The poster for the movie-adaptation of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods makes me smile.
I am one that really enjoyed the book. Enough so that I can’t imagine how the movie can live up to it. You can watch the preview trailer below and make up your own mind. I don’t remember the book being so “cute”? Does that make sense? I am not a big re-reader, but this may call for it. The encounter with the bear was one of my favorite bits in the book. Not sure why I found it so funny. Bryson just has a why of countering serious situations with this dry, almost stuffy, British-like sense of humor.
I am still up in the air if Robert Redford and Nick Nolte are the right guys for the parts. Though since Redford is producing the movie, I guess he gets to do whatever he likes. The A Walk in the Woods movie hits the big screen this fall on Labor Day weekend. Fingers crossed!
What a fantastic holiday weekend here in Birmingham, AL. The weather has been fantastically cool and even spit out a little summer shower this evening. So I don’t blame you if you’re out hiking, biking or sunning this next week – but if the rain falls again consider checking out one of these book events in and around the Birmingham area over the next two weeks.
Tuesday, May 26th from 10:00am – 12:00pm – Author Roe Bonner, will be at the West End Library talking about and signing his book Behind The Mic: The Rise and Fall of Personality Radio, which discusses the business aspects of owning or managing a radio station.
The Girl in the Spider’s Web hits U.S. bookstore shelves on September 1, 2015 and the U.K. a few days earlier on August 27, 2015. This book is the fourth book in the late Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy“.
The U.S. publisher Knopf released the two covers yesterday. One for the U.S. edition and the other for the U.K. edition.
U.K. edition cover of “the Girl in the Spider’s Web”U.S. edition cover of “the Girl in the Spider’s Web”
“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo” series was a global publishing phenomenon by all accounts. Not quite Harry Potter, but oh so close. The books raced up the charts in every country they were published in.
Since Larsson died in 2005, this book has been written, in secret, by a Swedish crime-news reporter. Hopefully it will live up to what Larsson had started. Some say Larsson had planned on the series to run a full seven books.
The NPR Blog has a few more details on the new books and series.
This month Simon Goldhill’s Freud’s Couch, Scott’s Buttocks, Brontë’s Grave is the University of Chicago Press’s free eBook offering. I have not read it yet, but the book is all about writers, their homes and travel. When I travel I always look up local literary points of interest and local indie bookshops to visit. They are so much more interesting and telling than the usual sight-seeing fare.
Goldhill’s book not only points the way to where these literary locations are, but also digs a little deeper in trying to connect the dots between these places and the writers that were there. I scanned a bit of it and he seems intent to tackle questions like:
Why did author go there? What were they looking for? What will you find if you go there today? Some of the historical sites of note, listed in the book, are:
Sir Walter Scott’s mansion
Wordsworth’s cottage
the Brontë parsonage
Shakespeare’s birthplace
Freud’s office
So if literary pilgrimages and bookstore tourism are your thing, be sure to check out UCP’s free eBook this month. (There are a few caveats: they use Adobe DRM, so you’ll need an approved eReader app for that and a kindle fire may be the only kindle device that can read these free ebooks. I haven’t confirmed that though.)
