Read 'em and weep
Today's Friday Five are about books, my earliest- (and still best-) loved things. All right, I *do* seem, at the moment, to have entered a phase in which I default to other methods of content consumption at the end of a busy day or jam-packed week. But my dream is still to fill whatever passes for my retirement with a return to that first love (i.e., hours of non-stop page-turning).
Anyway, here are my answers. Ready?
1. Which book made you cry?
Many, many, many books have done this, but Imma go with the answer I gave in a book meme just over ten years ago in this very journal: "Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man, which I think is the second of the Death books. I read the last third of it through a virtual waterfall of tears -- and I was in a library at the time! Maybe *it* is the [proverbial] 'book everyone should read.' It's beautiful and hilarious and wise and absurd all at once, and easily in my top five of all time."
It was a memorable cry -- the kind where your eyes sting and your face blotches and you're not sure how to stop, through I kept it as silent as I could. (As I recall, I kind of hid behind the book.)
2. Which book would you like to see adapted for a television series?
Hmmm .... This isn't quite what you asked, but I wish I could see the BBC's 1980 Don Camillo TV series, in which the divine Brian Blessed played Peppone. If you know the character and the actor, you can see why I'd rather have that (lost-to-history, alas) incarnation than a new adaptation. I mean, how could such casting be improved on?
Okay, and I'm always up for a new Sherlock Holmes adaptation! It doesn't have to be a scrupulously faithful one (since I already know the originals by heart). Just give me the two main characters, a smart script, some heart, and decent production values; then slap on a fun or gimmicky twist; and I'm in. Ooh, and now that I've brought it up, I know what I want: filmed versions of Nicholas Meyer's post-The Seven Per-Cent Solution Holmes novels, starting with The West End Horror (in which Holmes and Watson meet G.B. Shaw and solve a murder in the Victorian theatre world). Meyer could even write the screenplays!
Ooh, here's another idea. I recently watched the four-part 1997 Channel 4 adaptation of Anthony Powell's twelve-novel epic A Dance to the Music of Time, and it turned out to be the adaptation I hadn't realized I wanted (because I'd given up on my long-ago aspiration to read the books, and therefore thought I didn't care any more). That, in turn, made me wish for a mini-series covering C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers, a similar-in-scope set of novels that also fell off my TBR list as I matured out of the nearly pathological Anglophilia of my youth. Anyone up for reducing Snow's eleven books to four feature-length films? I thought that scheme worked very well for the Powell series.
[Oh, wait: the Internet tells me that there *was* a 13-episode Strangers and Brothers BBC TV series in 1984, but reviews are lukewarm. Anybody know whether it's worth a look?]
Finally, I wish someone would do some PBS Mystery- quality adaptations of the Charlie Chan books, corrected for any, er, condescension in the original texts (I don't remember them as racist, but I probably made too many allowances for that sort of thing back when I first read them). Maybe add in details from the real-life Chinese-American cop who they say was the inspiration for Chan (unlike the fictional version, the real guy was compact and action-y). These programs would, of course, star an actor of Chinese descent as Chan. But I think the director and writers would have to be Chinese-American, as well, or it'd never fly. But I would so watch it.
3. Among books you've read, which was most recently published?
I was going to say Bachelor Girl, which I thought was new when I read it last year, but a quick check tells me that it was actually a 2018 book. My Ethics textbook has a more recent copyright date than that! Still, BG may be among the most recently published things I completed, seeing as how most of my TBR is, shall we say, vintage stuff.
4. If your personal January 2025 were a novel, what would be its title?
Hard Times is already taken. Maybe just Weary?
5. When reading a physical book, how do you mark your place when you set it down?
I almost hate to admit this, but I used to make a teeny-tiny dog-ear in the page corner. Now I either stick a receipt in there, or simply close the book, confident that I can find my place again with minimal flipping (and I always can, making me feel even more guilty now for all my years of paper-folding).
Anyway, here are my answers. Ready?
1. Which book made you cry?
Many, many, many books have done this, but Imma go with the answer I gave in a book meme just over ten years ago in this very journal: "Terry Pratchett's Reaper Man, which I think is the second of the Death books. I read the last third of it through a virtual waterfall of tears -- and I was in a library at the time! Maybe *it* is the [proverbial] 'book everyone should read.' It's beautiful and hilarious and wise and absurd all at once, and easily in my top five of all time."
It was a memorable cry -- the kind where your eyes sting and your face blotches and you're not sure how to stop, through I kept it as silent as I could. (As I recall, I kind of hid behind the book.)
2. Which book would you like to see adapted for a television series?
Hmmm .... This isn't quite what you asked, but I wish I could see the BBC's 1980 Don Camillo TV series, in which the divine Brian Blessed played Peppone. If you know the character and the actor, you can see why I'd rather have that (lost-to-history, alas) incarnation than a new adaptation. I mean, how could such casting be improved on?
Okay, and I'm always up for a new Sherlock Holmes adaptation! It doesn't have to be a scrupulously faithful one (since I already know the originals by heart). Just give me the two main characters, a smart script, some heart, and decent production values; then slap on a fun or gimmicky twist; and I'm in. Ooh, and now that I've brought it up, I know what I want: filmed versions of Nicholas Meyer's post-The Seven Per-Cent Solution Holmes novels, starting with The West End Horror (in which Holmes and Watson meet G.B. Shaw and solve a murder in the Victorian theatre world). Meyer could even write the screenplays!
Ooh, here's another idea. I recently watched the four-part 1997 Channel 4 adaptation of Anthony Powell's twelve-novel epic A Dance to the Music of Time, and it turned out to be the adaptation I hadn't realized I wanted (because I'd given up on my long-ago aspiration to read the books, and therefore thought I didn't care any more). That, in turn, made me wish for a mini-series covering C.P. Snow's Strangers and Brothers, a similar-in-scope set of novels that also fell off my TBR list as I matured out of the nearly pathological Anglophilia of my youth. Anyone up for reducing Snow's eleven books to four feature-length films? I thought that scheme worked very well for the Powell series.
[Oh, wait: the Internet tells me that there *was* a 13-episode Strangers and Brothers BBC TV series in 1984, but reviews are lukewarm. Anybody know whether it's worth a look?]
Finally, I wish someone would do some PBS Mystery- quality adaptations of the Charlie Chan books, corrected for any, er, condescension in the original texts (I don't remember them as racist, but I probably made too many allowances for that sort of thing back when I first read them). Maybe add in details from the real-life Chinese-American cop who they say was the inspiration for Chan (unlike the fictional version, the real guy was compact and action-y). These programs would, of course, star an actor of Chinese descent as Chan. But I think the director and writers would have to be Chinese-American, as well, or it'd never fly. But I would so watch it.
3. Among books you've read, which was most recently published?
I was going to say Bachelor Girl, which I thought was new when I read it last year, but a quick check tells me that it was actually a 2018 book. My Ethics textbook has a more recent copyright date than that! Still, BG may be among the most recently published things I completed, seeing as how most of my TBR is, shall we say, vintage stuff.
4. If your personal January 2025 were a novel, what would be its title?
Hard Times is already taken. Maybe just Weary?
5. When reading a physical book, how do you mark your place when you set it down?
I almost hate to admit this, but I used to make a teeny-tiny dog-ear in the page corner. Now I either stick a receipt in there, or simply close the book, confident that I can find my place again with minimal flipping (and I always can, making me feel even more guilty now for all my years of paper-folding).