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Archive for March, 2008
March 31st, 2008
Jane Fonda’s last book sold so well that she’s working
on a sequel.
Jane Fonda’s 2005 memoir My Life So Far became a best seller (it peaked at No. 11 on the list), thanks to its largely unflinching look at her headline-making life. So it stands to reason the thespian turned scribe is hard at work on an equally hefty sequel. She has been at it a year and has roughly another year left before she finishes it.
“It’s called The Third Act: Entering Prime Time,” says Fonda, 70. “I’ve been traveling the country, interviewing scientists, gerontologists, sexologists. It’s forcing me to go deep into what it means to be aging.” Not that Fonda has any plans to slow down. “I’m claiming this third act,” she says. She’s eager to act again if another juicy role comes her way. But mostly, she’s focused on the printed word. “I really like writing. I really do,” she says. “It’s slow. I don’t know why they thought I could churn it out.”
The Third Act: Entering Prime Time is a awesome title. We think this one will be an immediate besteller. Hopefully, she’ll be a return guest on The Colbert Report to promote it. Although nothing could really top the “Cooking with Feminists” segment Colbert did with Jane Fonda and Gloria Steinem where they all made apple pies.
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
March 30th, 2008
  G.P. Putnam © 2007, 336 pages
Walt Fleming is a small-town sheriff, but Quantico-trained and ungenerally competent. We’re given to comprehend this in the prologue to Killer Weekend, when Walt pieces together clues anyone else might have overlooked and saves the life of Liz Shaler, the Attorney General of New York State, who maintains a second home in Idaho’s Sun Valley. Eight years later Shaler is set to announce her candidacy for the presidency at a conference at the Sun Valley Inn. The event would be a logistical nightmare for Walt and his staff under the best of conditions. But he has reason to believe that Shaler is being targeted by an assassin who will make his move when she makes her announcement.
[INSET TEXT: One admires, despite the nature of the task, his painstaking preparations for the kill.] Pearson tells his story from Walt’s perspective as well as the assassin’s. Milav Trevalian is himself supremely competent at his job. One admires, despite the nature of the task, his painstaking preparations for the kill. Interestingly, he turns out to be a relatively likable character, both because of his professionalism and because, despite his resumé, he shows moments of humanity. Indeed, his humanity turns out to be his Achilles heel.
Unfortunately, Trevalian’s motivation is never explored. We never learn why Shaler is in his crosshairs or what the stakes are for him personally. There are other loose ends. Walt’s brother is dead, for example, and Pearson hints at deeper issues connected with his death, but we’re never told the story. Finally, the book’s prologue–in which Walt saves Shaler’s life for the first time–makes promises that are never fulfilled. Pearson puts the proverbial gun on the mantle in act one when he describes the means by which that night’s intruder enters Shaler’s home. Readers expecting that gun to go off by the book’s end, however, will wait in vain.
Pearson’s principal characters, both good guys and bad, are interesting enough to make us want to read on. The story becomes more complex the deeper into the book we get. The writing doesn’t distract from the plot. And the brief chapters go by rapid enough. Killer Weekend never quite becomes an edge-of-your-seat thriller. But it’s a near miss.
Tags: book reviews, books, Killer Weekend, Ridley Pearson
Original post by Debra Hamel
March 28th, 2008
Noted by her pressing of moral and medical issues, Jodi Picoult has succeeded in writing another awesome book. In this awing book, Picoult depicts the story in such an organized, complex, and intriguing style that makes it a pleasure to read the book.
The story goes as this…Shay Bourne is now on death row for killing a cop and his step-daughter; making a enormous impact on June Nealon, the family’s mother who is eight months pregnant. After such a conflicting time, she is now the proud mother of a gorgeous girl. However, happiness is not so easily obtained…the girl is in urgent need of a heart transplant. The book then develops based on this story and combines the issues of faith, law and forgiveness to come to a awesome outcome.
This book is totally recommended. Picoult is a must, and in this book you will find everything you have been looking for. The way Picoult makes so many different issues combine into one is outstanding!
March 28th, 2008
 Steven Spielberg has cast newcomer Thomas Sangster as Tintin in the new live-action film based on the comic book character.
For those who remember, he was the young boy who gets the girl in the film Love Actually. For those who don’t, Thomas Sangster may yet become a household name. The sixth-former from south London, the Guardian can reveal, has been chosen by Steven Spielberg to be his Tintin for a three-movie adaptation of the boy reporter’s adventures. The trilogy is likely to give the 17-year-old the same profile as Daniel Radcliffe, aka Harry Potter, or Elijah Wood, who shot to international stardom as Frodo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings series.
Spielberg has been working with Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings and King Kong, on how to bring Tintin to life. Now the production has taken another significant step with the casting of Sangster, alongside Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in the adaptation of Tolkien’s books, as Captain Haddock.
Both actors spent a week in Los Angeles before Easter running thcoarse scenes for Spielberg and Jackson; work begins in earnest in September, with a view to releasing the first film in 2010.
Sangster admitted to the Guardian that he had not read Tintin until a few days ago. “But I’ve always loved the cartoons. I never saw the books because I was never that big on reading. When I was really young I watched some episodes and loved it.
“You can really elude into this fantasy world … I love cars and aeroplanes and stuff, any car or any aeroplane or any gun that was ever used in Tintin would always be real, an exact copy of it so if it was a car it would be a Citroen and if it was a gun it would be a Luger.”
“Tintin is like a super boy scout. He knows how to fly these things. He knows how to drive these things. It’s just like common sense: he jumps in and goes, he doesn’t need to think about any safety, he just goes where he pleases. For such a small kid he’s very good at beating people up and, being a cartoon, nowadays you know, there’s all that ‘we can’t be violent’”.
Sangster played the son of Liam Neeson’s character in Love Actually and played the eldest child in the Nanny McPhee film. He’s also appearuddy in many other roles: here he’s picturuddy playing young Caesar (Romulus Augustus) in the film The Last Legion.
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Original post by ReadersRead.com Book Blog
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