Books On Film | 2013 Adaptations

Let's ring in the new year with a list of 13 books that have adaptations scheduled to be released in 2013.

[January] 

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters, starring Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arteton, is a twist on the classic fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. The movie will feature Hansel and Gretel as adult witch bounty hunters.

Watch movie trailer on youtube

 

[February]

Beautiful Creatures will star Emma Ronsom, Emma Thompson, Jeremy Irons, and Viola Davis. The YA book of the same title explores the love between two teens in South Carolina with a psychic connection and a secret.  

Watch movie trailer on youtube

 









Warm Bodies, starring Nicholaus Holt and Teresa Palmer, is based on a post-apocalyptic YA tale of the same title (link+) about a zombie named R who falls in love with a human.
 

Watch movie trailer on youtube

[March]
There's already one classic adaptation of this book. The newest, called Oz: The Great and Powerful (James Franco and Michelle Williams), will be a prequel inspired by the book. It will follow the man who becomes The Wonderful Wizard of Oz on his first journey into the land that L. Frank Baum created. 

Watch the movie trailer on youtube

[May] 
The fourth movie adaptation of The Great Gatsby will star Leonardo Dicaprio. The book follows Jay Gatsby on his journey through 1920s America and the perils of love. For a full review of The Great Gatsby as well as a view of the movie trailer, visit this Book Bucketlist post.


Watch the movie trailer on youtube











The newest Iron Man film, Iron Man 3, will feature The Mandarin as it's villain and some sort of homage to the Iron Patriot. The Mandarin originally appeared in a 1964 issue of Iron Man. Iron Patriot appeared in the Dark Avengers [link+] comic. He was Norman Osborne of Spiderman fame (the Green Goblin) in a new suit and up to no good. The version of Iron Patriot which will appear in Iron Man 3 seems to played by Rhodes (War Machine), so who knows how closely they will stick to the story.

Watch the movie trailer on youtube

 
[June]
The new Superman reboot film starring Henry Cavill, Man of Steel, is titled after the six-series comic collection from 1986 which rebooted the Superman origin story. 
 

Watch the movie trailer on youtube
 












World War Z will star Brad Pitt. The book is written as a collection of first person stories released by the UN Postwar Commission ten years after the Zombie Wars. It's is a sequel to The Zombie Survival Guide

Watch the movie trailer on youtube

[August]
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones is the first book in The Mortal Instruments series. It follows the adventures of a teenage girl who becomes involved in the world of demon-hunters. More involved then she even realizes.

Watch the movie trailer on youtube











 
Percy Jackson: The Sea of Monsters is the second book in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson & The Olympians series. Teenage demi-god Percy and friends have to save their satyr friend from the clutches of the Cyclops Polyphemus.

Be on the lookout for the movie trailer! If you want to read the whole series, start at the beginning with The Lightning Thief.












[November] 
Ender's Game will star Harrison Ford, Abigail Breslin, and Asa Butterfield. The movie is based on a science fiction novel set in the future where children are recruited by the government to train to fight an alien enemy.

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire is the sequel to The Hunger Games. The book is set in a post-nuclear America in which the country is divided into 12 districts. The districts send two tributes each year to fight in the annual Hunger Games.

The second book follows Katniss and Peeta as they return home as winners of  the 74th Hunger Games. 
 

  

[December]

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug is the second of three Hobbit movies to be released. The book follows hobbit Bilbo Baggins on his journey out of The Shire, where he has a much bigger adventure than he bargained for. The Hobbit is a prequel to The Lord of the Rings series. To read more about The Lord of The Rings universe visit this Book Bucklist post.












Movie Information: IMDB
Release Date Source: Movie Insider 
Covers courtesy of LibraryThing
For more information about borrowing through Link+, please visit this page.

Food, Food, Food | Livermore Outlets

By the time you read this I will be in Livermore at the new Outlet Mall.  I must admit that I am less than impressed with their website and am sad to report that I am having trouble finding much info about the restaurants.  I wanted to be practically on fire in anticipation of all the yummy restaurants. 

This makes me think of our website.  Obviously you found it since you are reading this, but we are open to suggestions if you can think of ways for it to be improved.  I'd enjoy it more if it deposited $347 into my checking account every time I look at it, but the committee that works on the site is unlikely to endorse that update.

I will be at our Angelou Branch on Saturday in case you want to stop in and see what I bought on Friday and hear about my lunch!

The Wanderlust Librarian | Indonesia

I am proud of my Indonesian heritage. I so rarely get a chance to visit my ancestral country, but when I do, it's always an adventure. The last time I visited was over 5 years ago when my cousin got married. It was the first time I had traveled there without my parents. When I was a kid, our family used to travel to Indonesia once every 4 years. We would stay for at least 2 months. Before I went on this last trip. it had been over 10 years since I had last visited family. 

Jakarta is the capital city of Indonesia. Per the CIA Factbook, the total population of Indonesia is 248,645,008. There are over 9 million people living in Jakarta. A majority of my family live in and around the capital. Houses in Jakarta are squished together. There is barely enough room, sometimes, for a carport. Since the weather is warm, the floors are almost, always, tile and the furniture is simple. 

   

My aunt's house is nice and cool in the hot weather

Outdoor spaces are perfect for the warm climate

There is barely enough room for parking at my cousin's house!

In a crowded city, traffic lines are just suggestions. 

In a city that's full of people, everything is crowded. Buildings expand skyward and business is ripe all over this bustling city. The malls in Jakarta rival the ones in Las Vegas and have a lot of high end stores and shops. Some of the best deals I got came from an indoor market place called Mangga Dua (The Two Mangos). I use the word "market" loosely, as there are floors of tiny stalls selling everything from eyeglasses to video games. 

Mangga Dua Market really puts into perspective the "one stop shopping" concept! 

I can't talk about Indonesia without talking about the food. It's amazing. A lot of the things I eat are things that I grew up with in my house: fried rice, noodle soup, seafood dumplings. Take a look at the goodness I enjoyed on my last trip! 

If you ever get the chance to visit Indonesia, do it! It's a vibrant country full of wonderful people and culture....and food! 

Adventure and good eats are out there!

-Rena 

Noodles and seasoned chicken. You use the broth and meatballs
on the top right to taste! 

Nasi Goreng  (fried rice) is always accompanied by
colorful krupuk (shrimp chips) 

Mie Tarik (pulled noodle) that I got at the mall! It was
delicious! 

   

Sate Ayam (chicken skewers) and lontong (pressed rice patties)
are almost always served together. This is my favorite food! 

Book Bucket List | To Kill a Mockingbird and Flight Behavior

In five days, it will be 2013.  I know for a fact that if I make a resolution that's supposed to last all year, I will probably end up breaking it. (Especially if it involves Chiptole...) So instead, I'm going to shoot for something easy so I don't have to worry breaking any far fetched resolution.  I've decided that in January, I am going to read something old that has been sitting on my bucket list for awhile, and something new that I have just discovered and really want to read.

Years ago when I first read To Kill a Mockingbird, it quickly became one of my favorite books.  I read it twice in a row, and ran out and got the movie.  It's been awhile since I've picked up Harper Lee's classic novel, but I am going to now.  To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960 and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1962.  The book addresses prejudice, morality, courage, and generally doing the right thing in the face of adversity.  I love this book, and it will be the first book I read in 2013!

For the new release, I'm going to be picking up Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behavior.  One of Kingsolver's older books, The Poisonwood Bible, is another one of my favorites and I can't wait to read her latest release.  When bored housewife, Dellarobia, avoids disaster and doesn't burn in the fire that destroys her home, her entire life changes.  I don't want to read too much about it, before I actually sit down with a copy, but I'm very excited about it!

So there you go, something old and something new for the New Year!

Tara's Short Attention Span Challenge | This is Happening.

Have you ever known someone who finds something new to learn, gets really excited about it, does it for a week or so, and then drops it and moves on to something new?  You might even say that this person does this little routine on a habitual basis?  Well, if you didn’t before, you do now!  I am one of those people!  I don’t like to think I have a short attention span per say, but instead maybe a healthy appetite for information.

Of course, working at SSJCPL hasn't discouraged my information appetite in the least. We have new books that come in everyday on a variety of subjects.  I am all about a new skill or hobby on pretty much a weekly basis.  Just when I start to master one, I move on to the next.  In some ways, I have always been embarrassed about this erratic and non-committal part of my personality.  I worried I would be someone who never really mastered anything.  I'd hoped I'd grow out of it, but here I am now, in my thirties, and I've come to realize, this is just who I am.  So I'll embrace it; I am a Jack of all Trades, but Master of None. 

This year, I challenge myself to an experiment: 52 weeks and 52 different skills.  Of course, any challenge needs to have rules.

Rules: 

• The knowledge will ONLY come from the library; be it a book, or a program, or online database (no Wikipedia allowed!)
• I will not pay for or seek out expert opinion from outside the library. For example: my husband is a mechanic, but I will not ask him for help when I learn how to change oil. (That one will be hard, by the way)
• I will always post where I got the information with links
• I will always post my results and how I got them (pictures, video, whatever), whether good, bad, or embarrassing. there might be a lot of the latter two. 
• I am a smart gal, but I will not censor my ditziness. If I make a mistake, especially a silly one, I will mention it! 

I hope you will enjoy my knowledge adventure!  Please check in each week for my results and by all means, feel free to post comments and suggestions.

The Short Attention Span Challenge will begin on Jan 2, 2013  January 9, 2013!

Learning | Lifelong Learning

In my last post, I did say I never liked making New Year's resolutions, didn't I?  My opinion hasn't changed. But if you're looking around for a spare resolution, I have a few suggestions.

You might consider the idea of lifelong learning.   There's a new book called  Learn something new every day : 365 facts to fulfill your life .  At least this one should get you  through your first year of lifelong learning. As I'm writing this post, all five copies of this title are checked out--maybe because it is written by National Public Radio Librarian Kee Malesky. As soon as I saw this title in the catalog, I looked for the catalog subject headings attached to the record, and I learned two new things.  

• First, I learned a new word: vade-mecum, because the first subject heading was "Handbooks, vade-mecums, etc." Vade-mecums are handbooks or manuals that are intended to be carried around for ready reference. This subject heading sounds so useful! I wonder why we only have 36 titles with that heading.  
• Second, I learned of another subject heading. It's called "Curiosities and wonders", and it's chock full of fodder for the curious mind. When I last checked, our library system had 168 titles attached to that subject heading.  

 

Give yourself a classical education. There is a book that will guide you through the process.  It's called The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had. This ambitious tome provides an introduction to the reading and appreciation of fiction, autobiographies, history, drama and poetry. There are lists of recommended books with synopses.  Even though I don't feel the need to make a resolution to get a classical education, I think I may turn to this book, when I'm looking for some good reading material.