What book do you think should be made into a movie? And do you have any suggestions for the producers?
Or, What book do you think should NEVER be made into a movie?
I think the book I finished reading at the weekend would make a great movie. The book is The Gargoyle
Another book that would be good as a movie is Kate Atkinson’s When Will There be Good News?
Today I’m in Dante’s Inferno, an invisible spectator following Dante and Virgil as they make their way down into Hell. Charon, the boatman ferries the dead across the river Acheron to the Hall of Death with the dread words “Lay down all hope, you that go in by me” has let us enter from a word of power from Virgil. And so we descend …
(Click the button for more teasers)
My teaser is from pages 30 & 31 of Dante The Descent Into Hell translated byDorothy L Sayers. This in the 2nd Circle of Hell where the souls of the sexually promiscuous are being punished tossed eternally in a howling wind:
The blast of Hell that never rests from whirling
Harries the spirits along the weep of its swath ,
And vexes them, for ever beating and hurling.
When they are borne to the rim of the ruinous path
With cry and wail and shriek they are caught by the gust,
Railing and cursing the power of the Lord’s wrath.
Dante is so overcome with pity that he swoons: “And, as a dead man falling, down I fell.”
William Blake’s painting captures the scene:
Today’s MUSING MONDAYS post is about new authors€¦ 
What is your policy when it comes to new authors? Do you feel comfortable purchasing a book or do you prefer to borrow new authors from the library? How often do you ‘try out’ a new author?
I’m in the middle of a few books, as always, but one book is having to take preference over the others because it’s a library book, due back next Tuesday and I won’t be able to renew it. Well, I could take it back late and pay an overdue fine, but I hate to do that.
The book is The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. I wrote a bit about this book in yesterday’s post on Library Loot, where I said that after a few pages I nearly gave up on it because of the graphic descriptions of burning skin and flesh, but that it had got better when the unnamed narrator met Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles and she starts to tell him tales of the time when they were once lovers in medieval Germany.
The book alternates between recounting their present day life and Marianne Engel’s stories of their past life. The good things I do like about this book are the many references to Dante’s Inferno, which I still haven’t read, the religious references and what life was like in medieval Germany.
But there are annoying things about the book that maybe wouldn’t be so annoying if I could read it more slowly. This is a book with stories within stories – the stories Marianne Engel tells are good, but there are too many of them. When she says “Would you like to hear a story?” I think no, not another one. If I was able to take more time I’d put the book down after reading one of these before going on with the book. As I don’t have that time I find myself reading impatiently, wanting to get on with the main story. For another thing I don’t like reading lots of lists of things – the list of food Marianne brings him to eat for example made me slide my eyes over the page – in the middle of this list the narrator even inserts this in brackets “(just checking to see if you’re still reading)”. I was – just.
The pages are suitably black-edged. It looks charred as though it had been burned and because I’m the first person to read the book they’re still stuck together and I have to gently prise them open. They make a crackling noise and slow down my reading – not good for reading to a deadline.
I think the main problems though are that I normally read several books at a time moving from one to the other – it’s a bit like watching different programmes on TV – in several installments. I’m not used to reading only one book. And of course, that terrible feeling of time running out is reminding me of revising for exams, or of having to finish a report for work. It does really take the enjoyment element away from reading until it starts to feel like a chore.
I’ve spent quite a big chunk of my life in libraries. As a child I used to go about once a week and after I left school I worked in a large city library and then went to library school. After I qualified as a librarian I worked in the library’s Local History Library for about four years and then left to have a baby. But that of course didn’t stop me using the library and again I used to go about once a week. When I started to work full-time again (years later) I spent most lunchtimes in the County Library main library either browsing or reading. Since leaving work I’ve been borrowing books from this small branch library, although I still have trips in to the main library as well.
This week I’ve borrowed six books and bought two from the Ex Library Stock Sale. These are the books that I borrowed:
The library has a display of new fiction and that’s often the first place I look. This week I borrowed one book from the display- there were actually more new books on display on a bookcase next to the table:
The other books I borrowed are:
The two books I bought are:
I’ll be showing more photos of the library in other Library Loot posts in the future.
Today’s BTT question:
We’ve all seen the lists, we’ve all thought, ‘I should really read that someday,’ but for all of us, there are still books on ‘The List’ that we haven’t actually gotten around to reading. Even though we know they’re fabulous. Even though we know that we’ll like them. Or that we’ll learn from them. Or just that they’re supposed to be worthy. We just €¦ haven’t gotten around to them yet.
What’s the best book that YOU haven’t read yet?
Quite a difficult question to answer. First of all I just could not say any book is the “best” book I’ve read, so as for the “best” book I haven’t read – well I’ve no idea!
But there are many books that I know are considered to be “good” books that I’ve not read. A few spring to mind straight away:
There must be many more!
BooksPlease 