This week’s Booking through Thursday asks:

Even though it’s usually a mistake (grin) … do movies made out of books make you want to read the original?

There are three situations where I have found that a movie inspires book reading:

1. The movie is coming out of a book I’ve been meaning to read but hadn’t yet gotten around to or that I know is based on a book that I’ll probably like. Usually I’ll hold off on seeing the movie until after I’ve read the book, which sometimes means it’s ages before I see the film. Running with Scissors was such a combination.
2. The movie was particularly good — and I’ve heard good things about the book. My recent foray into The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is one such example. I’d also like to read Coraline, the movie of which I really enjoyed.
3. And the final category are movies based on books that I didn’t realize were books until I looked them up to do more research. The best (and possibly only) example I have is Helene Hanff’s 64, Charring Cross Road, a delightful epistolary story chronicling the author’s decades-long correspondence with a London bookseller.

How about you? Do movies ever inspire you to pick up a book — and are you usually glad you did?

Last week, I revealed you had correctly identified six of the ten quotes I gave you from some of my favorite books.

With some additional clues (some more clever than others, I admit), raidergirl3, Jenn, Rudi, and Grey Kitten correctly identified three more:

1. “My father had a face that could stop a clock.” — The Eyre Affair

3. “The year began with lunch.” — A Year in Provence

9. “It was a dark and stormy night.” – A Wrinkle in Time

The only quote no one could identify:

7. “I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine’s father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.”

My additional clue: When driving across the country to Tucson, you want to be very careful about picking up reptiles at rest stops. It just might change your life. [I later asked in the comments if capitalizing reptiles would have helped anyone guess, but the resulting silence suggests that no, that wouldn't have been useful.]

The answer? The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver.

Admittedly, the opening line of the story does not have much to do with the rest of the book, but I was hopeful that the reptiles bit of the clue might trigger your recollection of Turtle, who enters the tale during a rest stop in Oklahoma.

Thanks for playing along, everyone!

I head to Connecticut tomorrow for a long weekend with my family. I expect it to be full of beautiful things — loved ones, a hammock, great weather, books, knitting, PBS — and hope to come back feeling refreshed and ready for the fall. Before we move forward, however, we need to look back and find three beautiful things from the past week, which I record here with Jeremiah draped over my shoulders:

1. Not feeling well on Friday night, I canceled plans with Julia on Friday night and came home and slept. By Saturday morning I felt a lot better. And Julia was able to join us for a post-beach dinner that night instead.

2. Prior to Sunday, the extent of my exposure to Great Big Sea was streaming an album of theirs earlier this year. But people have always said that based on the bands I like that I’d appreciate them and Sarah‘s a big fan. They were all correct, and I spent Monday morning playing videos of songs they had performed under clear, moonlit skies and before an enthusiastic Wolf Trap crowd. I predict a few new cds in my near future. (If you aren’t familiar with Great Big Sea, but like Barenaked Ladies, Eddie from Ohio, or Moxy Früvous, you might consider some, too.)

3. Finally, we’ve had an absolutely fantastic week of summer weather. (I can’t say how weird it feels to write that in August!) The highs have been in the 70s and 80s. The lows have been in the 60s. Some days were cloudy. Others were clear and blue and sunny. But either way, it doesn’t matter; it’s just been glorious.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world this week?

The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan

From the jacket: “All year the half-bloods have been preparing for battle against the Titans, knowing the odds of a victory are grim. Kronos’s army is stronger than ever, and with every god and half-blood he recruits, the evil Titan’s power only grows. While the Olympians struggle to contain the rampaging monster Typhon, Kronos begins his advance on New York City, where Mount Olympus stands virtually unguarded. Now it’s up to Percy Jackson and an army of young demigods to stop the Lord of Time.”

My take: As the end of the Harry Potter series neared, a number of people mourned the fact that they’d never again have that amazing feeling of being able to crack open a new book in the series. I sympathized with the sentiment, even as I stood in line at midnight hoping for a fitting conclusion to a beloved series.

Obviously, though, I took it to heart. Although I was an early fan of The Lightning Thief and read the second book as soon as it came out, I slowed my pace down when I found out the Percy Jackson series would only number five. I didn’t read the third book until several months after it came out and the fifth book was imminent when I read the penultimate novel. But then I stopped. Sure, I’d periodically scan the library shelves to see if Book 5 was available, but I didn’t put in a request or anything like that. I just didn’t want to have the series end.

However, when I went to hear Rick Riordan speak this spring, he mentioned that he was working on a related series of books destined to take place at Camp Half-Blood. Knowing that even if the main story about Percy and Grover and Annabeth came to a conclusion that I didn’t have to leave the world behind made it okay to read the final book. Plus, my friend Shelley’s son, Daschel, told me that it was excellent. If you can’t trust an 11 year-old boy on the matter, who can you trust?

I picked the book up a couple weeks ago when I saw it at the library and have been saving it for a day when I had the time to immerse myself into Riordan’s well-crafted world. I packed it to take to the beach Saturday and finished it up Sunday afternoon before the concert.

It did not disappoint.

Filled with all the familiar characters from earlier in the series, we join Percy as he frets about how to stop Kronos — who’s taken over the body of demi-god Luke — before the Titan (the gods around before the now-familiar Olympic Greek gods took power) is able to return to full strength and destroy Mount Olympus and Manhattan along with it. A prophecy foretelling doom and a mission gone awry suggests the Oracle may just have known what she was talking about. Now Percy must embark on the most dangerous of all his quests — into the realm of Hades — in order to lead a hodgepodge army of demi-gods and woodland spirits attempting to prevent the ultimate destruction of the Olympic gods.

And if that’s not enough, the nearly 16-year old must figure out who he likes more — fellow demi-god Annabeth, daughter of Athena, or mortal Rachel Elizabeth Dare, who can see through the Mist that prevents most humans from seeing the supernatural.

It’s going to be a rough couple of days for Percy. But as Dasch promised, it’s so worth it.

Pages: 400

So last I left you, we had ten quotes from books I love.

You have correctly identified six of them:

2. “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.” The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

4. “Dear Sidney, Susan Scott is a wonder.” The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

5. “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.” To Kill a Mockingbird

6. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

8. “Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow…” Anne of Green Gables

10. “On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool, in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool, he was splashing … enjoying the jungle’s great joys … when Horton the elephant heard a small noise.” Horton Hears a Who

Well done, Jenn, raidergirl3, RandomRanter, and Allegra!

This leaves us with four quotes, at least three of which I bet many of you have read. These are the four I expected there would be the most challenging, so let’s see if anyone can get them if I offer a clue:

1. “My father had a face that could stop a clock.”
You’ll think about this quote the Next time you get sucked into a good book.

3. “The year began with lunch.”
Spend some time with Annie and Peter near the Mediterranean. The food is excellent. The house is a bit of a mess. Watch out for the pastis.

7. “I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine’s father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.”
When driving across the country to Tucson, you want to be very careful about picking up reptiles at rest stops. It just might change your life.

9. “It was a dark and stormy night.”
There is a thin line between religion and science, and another between life and poetry.

I’m hoping some fun weekend plans will help to lift the glums that have been settled around my head this week.

On Saturday we’re heading to the beach. Sun and sand and sea, here I come!

On Sunday, I’m hoping to get across town to join some friends for a brunch celebrating their second anniversary. However, I also need to get to the garden and to the farmers’ market before heading out to Wolf Trap with Rudi and Sarah to see Great Big Sea. Hopefully, there will be time to fit everything in!

What are you doing this weekend? Anything fun?

I don’t usually participate in the literary-themed Weekly Geeks meme/carnival, but for a change I thought I would this week. Not coincidentally, this week’s challenge invites you to go back through the archives and pick a previous challenge to fulfill.

I have chosen Trivia Time, which asks participants to:

So take a moment, don’t stress about it all, and write down five to ten questions that pop into your mind. You could center all your questions around a particular theme or genre, maybe something in which you specialize. Or ask questions about one certain book. Or teach us about your favorite author through your questions.

You could do really easy ones that you know we’ll all get or really hard ones that will challenge even the best of us.

Once you post your questions and add your link here, be sure to go around and answer the questions posted by everyone else. Remember, no fair Googling! At the end of the week, don’t forget to do another post with the answers to your questions.

And most importantly, have fun!

Below you’ll find the first lines of ten novels books [one of these, while fiction, is not a novel] I particularly like. Some are quite easy, but I think others may pose more of a challenge. Your job is to guess the books (without Googling, remember!) and leave your thoughts in the comments:

1. “My father had a face that could stop a clock.”
2. “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy.”
3. “The year began with lunch.”
4. “Dear Sidney, Susan Scott is a wonder.”
5. “When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow.”
6. “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”
7. “I have been afraid of putting air in a tire ever since I saw a tractor tire blow up and throw Newt Hardbine’s father over the top of the Standard Oil sign.”
8. “Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back int he woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through the woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum; it probably was conscious that Mrs. Rachel was sitting at her window, keeping a sharp eye on everything that passed, from brooks and children up, and that if she noticed anything odd or out of place she would never rest until she had ferreted out the whys and wherefores thereof.”
9. “It was a dark and stormy night.”
10. “On the fifteenth of May, in the Jungle of Nool, in the heat of the day, in the cool of the pool, he was splashing … enjoying the jungle’s great joys … when Horton the elephant heard a small noise.”

Good luck!

Did you realize there’s only one more Thursday in August after today? No, neither did I. Alas, it would seem that if you want to spend the rest of your summer soaking up the rays and eating barbecue, you’d better get out there this weekend…

Here are three things from my past week that struck me as beautiful:

1. Way back in the spring, Sarah and I went to a yarn festival, where we also bought some soap. Mine has been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for us to need a soap refill — a moment that finally arrived over the weekend. The scent I chose, Fluffy Pajamas, is mild and comforting and makes me extra excited to perform my daily ablutions.

2. Erin McKeown was this evening’s Millennium Stage performer. Since I would gladly pay money to see her (and have), I was delighted that I could get out of work and over to the Kennedy Center in time to catch her set. I’m even more excited to hear that she’ll be performing locally again in October. (Also, you can watch Erin, too, if you’d like in the archived version of her performance.)

3. As I was trying to get some unruly plants to stay in my garden plot rather than straying into the common paths, I looked down and found that one of my plants had grown this:

One of my plants has a baby peanut! I covered it up to keep it nice and toasty until harvest time in the fall.

ETA: I forgot one! I worked from home on Monday waiting for a perishable package that had been mis-routed to Little Rock and delayed. While portions of the experience were frustrating, I was highly impressed when the mail carrier telephoned me to say that she’d seen all the notes I’d left saying I was home but that I clearly wasn’t hearing her knocking on our outside door and could I please come sign for the box. Institutions may sometimes fail, but people come through in the end.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your life this week?

You know the routine: Hit shuffle on your favorite music player and record unedited the first ten songs it opts to play. Here are mine from my iPod:

1. “Moon over the Freeway” — The Ditty Bops
2. “Madagascar” (Push Remix) — Art of Trance
3. “Bajo Otra Luz” — Nelly Furtado featuring Julieta Venegas &
4. “Needles and Pins” — The Searchers
5. “Messiah: Part II, No. 44″ — London Symphony
6. “Chicken Fried” — Zac Brown Band
7. “Rockin’ around the Christmas Tree” — Mel & Kim (Yeah, nothing ever really gets deleted from my iPod. I would have been shocked if a Christmas song hadn’t come up…)
8. “Taxi” (live) — Harry Chapin
9. “Daydreamer” — Adele
10. “Crazy” — Gnarls Barkley

I have to say: This may be one of the more eclectic playlists my iPod has ever come up with.

What does your iPod/cd changer/etc. think you’d like to listen to today?

Heat by Mike Lupica

From the jacket: “Michael Arroyo grows up in the shadows of hallowed Yankee Stadium, a boy forever on the outside looking in. His only chance to see his field of dreams? Pitch his Bronx all-star team to the district finals and a shot ta the Little League World Series. But there is a problem. Michael is good — too good. Rival coaches and players can’t believe a boy could be this good and be only twelve years old.”

My take: Ace pitcher Michael, his 17-year-old brother Carlos, and their Papi are relatively recent arrivals in New York, having escaped from Cuba with the hope of getting the gifted Michael to the Little League World Series and, eventually, to the Majors.

All is progressing according to plan: Michael is feeling great both from the mound and at the plate. He and his best friend Manny, a fast-talking catcher with a secret passion for dance, books, and movies, are part of an unbelievably good summer all-star team in the Bronx. And there’s this beautiful girl named Ellie who’s started showing up at the playing field some days who’s got a wicked arm and a great laugh.

You’d think life just couldn’t get any better for Michael until an opposing father/coach writes a letter to the local Little League saying he suspects Michael is older than he’s allowed to be, and the league votes to suspend Michael until he and his family can produce his birth certificate to prove his age. Suddenly, life has just gotten much more complicated, threatening to reveal a secret that Michael is guarding closely and that could get him and his loved ones into a lot of trouble.

Sports columnist Lupica has created an interesting backstory for his main character and his secondaries and does not feel obligated to share all of it with us. This helps to make the characters feel like people with stories outside of the confines of the novel. Also, there were several spots in the book where I thought, “Oh, so this is where the story is going to go.” And often it didn’t. I don’t know if those were intentional false leads or if Lupica just, as Jasper Fforde puts it, built himself a lot of off-ramps that he didn’t end up needing, but, again, it works.

I think this is a book that a lot of boys would really like. Michael’s not an outwardly emotional character, but he’s got a lot going on beneath the surface. He feels out of control in his life, but when he’s on a baseball field that all slips into the background. Plus, Manny makes an awesome best friend. The boys try to solve their own problems without getting adults involved, which recalls to mind a number of poor interesting choices I made as a teenager because I could see grownups were just going to complicate things. I’m not saying it’s a good thing, merely that it’s real.

It’s not just boys who’ll like the book, though. Anyone with an appreciation for a well-told tale focusing on the underdog also will close the back cover with a smile on their face. I’m glad I picked it up.

Pages: 220