New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 19

Someday Gianna will
understand what it is
to love Gus and Call.

Day 19: Favorite Book Turned into a Movie

Gianna:

This category is just one more chance for Liz to jump down my throat about Lonesome Dove! Some other great movies won't make my list because I never read the book, such as The Shawshank Redemption and The Princess Bride. Not that anyone asked, but I will note which I liked better, the film or the book. Here we go, my top ten books to movies. [Let me state here that it's selfish of Gianna to pick ten movies. She does this so that it's harder for me to pull alternatives out of my butt.]

Friday Night Lights – I think I liked the movie more, which may be unfair because I read the book after the movie, but man, I did really like the movie.

Atonement – The book, but what a great movie. In fact, I think I will watch it again tonight. [Sweet! Baked the cookies. I'm on my way over!]

The Silence of the Lambs -- I don’t want Jodie to think I don’t love her post-Golden Globes so I will say the movie. Well, I would say the movie anyway.

No Country For Old Men – See, now I am already regretting this list because this is tough. I think the book because it shocked me so much.

The Godfather – I thought the book was a snooze compared to the movie, but again, I saw the movie first. This is my favorite movie ever by the way (Leave the Gun. Take the cannoli. - Clemenza)

Drugstore Cowboy – This too, is one of my favorite movies ever and I do think it's better than the book. Author James Fogle was robbing pharmacies until he died last year at the age of 75. Well, technically he was robbing pharmacies until he was 74 and then went to prison.

The English Patient – I do think this movie was lovely, but it doesn’t hold up so in this case I pick the novel.

Misery –
I think Liz and I will agree on this one, the movie was better. ("God I love You" - Annie to Paul as she takes the sledgehammer to his ankles.)

The Hours – I feel the same about this movie as I do The English Patient, I loved it at first but after seeing it a few times it’s a bit blah. I pick the book.

Terms of Endearment – I adore this book, but the movie the movie the movie.
(“It's past ten. My daughter is in pain. I don't understand why she has to have this pain. All she has to do is hold out until ten, and IT'S PAST TEN! My daughter is in pain, can't you understand that! GIVE MY DAUGHTER THE SHOT!” –Aurora)

I guess it’s not great that I have liked more movies than books. Hey Liz, let's start a movie blog!

Liz:

Sure, let's start a movie blog. First, we're watching Lonesome Dove. For the love of god, what do I have to do to convince Gianna that both the book and miniseries are fantastic?

Here's another fantastic miniseries based on a book: Band of Brothers. It's my favorite war drama, and since I think the writer of the book was a hack and a disgrace to historians. But the miniseries is really great. Damian Lewis, Ron Livingston, a Wahlberg, David Schwimmer as a jerk.

The Virgin Suicides is that rare thing--a Kirsten Dunst movie that doesn't make me want to vomit. Of course, she barely speaks and then she commits suicide, so it's like a little cinematic gift to me. Liked the movie...didn't hate the book.

The Wonder Boys--I liked both movie and book.

Seabiscuit--I think people have forgotten how phenomenal this book is, and the movie isn't half bad. I seem to have a thing for horse racing movies. I will stop and watch even though I know exactly what happens. Black Beauty, Seabiscuit, Secretariat--spoiler, they win in the end.

Stand by Me is based on
the novella The Body.

I think we just need to declare that Stephen King's works are better as movies. I'm basing this generalization on the relatively few Stephen King works I've read--The Shawshank Redemption, Stand By Me, The Shining, Misery.


Ordinary People--It's that rare thing that rips me apart. If Gianna hasn't seen this movie, we're adding it to her must watch list.

To Kill a Mockingbird--Atticus Finch. 

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge, Day 10

Day 10: Favorite Classic Book

Gianna:

Gianna has NOT read this!

Another impossible question, so I will modify it. Instead of choosing a favorite classic, and as everyone knows, mine is Lonesome Dove, I have decided to choose a classic or two that I really love but that I have neglected to write about on this silly little blog. Okay, that’s unfair…this crappy little blog. 

The Ellen and Portia of their day

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein (I call her Gerts or Gertie) is the type of book I adore because it puts you on the path to a zillion other things. You can’t read this book, which features a cat fight between Matisse and Picasso, without wanting to know more those clowns, or of course art in general. I hadn’t read Hemingway until I read Alice B., and everyone should read at least one Hemingway novel (although his short stories are remarkable).  [One can't properly hate Hemingway until one reads him.] On the down side, after reading Alice you may think, “Why bother going to Paris now? All the good shit already happened."  And that may be true. 

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans (1936).  I don’t know if young people read this or not anymore; I hope so. [I'm younger than Gianna and I've read it. That counts, right? I don't know why old people are so resistant to reading Lonesome Dove.] As Roosevelt’s New Deal programs began making their way to the poorest Americans during the height of the depression, Agee and Evans traveled the South on a magazine assignment. They photographed and interviewed white sharecroppers, focusing mainly on three desperately poor families.

As I look at these photographs now, I think of the current conversation of government assistance, and I am reminded of how important not only this book is, but how important journalism can be. I know this book has a bit of controversy surrounding it--the truth being that some of these photographs may have been posed--but for me it hasn’t changed my affection for it at all. 

Liz:

I love Hemingway so much. Like, there's the man and he goes fishing and he fights a marlin and talks endlessly about DiMaggio--and I just love the Yankees too--and then the sharks eat the marlin before the man can bring it to shore, and what the hell happened to the afternoon of my life that I lost reading this book?*

I love Mark Twain so much.  Like, there's a boy with ADHD who plays with the life of a slave while running away from home, and it's supposed to be the greatest book in American literature and really funny, but mostly it's just silly and rather abusive and kinda racist.*

I love Norman Mailer so much.  It's so awesome the way that he makes anal sex sound like so much fun for the woman being raped.  But who wouldn't want to be buggered by a guy who's already murdered his wife?*

Yeah, I'm going with Virginia Woolf for this one.  

*The Old Man and the Sea, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, An American Dream

New Year, New 30 Day Book Challenge Day 2

Day 2: A Book That You've Read More Than Three Times

Gianna:

Just as luck would have it, there are exactly three books that I have read three times! Just looking at this short list, it's obvious I have a type, and I am an incredibly well-rounded person. 

The Holy Bible 

Lonesome Dove

Rubyfruit Jungle 

Now, just because I know so many of our readers have also read the Bible and Lonesome Dove (some in the same weekend if you're like me!), I will focus on the last book on my list, Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. 

Gianna, Rita Mae
does not approve of
your theft.

No I didn't read this novel in a tough college level literature class as one may expect. I first read it in a dark corner of a library when I was in high school. I then went back and read it in the same library, in a different dark corner. I then stole it from that very same library so I could read it a third time. I then returned it to the library two days later so it would never be found on my person. 

Now, just because I can, I own a copy but have yet to read it a fourth time. Not as fun I guess.

[Correction: Gianna has not read Lonesome Dove, even though I've been bugging her about it FOR YEARS.  She has not read it three times.  She has not read it ONE time.  Nonetheless, she works for UT Press, which has published several books on Lonesome Dove.  She's a liar.]

[Correction: If Gianna has read the Bible, it's obvious that the holy book had only adverse influences in her life. I'm going out on a limb and saying that Gianna is a liar.  Isn't lying a sin?]

Liz:

I almost never reread now.  Rarely I will read a book a second time, such as when I was a member of a book group. So I'm going back to college for my pick, which is Sula by Toni Morrison.  I read it for a Women's Lit class, read it again for the comprehensive lit exam that English majors had to pass, and I read it for a book group after I graduated from school.  A few years ago, I listened to the audiobook of Sula because Toni Morrison reads it and hearing an author's work in her voice made it fresh once more.

Gianna the Liar will agree with me that Sula is a wonderful book about friendship, love, and anger.  It's a book of powerful women, damaged people trying to survive, quirky characters, and two incredible friends, Nel and Sula.

Books We Want for the Holidays: Lonesome Dove

Author of Terms of Endearment!

I know that I have failed to meet Liz’s expectations over and over, but her greatest disappointment in me remains that I have never read Lonesome Dove.  Her disgust grows with the fact that I haven’t seen the mini-series either.

The thing is, I want to make amends, I want to do the right thing. But also, I don’t really want to read Lonesome Dove. Have you looked at that book? My God, it's like one thousand million pages long! And the font size, are you kidding me?

Does it not matter that I read Terms of Endearment and The Evening Star? I guess it just doesn’t matter to precious Liz that I not only read The Last Picture Show, but then went on to read Texasville!

Cary White's trail map

Does it not matter that I just finished reading cover-to-cover A Book on the Making of Loneseome Dove? Does that not count toward not only reading the novel, but also seeing the movie? It should; it is packed with interviews from about forty people involved with the movie: Peter Bogdanovich, Chris Cooper, Robert Duvall, Frederck Forrest, Stephen Harrigan, Bill Wittliff, Diane Lane and of course the man himself, Larry McMurtry.

Also included are several very cool candid Polaroid shots from the set, photographs of iconic props (such as trail maps), costumes, set designs, and shooting scripts. Of course the book is also packed with gorgeous on set photographs, both during shooting and candid.

It’s a gorgeous book, the perfect gift for a fan of the film, novel, or anyone who ever set foot in Texas. 

The gorgeous Robert Urich

I know, I know…I guess it doesn’t matter how much of McMurtry I read if it doesn’t include the one that won the Pulitzer.  2013 will be the year of Lonesome Dove. 

[That's it--we are watching the mini-series before January 1st.  We're not going to debate this.]

Generally Horrible Questions: Scott Montgomery

MysteryPeople's Scott Montgomery

Our first bookseller profile for 2012 is the mystery guru and driving force behind MysteryPeople, the store-within-a-store at Austin's BookPeople.  Scott reads lots and lots of mysteries, the tougher the better.  (Secretly we think he loves The Cat Who series, but he won't cop to it.)  Let's ask him a bunch of questions and see if we can make the tough guy cry.

Generally Horrible Questions: Scott Montgomery

1.  How did you get into the bookselling business?
I was in LA's The Mystery Book Store so often I got mistaken for an employee. [That's funny--Liz is regularly mistaken for a Random House employee.]

2.  Favorite mystery/thriller of all time?

James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss. [...Yeah, we're not touching this one.]

3.  Three desert island books? 
Lonesome Dove, True Detective by Max Allan Collins, and HW Brands' great Theodore Roosevelt biography TR. All good, long books.

4.  What are you currently reading? 

I'm juggling four books--an involving thriller called The Dispatcher, James Carlos Blakes' engaging look at Missouri border guerrilla Bloody Bill Anderson, The Wildwood Boys, The Professionals which is living up to its hype, and Elmore Leonard's Raylan.

5.  What is your favorite part of your job?

Money for nothing and your chicks for free...oh wait, that was Dire Straits cover band days. The friendships with the authors and customers. [Gianna claims to see Scott chatting up the ladies all the time.  They MAY be talking about books....]

6.  What books changed your life? 

Swag by Elmore Leonard, The Day The Cowboys Quit by Elmer Kelton, Reed Farrel Coleman's Walking The Perfect Square. [So...no Nora Roberts writing as J.D. Robb?]

7.  What is your second favorite bookstore? 

Murder By The Book in Houston. Like any good niche bookstore they're out there to promote the genre and not just sell stuff.

Scott with author
Reed Farrel Coleman

8.  What did you want to be when you grew up?

A veterinarian.  [Great! Someone can start administering Zorro's medications!]

9.  I have never read ______________ and I'm so ashamed.

Jackie Collins.

10. The most important question on the list: Liz or Gianna?

Liz. It's that warm, open personality. [The correct answer is always Liz.]

11. Choose one: Craig LaMorte (Gianna’s nephew), Craig Johnson, Craig T. Nelson, Craigslist, Daniel Craig,  Craig Biggio or you know what the hell….Larry Craig?

Author Craig Johnson

Selling Craig Johnson's books pays my rent, so I'll so with him. That said, I'm a big fan of James Bond and Coach. [What, no love for Mr. Wide Stance?]

12. Which mystery series should we all be reading? 

Reed Farrel Coleman's Moe Prager series. I always suggest the first book, Walking The Perfect Square, when people say the genre can't be literary. It suppresses my instinct to yell or punch. 

13. Last good non-mystery book you’ve read?

HW Brands' American Dreams;  great look at the US from the atomic bomb to Obama.

14. Coolest author you’ve ever met? 

You two broads are trying to get me into trouble since many of my friends are authors. Outside of the writers I normally hang out with, George Pelecanos. He's the definition. The man writes, walks, and talks cool. [Scott is the only person who can call us 'broads' and not risk injury.]

15. If you could be any detective in any novel, who would it be? Please don’t say Stephanie Plum….

Since the best detective writers have haunted or wounded heroes, I'd be Richard Prather's Shell Scott. He was oddly good looking with a white buzz cut and piece of his ear cut, drove a cool car, always had a great quip, never seemed to want for cash, and slept with at least two great looking babes in under 180 pages. Don't know if I'd want to be him when the was naked on top of the hot air balloon. [There's a mental image that'll linger.....] 

Here's Scott recommending blog pal Taylor Stevens' newest book and upcoming MysteryPeople at BookPeople event.

Keep Austin Noir.