These books are all adult novels, with the exception of Showrunners, that’s flat-out non-fiction, and all have movie adaptations coming out in the next few months.
This is Where I Leave You - Jonathan Tropper
I have rule: I must read the book before I see the movie. Most of the time, this is not a problem, as I read a book, Divergent, The Hunger Games and am left to wait for the on-screen adaptation for months - or years. No show with TiWILY. The book came out a few years ago, but it’s getting a second life as the movie comes out September 16, and is generating a healthy amount of buzz.
The trailer does a fairly apt job at summarizing the book, so I won’t get into that too much, but what I found really interesting about Tropper’s writing is his ability to remove Judd from the present and send him back to certain moments - the day he caught his wife cheating, for instance - and anecdotally fill in the blanks for the readers.
The end isn’t wholly satisfying for someone who likes books to be presented to her with bow-tied perfection, but life isn’t perfect. It’s really messy. Families come together and the separate and then come back to the same table, with years of baggage on their shoulders. But they’re still there for you.
Goodreads | Amazon | B&N
Gone Girl - Gillian Flynn
I still don’t quite know what to make of this book. I do know I am moving through it slowly. Maybe it hasn’t picked up yet, but while I am enthralled and want to read it, I find it hard to fly through the pages. Everyone seems to have read this book and are eagerly anticipating the movie version with Ben Affleck (sold) and Rosamund Pike, out in October.
Nick is such a complex character, I do love being in his head. Right now I’m about 100 pages into the story, and I think it’s Amy’s journal entries - the chapters switch from Nick’s omni-present third person and Amy’s first-person POV - that are slowing me down. My fingers are itching to flip to the back to the book and read what happened to her, but something in the back of my head is forbidding me to cheat ahead. It’s for the best.
Goodreads | Amazon | B&N
Showrunners: The Art of Running a TV Show - Tara Bennett
Do I need to explain why I’m super insanely excited to read this? If you know me, probably not. But I haven’t talked that much about television on this platform, so allow me to enlighten you. I am so. excited. to dive into this book. It’s a companion novel to the documentary by the same name that will be premiering this October. It's everything I could have ever wanted from a book - after reading greats such as <em>The Revolution was Televised</em> and other long-from "oral histories" about my favorite shows.
Containing interviews from the best in the biz - Joss Whedon, Damon Lindelof, Mike Royce and Robert and Michelle King among them - my greedy wannabe television-writing/producing/showrunning fingers are grabbing for this book (figuratively - I already have it, I just don't have the time dedicate to it today. But tomorrow? It's just Showrunners and me.) I’ll be reading it over the weekend and doing a write up of it over at Hypable, but it will be more leisure reading for me than work. That’s for sure.
Goodreads | Amazon | B&N
Hopefully, I'll post again in the next month and a half... but with all of these books I'm reading, I make no promises.
