There's a creepy-yet-brilliant Tumblr site called The Composites that uses law enforcement composite sketch software and the original author descriptions to create images of famous literary creations. We think the final results are generally more appropriate for Halloween than Valentine's Day, but who knows? Maybe someone reading this will think the composite version of Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester is just as dreamily Byronic as they'd always imagined him to be:
Last week, Flavorwire put together a slideshow of 15 Famous Authors' Beautiful Estates. It was fun to flip through, although surprisingly few of the homes had my heart burning with real estate envy. Anaïs Nin's California home was very 60s groovy, and I liked Robert Graves's Majorca house, but the rest of the houses fell between "Aggressively Spectacular" (hi, J.K. Rowling!) and "Modern McMansion" on the curb-appeal scale. I think my problem is my imagination is limited, and even if I started to fantasize about magically inheriting a house like Evelyn Waugh’s Piers Court, I would be unable to picture a fleet of pre-paid servants coming with it. And then who would scrub all those bathrooms?
...or, worse yet, what if the house didn't even have modern bathrooms? Some of those really historic homes have codes preventing major alterations, so you might be stuck with pre-20th-century plumbing, and I don't care how beautiful the house is: I love modern plumbing with all my soul.
If you told me this entire line of books (from Penguin's Puffin Books imprint) was a tie-in for a new series of classic literature adaptations airing on ABC Family, I would totally believe you:
Publishers Weekly did a great post recently about the many and varied cover art choices for John Steinbeck's East of Eden. I can't say I agree with their statement "If you haven’t yet read East of Eden, you’re in for a treat", but I do have to say that this cover is almost (but not quite) awesome enough to convince me to give Steinbeck another chance:
For the first time since its original publication fifty years ago, a reprint of Stella Gibbons's short story collection Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm is going hit bookshelves next week. Cold Comfort Farm is one of my all-time favorite books, but I've only seen this prequel on AbeBooks, where an original edition can run you between $200 and $4000(!!!) dollars. I had no idea a reprint was in the works, so I'm regarding this news as a glorious, totally unanticipated holiday gift from the literary gods, for which I am sincerely grateful.
Much to my delight, the second book for NPR's Back-Seat Book Club is Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my all-time favorite books. The Back-Seat Book Club is technically aimed at readers aged 9 to 14, but trust me: The Phantom Tollbooth is simply too awesome to be limited by its "middle reader" label.
I'm totally delighted by the images from PosterText, a company that designs posters featuring the contents of various classic novels*, artistically arranged to depict an important scene or element from the book. Check out their take on War of the Worlds (above). Wouldn't that look great on, say, a dorm room wall? Way better than an Ikea copy of Klimt's The Kiss.
*Or at least large portions of them, like the first 20 chapters of Wuthering Heights.
According to THR, writer-director Billy Ray has been hired to write a new adaptation of the classic Dashiell Hammett novel The Thin Man. Johnny Depp (seriously, does that man ever take time off?) is attached to star, and Rob Marshall will direct. This is one project I am unequivocally excited about; I'm pretty sure Depp will do right by Nick Charles.
Publishers Weekly has started what appears to be a mini-series of posts devoted to weird stuff named after authors. Some of them make sense (an extinct species of large-toothed whale named after Herman Melville); some of them don't (two Michigan towns named after Rudyard Kipling, neither one of which he ever visited), but they're all entertaining.
According to Publishers Weekly, Frederick Warne has announced that it will publish The Further Tale of Peter Rabbit, written by actress Emma Thompson, in September 2012. The book is the 24th tale starring Peter Rabbit, and will be the first time Warne has published an original addition to the series of books that Beatrix Potter wrote between 1902 and 1930.
I would be more excited about this news, but I once attended a college lecture about Beatrix Potter, and the speaker cheerfully informed us that Ms. Potter had rabbits shot and stuffed so she could draw them at her convenience. It sort of took the bloom off the rose, you know?
THR is reporting that Sundance Selects has acquired the North American rights to Trishna, a new movie set in contemporary Rajasthan based on Thomas Hardy's classic novel Tess of the D'Urbervilles. Behold:
Gorgeous sets, exquisitely good-looking stars... but I know how this story ends. No thanks.
But can I really buy an twisted antihero named Pinkie?
Speaking of violent, gloomy movies, if you can't wait until March, last year's film adaptation of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock is finally popping up in various arthouse theaters:
I was under the impression the original story (which I haven't read) was less "doomed love affair" than "creepy manipulation with a dash of Stockholm syndrome", but whatever sells, I guess.
According to Vulture, Jesse Eisenberg is set to star in director Richard Ayoade’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s novella The Double, which they describe as "Fight Club for bureaucrats". That actually makes it sound kind of awesome, but a word of warning: Wikipedia says that D.S. Mirsky (a fellow Russian, mind you, who I'm assume was inured to the gloom of Russian literature) described it as "painful, almost intolerable reading".
Aw: Sales of Harper Lee's 1960 novel To Kill A Mockingbirdrose by 123% in the UK after David and Victoria Beckham named their new baby "Harper" in honor of the book, said to be Victoria's favorite.
Of course, Victoria made an infamous comment in 2005 that she'd never actually read a book (although she had written one), so I'm glad to hear that either A) she was joking*, or B) she's picked up a novel or two in the intervening years.
*Or her comment was mistranslated, or taken out of context, or something. But it couldn't really be true... right?
Sadly, this "How To Drink Like Your Favorite Authors" article does not include a "Which author/lush are you?" quiz or drink recipes, but it's a fun read nonetheless.
I made it most of the way through this Times article about plans to celebrate the 75th anniversary of Gone With the Wind, but I had to stop when one of the devoted fans described the novel's setting as "a precious time to enjoy being a lady".
Sure, this is a book about war, slavery, poverty, gold-digging, and nearly dying in childbirth... but, hey, it also features coquettishly twirled parasols!
They're not out in the U.S. until the beginning of May, but the Moleskine "Le Petit Prince" notebooks are adorable. The books will come in two different sizes and layouts, both of which will display an image of the Little Prince debossed on the cover. Inside will be drawings and quotes from the story, as well as some miniature pop-up paper reproduction to cut out, mount and stick in the book. At roughly $20 per notebook, they're really not cheap... but I still totally want one.
The Times has posted an article about the final typescript of the last four chapters of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. The chapters—which were mistakenly believed to have been burned in 1949—have turned up in the Pequot Library in Southport, Connecticut, and have gone on display in honor of the novel's 75th anniversary in June.
Note: And even if, like me, you can't stand Gone With the Wind, check out that library! It looks awesome! My local public libraries both look like barns, so I'm totally jealous.
