I've encountered a few things I want to
pass on lately. Starting with the book stuff:
1) When I finished reading Life As We Knew It
by Susan
Beth Pfeffer last spring I wanted to press it into
the hands of everyone over the age of twelve and insist
that they read it. If an asteroid hit earth changing
the moon's orbit and sending
life on earth into chaos I'm sure Life As We Knew
It and its companion book The Dead and the Gone
are exactly how life would unfold for countless American
families.
I wish more adults would venture into
the teen section of their local bookstores or libraries
because both these young adult books have the potential
to appeal to a much broader age range than their place
on the shelf would suggest. Susan Beth Pfeffer doesn't
sugarcoat the terrifying struggle to survive in a world
without electricity and sunlight. The tension will have
you speeding through page after page. In fact, when
I neared the end of The Dead and The Gone, while
at the car dealership waiting for a car tune up this
past weekend, I had to blink back tears and struggle
to hold myself together.
2) Courtney Summers' first two chapters of Cracked
Up To Be are now up
at her website and once you take a peek at what
Parker's up to, the curiosity rapidly snowballs. I'm
betting you'll be hooked and need to read the rest come
December when Courtney's book arrives in stores.
3) David
Yoo's new book, Stop Me If You've Heard This
OneBefore, is out today. I'm looking forward
to checking it out—and not just because both our
titles have links to Smiths songs! Have a look
at the trailer.
5) I've been coming back to this YouTube video of Swedish
duo First
Aid Kit covering the Fleet Foxes tune Tiger Mountain
Peasant Song all week. It's strangely haunting...ageless...
And here's Fleet
Foxes' Robin Pecknold playing Tiger Mountain
Peasant Song at London's ULU in June.
6) I got a chance to see Michael Winterbottom's latest
release, Genova, at the The Toronto International
Film Festival a few weeks ago and loved it. Colin
Firth plays Joe, a man who decides to spend a year in
Italy with his two daughters after his wife dies in
a car accident. While the youngest daughter has constant
visions of her mother, the older discovers Italian boys
and bitterly keeps a heartbreaking secret about her
younger sister. The movie's by turns eerie, contemplative
and aching. I've never seen Firth better and the two
girls playing his daughters are absolutely wonderful
too. THINKFilm
has acquired the North American rights and Metrodome
snapped up the U.K. and Irish ones so eventually it
should appear in a theatre near you.
Things
to Check Out
1) When I finished reading Life As We Knew It
by 
sending
life on earth into chaos I'm sure Life As We Knew
It and its companion book The Dead and the Gone
are exactly how life would unfold for countless American
families.
