Hello everyone! I hope you all had a lovely weekend. I’m just popping in to remind you that there’s still time to enter my giveaway of Wanderers by Edward Belfar! It’s an excellent collection of short stories about being geographically and emotionally far from home (review here). The giveaway is open until 12 a.m. EST Wednesday, and you can earn points by commenting on my review, following my blog, tweeting about the giveaway, etc. Click here to enter!
Honestly, I had never heard of Cloud Atlas before I saw the 6-minute trailer a few months ago. However, the trailer looked fascinating, and I quickly resolved to read the book before the movie came out. Although I loved the book, I had some mixed feelings about the movie when I saw it last weekend.
I liked the way they handled the structure and the timeline. Although the book is structured like matryoshka doll, the film has all of the stories unfolding at the same time, quickly switching between stories in a non-linear fashion. I think this worked much better for the film, as it would have been really strange to spend 20 minutes with one character and then switch to another; this set-up allowed the stories to be connected thematically, which was interesting. However, it was more difficult to get a feel for each story and setting when they were constantly changing. Continue reading
2012 is turning out to be a huge year for movie adaptations of amazing books! The first half of the year saw the release of the movie version of contemporary favorite The Hunger Games, and this fall and winter will see the release of film adaptations to seven really great books — although I must admit I have read only five of them. Read on for trailers, release dates, casting info, and my thoughts! Continue reading
As I mentioned in my last post, my boyfriend and I took a little trip to Boston earlier this week! It’s one of my favorite cities, and it was really fun to relive some childhood memories walking by Paul Revere’s house and visiting the Make Way For Ducklings statues in the Common — as well as to create new memories cheering on the Red Sox at Fenway and taking a tour of the Sam Adams Brewery.
Although we were only in Beantown for two days, we still managed to fit in some book tourism! (Tom is wonderfully accommodating of my nerdiness.) The first day, we visited the Boston Public Library. According to Wikipedia, it was established in 1848 and is the first publicly supported municipal library in the U.S., the first large library open to the public in the U.S., and the first public library to allow people to take borrowed materials home to read. It contains 8.9 million books and AV materials and is the second largest public library in the country (following the Library of Congress)! Continue reading
As I mention on my “about” page, I started this blog in January as a project for my Social Media Marketing class; we were each assigned to pick any topic we were interested in to blog about over the course of the semester so we could learn firsthand about putting social media strategies into practice. I am really glad we did this project; I have really enjoyed running this blog, mostly because of the connections I have made! I love the sense of community in the blogosphere, and I have discovered some great blogs that I really like to read. And, of course, I’ve learned more about the world of social media. Today was the last day of class (oh dear, this is sounding like an “it’s been real, but the class is over so I’m done blogging” post — but you can’t get rid of me that easily), and I received a really wonderful surprise when I walked into the classroom at the ungodly hour of 8:30 this morning. Continue reading
I have no shame in admitting that I am a huge Gilmore Girls fan. I love the characters, the lightning-fast banter and the unique mother-daughter relationship. And as an avid reader, I love Rory, TV’s most lovable book nerd. The girl, who grows from a bookish and slightly awkward high school student into a confident, vivacious college graduate over the course of the series, always has her nose in a book (or several!). Her intelligence and love for the written word are wonderfully conveyed in the Commencement speech she gives as Valedictorian at her graduation from Chilton:
“I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I’ve been a resident of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina and strolled down Swann’s Way. It’s a rewarding world, but my second one is by far superior. My second one is populated with characters slightly less eccentric, but supremely real, made of flesh and bone, full of love, who are my ultimate inspiration for everything. Richard and Emily Gilmore are kind, decent, unfailingly generous people. They are my twin pillars, without whom I could not stand. I am proud to be their grandchild. But my ultimate inspiration comes from my best friend, the dazzling woman from whom I received my name and my life’s blood, Lorelai Gilmore. My mother never gave me any idea that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do or be whomever I wanted to be. She filled our house with love and fun and books and music, unflagging in her efforts to give me role models from Jane Austen to Eudora Welty to Patti Smith. As she guided me through these incredible eighteen years, I don’t know if she ever realized that the person I most wanted to be was her. Thank you, Mom: you are my guidepost for everything.”
For the other Gilmore Girls fans out there, here is a list of the books Rory talks about, is shown reading, or references throughout the series. This post was inspired by Free Page Numbers’ post a few days ago, although I think I have used a slightly different list. My list was compiled from the thread on Rory’s Book Club, rather than the CW’s list of books Rory would probably read. Just for fun, I have also included a list of the books Jess reads during the show! I don’t put a lot of faith in Rory’s choices of boyfriends (Dean was jealous and controlling, Jess was a bad-boy jerk, and Logan was an arrogant, rich-boy jerk) but you can’t deny Jess has good taste in books! Continue reading
Although brick-and-mortar bookstores have been closing their doors right and left the last few years, people today are reading more than ever before. This is due largely in part to e-readers. A 2010 study conducted by Marketing and Research Resources found that 40% of e-reader owners say they read more now than they did with print books. According to Amazon, its customers buy 3.3 times as many books after buying a Kindle. Amazon’s claim is supported by the statistic that e-reader owners read an average of 2.6 books per month, whereas print-book readers consume an average of 1.9 books per month.
Not only are e-books encouraging people to read more, but their sales are also increasing drastically. They are even managing to outsell print books on Amazon; between April 1 and May 19, 2011, the retailer sold 105 e-books for every 100 hardcover and paperback books it sold, excluding free e-books and including books without Kindle versions. Although this statistic is impressive, Forrester Research claims that e-books only make up 14% of all consumer fiction and non-fiction books sold. While e-books do not yet represent the majority of books sold, they are certainly on the rise with the number of e-reader owners doubling from 6% to 12% of Americans between November 2010 and May 2011. These numbers are sure to rise in the near future as e-readers begin to transition out of the early adopter phase of the technology life cycle and become picked up by more and more consumers. Continue reading
