Monday, November 28, 2011

It's going to be a movie!

Jean-Pierre Jeunet who directed Amelie  will be teaming up with his long time collaborator, screenwriter Guillaume Laurant to make the film adaption of The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen.  

This was my favorite novel of 2009 and needless to say Amelie is a classic in the feel good category of film. What a delightful pairing! Like peanut butter and chocolate, or Laurel and Hardy. If you haven't read Larsen's debut novel, well then get thee to the Odyssey, we can sell you a copy. I seriously can't wait. I wonder who they will cast as Mr. Tecumseh Sparrow Spivet? Who would be your guess for a genius, 12-year-old, cartographer?

Paz,

Nieves

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Book reviews, Good Reads, and Polls: Oh, My!

It's been a quiet blogging month here at the Odyssey.  Not too unusual for November, when the days get shorter, the darkness creeps in a little earlier each night, and our attention gets directed toward the winter holidays. 

It has also been a relatively slow reading month for me, for all of the reasons listed above. (I'm sure it has nothing at all to do with the fact that my last two weekends have been dedicated to watching the BBC show Being Human, courtesy of Netflix streaming.)  But I've done two bookish things in the last few hours that I wanted to share with y'all. 

More recently, I voted in the final rounds of the GoodReads Choice Awards for 2011.  Was I disappointed that The Night Circus didn't make it to the final round for "Favorite Book of 2011?" Sure.  But I was also really, really happy to cast my vote for Deborah Harkness's debut novel, A Discovery of Witches, instead. Deborah, who is an alumna of Mt Holyoke College, launched her book tour with the Odyssey back in February and we knew then that she had a great thing going with her paranormal/historical/bibliocentric novel.

I was awake very early this morning, courtesy of my dog Roxanne who needed to go outside around 5:00 a.m. At first I grumbled about it but then I realized that in fact she gave me the perfect opportunity to finish reading a riveting new book I'd picked up a couple of days ago called Running the Rift. It's Naomi Benaron's Bellwether Prize-winning debut novel, set in Rwanda in the 1990s.  I'd been reading it in 100-page chunks but I didn't want to push through to the end last night when I was so sleepy. 

Well, it was a thoroughly engrossing read.  I'll need to mull it over a bit before posting a full review 'cause right now I'm still reeling from it.  It's one of those books where you know exactly what's going to be happen, even if you don't know the particulars, and the narrative tension builds both from within the story and from without, based on your own knowledge of actual historical events.  Like a novel that opens in Honolulu in 1940, or one that features the Warsaw Ghetto in the late 1930s, you know what you're gonna get with a book featuring Rwanda of the early 1990s. 

All I can say is, read it.  The book releases in January from our good friends at Algonquin and Naomi Benaron will be at the Odyssey on February 2, 2012, for a reading and booksigning, and if you believe in the importance of literature in understanding the human condition and the role it plays in creating empathy & dispelling fear, this is an event you should attend.

~Emily

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Goodreads Choice Awards: Have YOU Voted?

Emily's write-in vote for Favorite Book of 2011

We're up to the Semi-Finals found at GoodReads for voting on the year's best books in tons o' categories.  Have you voted yet?  I have, and I can't wait to find out which books and authors will walk away with the awards. 

The Odyssey Bookshop has hosted events this year with semi-finalists in almost every category, and in many cases we've hosted multiple authors in those categories.  Did you read Erin Morgenstern, Deborah Harkness, Andre Dubus, Cassandra Clare, Tea Obreht, J. Courtney Sullivan, Jodi Picoult, Alice Hoffman, Steven Levy, Mira Bartok, Rick Riordan, Erin Hunter, Mo Willems, Anna Dewdney, or Lane Smith when they signed books for the Odyssey this year?  What about the dozens of others titles that are up for awards? 

Now's the time to vote to make sure that your favorite books and authors make it to the final round!  Click here if you want to cast YOUR vote!  (And if you're looking for more friends on GoodReads, please send a request my way.)

~Emily Crowe