Well, I wish I was reading The Lord of the Rings this month, but I have too many books to read. I think Middle Earth will have to hold until April for me. However, it doesn’t mean I’m not excited about the new trailer for Tolkien. You can watch the teaser trailer above.
The movie is supposed to be about the years that inspired a lot of what JRR Tolkien wrote in The Lord of the Rings. It covers his time in the war, his friendships, his obsession with language, and the love for his wife. Did you know that JRR Tolkien was totally in love with his wife and he considered her the muse of his work?
If you didn’t, then you might want to give the movie a shot. I know I’ll be watching it because I can’t resist the story of one of the most coveted fantasy novels of all time. I think this is going to be the Year of the Rings (I just made this up). Even the new series Amazon is working on will begin with the second age, the years where the ring was created and used by the all-powerful (and super scary) Sauron. With the new TV show in the works for Amazon and this new biopic on JRR Tolkien, I think a lot of people are going to pick up this book and fall deeply in love with the world Tolkien created.
Anyone else excited about this one? Anyone else a fan of author biopics?
Over Galentine’s Day, I was given the opportunity to go see Five Feet Apart a month before it releases everywhere. My friend, Kari, and I decided to get some dinner beforehand and then head into the movie. When we checked in and got there, they gave us free popcorn, free soda, and a swag bag filled with the book, a popsocket, and a little bag of tissues.
The tissues should have been the thing to tip me off. It should have immediately been a warning that I was about to cry my eyes out. Because that is just what I did.
Five Feet Apart is the story of a young teenager named Stella and a young guy named Will. They both have Cystic Fibrosis, which is a debilitating disorder where the mucus, sweat, and digestive fluids is thicker than a normal person. While that doesn’t sound like anything too serious, what happens is that the mucus builds up in the body without any way to go. When CF patients say that it feels like drowning, it’s literally their bodies filling with liquid to the point they can’t breathe.
There are thousands of different cases of Cystic Fibrosis. My friend Kat at @readwithkat has CF and she’s able to live life at home and medicate herself. In the book and the movie, Stella, Will, and their friend Poe all have a specific kind of CF that requires hospital care and monitoring. All three of these characters have three different cases of CF, which means that one person can infect another with their CF germs and make their cases worse. This is the whole emphasis on “five feet apart.” It’s technically six-feet apart, but we’ll get into why there’s a missing foot now.
Of course the book is a YA novel, so it’s about Stella and Will’s love story. Yes, they have a love story after I told you all the “six feet” stuff. It’s not like anything you would normally read in a YA. You could call it downright chaste, but it’s really not about the physical parts of love that are important. What’s important is the ability to build a relationship and a love for someone without physically being able to touch them.
And that is demonstrated so many times throughout the movie and the book. These CF patients love each other in platonic or romantic ways, but they can’t hug each other. They can’t high five or sit too close to each other because of their disorder. Yet, they were able to find that without touching. You find more creative ways to hold one another when using your arms and body aren’t available.
So between the movie and the book, they are one in the same. If anything, the book is slightly better than the movie because there’s one thing the book has that the movie doesn’t; internal dialogue. What I absolutely loved about the book was reading Will’s and Stella’s thoughts. Reading what they’re feeling while they fall in love with each other helps explain a lot of what I saw in the movie. It’s tough for two kids who love each other, but then add on a disorder that will kill you and then it’s just near impossible to be in love.
I think the only thing I didn’t like was the ending of the book. I thought the movie ending was so much more impactful without having them face each other again. I could be wrong, though. People do love a happy ending. Also, the book was written after the movie was in production.
Don’t forget to see Five Feet Apart in theaters starting March 15, 2019!
I received a copy of this book from Simon and Schuster for free in exchange for an honest review. My opinions have not been influenced by the publisher or the author.
I’m silently freaking out about this trailer. Silently, out loud. In my head, my voice is booming. Shrill screams and face grabbing ensues.
I can’t wait for this complex story to finally be on the big screen. If you haven’t already read the book, I highly recommend you do so but also watch out for this trailer. It’s a spoiler.
It’s the story about a young girl named Starr who was with her childhood friend when he was shot by the police. They believed he was in possession of a weapon, but Starr only saw the brush he pulled out of his car window before the gun shots went off.
After that incident, the story changes into one about a young girl who lives in two different worlds. One world is where she calls home, but it’s not in the most pleasant of places. The other world is filled with white people, her high school. The only school her family wants her to attend to avoid a tragic teenage existence. Neither of them fit her, but they both define her.
And as she’s trying to figure out everything with her life, she’s also being asked to testify against the police officer that shot her friend. What does she do? Does she speak up for her friend or does she stay silent?
Movie is out October 19, 2018, so check out The Hate U Give on Amazon if you haven’t already.
Who else is ready to hear Starr speak? You can find the trailer after the jump!
Well, if you follow me on Instagram then you know that I’m obsessed with the new trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Check out the new trailer above.
My friend, Michaela, at The Ardent Biblio recently talked about reading War and Peace for the first time.If you aren’t aware, War and Peace is considered one of the best books of all time written by the most prolific writers, Leo Tolstoy.
However, it was originally written in Russian, is over 1400 pages long, and it takes place during the Franco-Russian War. Unless you’re actually studying the text, there aren’t many people who decide to pick this book and read it. And if you do decide to read it, there’s a lot of families, a lot of names, and a lot of important moments you have to remember.
But a copy of the book has been sitting on my shelf for years. I even dedicated some time to read Anna Karenina (Tolstoy’s other epic classic) a few years back only to stop reading it one day and never picked it back up.
When it comes to books like this, I’m immediately intimidated. I felt the same way about Game of Thrones when the show first came out. I was weary with reading the novel because of all the characters, the places, and the events you had to remember. I think this is one of the many reasons why I put off reading War and Peace.
Today just happened to be the day I decided I will read it. I know that some of this influence does come from Michaela, but the other part comes from the fact that I’m currently watching the TV adaptation of the book. Here’s a trailer below:
So you must be angry at me for watching the BBC version of this show rather than reading the actual novel. Don’t worry, I will definitely read the novel in time. I just would rather watch the show first before diving into the book.
But why?
I think we’ve come to a day and age where reading classics (or some more difficult fantasy novels) has become easier. Aside from the myriad of translations you can choose from (definitely check out The Ardent Biblio post about it above), many of the beloved classics from yesteryear are now available on TV. Movies and retellings and mini-series have been made in abundance for so many classic books. I remember the day I watched all of the BBC Pride and Prejudice and after watching the epic mini-series, I decided to read the book. I read Little Women after watching the 1995-film version with Winona Ryder for the millionth time.
Similarly to many other books I come across, I always have a tough time with visualizing characters and people. With a ton of names and events, it’s hard to keep track of them all. I always find myself flipping from the front of the book and the family tree and the index back to the page I was reading. God forbid the author doesn’t even give you that! Even when the novel is simpler, I always find myself using some actor or actress I feel is appropriate for the main character instead of dreaming up someone in my head. I should have gone into casting or something for these movies.
What watching the show does is allow me to visualize what may have been more difficult without. I’m able to see who exactly is Pierre and Andrei and Natasha and all the others. I can see them in my head and when I read the book I can use that to help shape the story. When I go to the book later on, I’ll be able to read with those characters in mind and be able to visualize the nuances of their emotions and reactions.
I’m also able to visualize the story. You may think that this will spoil a novel for me, but it doesn’t. When a book is as popularized to make a movie, I feel like the spoilers are gone. You already know what’s going to happen or you can read about them online. But the visualization of the story allows me to follow along and understand the bigger events that happen.
Of course you’re not going to get the whole book in the show. If anything, the shows and movies provide a bone structure for you to go back and read the book and fill in the muscle and the tissue. A movie without the book isn’t the same as the movie with the book. You get to a battle scene with its gore and guns and fighting and for some reason these scenes have always been really tough for me to envision in my head. Instead, I get this battle scene played out for me and I can go back later and fill in the gaps I missed about that scene.
The last added bonus of watching the movie before reading the book is that you’re never disappointed. I’ve read books before watching the movie and felt the upset of it not being true to the film. I’ve seen movies that were even better than the book and that annoys me to no end as well. Watching the movie before the book sets me up for good reading with well-crafted scenes and if the adaptation is really good, it can really blow the book out of the water (but that’s a post for another time).
Y’all probably hate me now because I do this weird method of watching the adaptation before reading the book, but for some reason it’s worked for me. I’ve been able to really enjoy some of my favorite classics because I was able to watch them played out like this. It’s also great when the people who made the movie put in the extra work to make it incredible. With an adaptation like War and Peace, there’s a lot of ground to cover in more than just three hours. I mean, look at what happened with the Lord of the Rings movies.
I have so many feelings about the teaser trailer for the new A Wrinkle in Time. Scratch that, I have so many GREAT feelings about the teaser trailer for the new A Wrinkle in Time. Because I’m not a book tuber, I have to resort to gifs to express my emotions.
Let me back up a minute.
Over the weekend, D23 (Disney’s big convention) released the new teaser trailer for the upcoming move adaption of A Wrinkle in Time. Here’s the trailer:
If you haven’t read the book before and you don’t know what this is, let an old-timer show you a little something from her childhood.
The Plot
It was a dark and stormy night; Meg Murry, her small brother Charles Wallace, and her mother had come down to the kitchen for a midnight snack when they were upset by the arrival of a most disturbing stranger.
“Wild nights are my glory,” the unearthly stranger told them. “I just got caught in a downdraft and blown off course. Let me be on my way. Speaking of way, by the way, there is such a thing as a tesseract”.
Meg’s father had been experimenting with this fifth dimension of time travel when he mysteriously disappeared. Now the time has come for Meg, her friend Calvin, and Charles Wallace to rescue him. But can they outwit the forces of evil they will encounter on their heart-stopping journey through space?
When I was a kid, this was our YA. We had stories written by incredible people about worlds outside of the ones we knew and people we may never meet. I remember the moment I decided to start wearing sneakers all the time just in case someone were to whisk me away on a magical horse.
The movie’s got OPRAH, Mindy Kaling, and Reese Witherspoon; three incredible actresses who have expressed on social media their love for books. They play the three beings who whisk Meg, Charles, and Calvin to find Meg and Charles’ father. They even explain how they are able to travel through time. These roles are super big and I’m so excited to see some literary lovers playing them.
If you want to know how they love books, well, Oprah has her famous book club, Mindy Kaling will always talk about her favorite Pride and Prejudice, and Reese Witherspoon was so inspired by Big Little Lies that she made sure SOMEONE made it into a show. AND IT WAS SO FREAKING GOOD.
After seeing this trailer, I knew this was going to be my next read. And it is! I can’t wait to write more about my thoughts on the book now that I’m an adult. For now, I leave you with this:
Simone and Her Books 