Fever Pitch: A Book for a World Cup Year

Yeah, Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch came out quite a few years back.  Sixteen full years back, as a matter of fact (No, not the 2005 Jimmy Fallon movie).

But it’s still an incredibly relevant, very humorous and shockingly frank account of what it’s like to be a soccer obsessive.

What qualifies as obsessive?  Well, Hornby remembers the first wedding he was a best man at because Arsenal won 2-0 in a cup match that day.

He once went to a game with his then-girlfriend, who fainted when the team they supported conceded a goal.  Hornby’s first thought? Not for her safety, no.  He thought, “It’s just like a woman to faint at a pivotal time in a football match.”

The book describes the plight of millions of people across the globe who suffer from this affliction.  Hornby has rcovered (in his foreword, Hornby admits that he now understands that soccer is not an analogy for all things in life, and apologizes to those he tried to stretch one to), but many still suffer.

Fever Pitch helps the suffering obsessive understand his/her plight and potentially dig him/herself out of it.  It gives the borderline obsessive (me) a warning shot for what could happen if you allow it to go any further.  And it gives the average man a glimpse into his poor, consumed fellow man’s soul.

Attention Muggles: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park to Open This Spring

If you’ve read one of the +400 million copies of Harry Potter books that have sold worldwide, or if you’ve seen any of the silver-screen adaptations of the stories, you know that J.K. Rowling has conjured up a fantasy world that lies within our own world, full of creatures and characters, spells, horrors and magic. In keeping with the idea of worlds within worlds, Warner Bros. Studios and Universal Studios have teamed up to create a spankin’ new theme park within a theme park called The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, located at Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Potter’s park is set to open May 2010; you can already book trips at their website. Here’s a virtual map of the Wizarding World park:

My Sister’s Keeper–Different Endings, What Gives?

I believe in artistic license.  However, I do not believe a director should be able to completely change the events of a novel.  This is not “Lost,” a director can’t just decide to cut out important points that make up the basis of an entire story.

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult is about a family struggling with the imminent death of teenager Katie from cancer.  Anna, Katie’s sister, was created solely to save her sister’s life by providing her with blood transfusions, platelets, bone marrow, or whatever else Katie needs.  Katie, sick of the procedures begs Anna to stop saving her but not to tell their parents.  Anna files a lawsuit against her parents, suing them for the rights to her own body.  Their parents remain clueless as to why Anna is refusing to continue helping her sister.

In the book, the story is told from multiple viewpoints:  The mother’s whose sole focus is keeping Katie alive, the father’s who has always struggled with the using of Anaa, the brother who acts out because no one pays attention to him, Anna’s lawyer, Julia a family counselor, and Anna.

The movie only really focuses on Anna’s perspective.  Ages are changed and some characters like Julia aren’t even mentioned.  The audience can sense Anna’s brother is a troubled character but it is not focused on at all.  I can live with all of those changes, however, the change in the ending of the movie is inexcusable.

In the movie, Katie succumbs to cancer and dies after her mother finally accepts that she can not save her daughter and Anna should be given the chance to live a normal life.  But in the book, Anna dies and donates her kidney’s to Katie–saving her life and putting her cancer into remission.

This is a major change!I know everyone wants a happy ending but in reality, neither on was happy.  What’s the difference in who dies?  People will cry either way!

Rottentomatoes.com gave the movie a 47 percent.  Although the movie received almost a good review, it still falls under the rotten category.  I initially liked the movie until I read the book.  The movie is worth seeing but the book is the clear winner.

Grandma’s Not Shovel-Ready

This past weekend I was down in the Nation’s capital for the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). While I was there, I was able to discover (with the help of my father) a small coffee table book entitled Grandma’s Not Shovel-Ready. If you like a good picture book and want to learn about the most recent grassroots movement, you’ll thoroughly enjoy this.

Grandma’s Not Shovel-Ready is a compilation book of the best signs at conservative rallies over the past year. I must say I was truly amused after flipping through the book. The book shows Americans exercising one of their Constitutional rights. That’s nothing to be ashamed of.

Shutter Island-Book Review

The much anticipated Martin Scorsese film, Shutter Island, is set to hit theaters on February 19th.  Originally meant to premiere in October, the film had been pushed back four months due to “the economic downturn” according to Paramount execs.

The premise of the film is as follows:

Taking place in the year 1954, U.S. Marshal Teddy Daniels and partner Chuck Aule, have come to Shutter Island, home of Ashecliffe Hospital for the Criminally Insane, to investigate the disappearance of a patient.  Murdered/Patient, Rachel Solando somehow managed to escape her cell, despite being under constant surveillance.  As Daniels and Aule become more involved in the case, Daniels begins to realize that instead of searching the grounds of the institution to find Solando, he must look into his own past.

Dear John–Can the movie deliver?

I love reading– always have and always will.  Since Santa brought me a Kindle for Christmas this year, I have begun to read even more voraciously than ever before.  I no longer have the excuse of not wanting to carry a bulky book around as my Kindle is so tiny and cute.

Within the past year, I have grown to really love reading a book and then seeing a movie based on it.  I enjoy seeing the differences from the movie to the book and deciding if the director or the author had a more entertaining product.

My latest read was Dear John by Nicholas Sparks. The movie will be opening this weekend on February 5^th .