't think of other titles.

***Edit! Reading other peoples' lists made me remember these:***

Eragon

A good movie--though not the best they could have done. (Small, but irritating point: why weren't Arya's ears pointed?)

Charlotte's Web

This was THE first actual book I read. As in, no illustrations, long chapters, and many pages. A jump from the Dr. Seuss I had been reading before. :P

The Secret Garden
Movie is better than the book. I love the movie.

The Golden Compass
They watered down the movie, compared to the book. It was an okay movie . . . but I ended up feeling frustrated. It was like they tried to avoid following the more controversial aspects to the book and ended up with something that was even less satisfying.

*********

What about you? What films based on books have you seen that you loved (or hated)?


-----The Golden Eagle