PenPal Readers discussion

May's Theme for our Monthly Read is "Night at the Movies" : a book that has been made into (or will be made into ) a movie

We want to know about the books YOU want to read most, for inclusion in the voting poll to finalize our June BOTM. Please comment below with book suggestions (on this theme) that you'd like to see included in the poll.

We'll be setting up the poll for voting within the next week or so, so we need your suggestions soon! We won't be able to include every suggestion posted, but we'll narrow down to the most popular ones that get multiple requests and that make for good discussion.

I already know what I want - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carré!

Tinker, tailor,
Soldier, sailor,
Rich man, poor man,
Beggarman, thief.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is John le Carré's novelisation about his experiences of the revelations in the 1950s and the 1960s which exposed the Cambridge Five traitors (Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean, Anthony Blunt, John Cairncross, and Kim Philby) as KGB moles. The five had risen to very senior positions in the British Intelligence services.

The 1974 novel follows the endeavours of taciturn, ageing spymaster George Smiley to uncover a Soviet mole in the British Secret Intelligence Service. Since the time of its publication, the novel has received critical acclaim for its complex social commentary and lack of sensationalism, and remains a staple of the spy fiction genre.

In 1979 a TV adaptation of the same name was made by the BBC. The series was directed by John Irvin, produced by Jonathan Powell, and starred Alec Guinness as George Smiley.

Swedish director Tomas Alfredson made a film adaptation in 2011 based on a screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan. The film was released in the UK and Ireland on 16 September 2011, and in the United States on 9 December 2011. It included a cameo appearance by John le Carré in the Christmas party scene as the older man in the grey suit who stands suddenly to sing the Soviet anthem. The film received numerous Academy Award nominations including a nomination for Best Actor for Gary Oldman for his role as George Smiley. The film also starred Colin Firth as Bill Haydon, Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guillam, Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr, and Mark Strong as Jim Prideaux.

And if you haven't seen the film - you should! But read the book first.

The Glass Castle- Jeannette Walls, 2005. This book is a fantastic memoir of struggles and successes within the context of an ever-mobile, dysfunctional family. Walls’ childhood set amongst the backdrop of poverty and her alcoholic father’s mission to teach his children to make life an adventure.

The book received the Christopher Award, the American Library Association’s Alex Award, and the Books For Better Living Award. It spent 261 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller List.

The film adaptation, starring Brie Larson as the protagonist, premiered August 2017.

Morgan wrote: "The Glass Castle- Jeannette Walls, 2005. This book is a fantastic memoir of struggles and successes within the context of an ever-mobile, dysfunctional family. Walls’ childhood set amongst the back..."

I'm surprised you didn't mention Woody Harrelson! I've never heard of Brie Larson and never seen a single thing she's been in before, but I know Woody :)

I have several suggestions:
1. Lord of the rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien
2. The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
3. Little women by Louisa May Alcott

Call me By Your Name!!

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? /Blade Runner 1
Under the Tuscan Sun
Speak
Goth - the movie and book are both Japanese, so it would be great for intercultural experience (it's horror/dark fantasy though, although written in a YA style)

Ah, there are so many!

On a second thought, I think Sir Terry Pratchett's The Colour of Magic and Going Postal would make good candidates! The movies are brilliantly made and the books are equally awesome. The Colour of Magic is also the first book in his Discworld series.

Was the idea for us each to suggest ONE or many? All of the other groups I'm in only want one nomination for each Book of the Month.

A wrinkle in time

Jazzy wrote: "Was the idea for us each to suggest ONE or many? All of the other groups I'm in only want one nomination for each Book of the Month."

Well more than one is o.k, but I would try to keep it to just a few... the ones that you're really interested to read now! And ones that others would want to read too helps! We have to narrow down the list to a manageable number for voting on, so that we end up with a clear winner (instead of a long list of books that all got a vote or two).

I like all the options nominated so far, and would be very happy reading any one of them, so hopefully others will too :)

"We have to narrow down the list to a manageable number for voting on, so that we end up with a clear winner (instead of a long list of books that all got a vote or two)."

Exactly why everyone else says choose one. But since we can choose more than one and I have a nearly endless list I'll think of 3 or 4 more that are VERY special.

I would also like to recommend

Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

Doctor Zhivago is Pasternak's triumph, a semi-autobiographical novel and a great story of lives irreversibly altered by the Russian Revolution. The character of Lara was based on his mistress, Olga Ivinskaia, the woman he loved until he died in May, 1960. Boris Pasternak at first agreed to accept the Nobel Prize for literature, but had to turn it down due to dissent from the Soviet Union. It was only after his death that his son accepted in his stead.

While immensely popular in the West, the book was banned in the Soviet Union for decades. For this reason, the film could not be made in the Soviet Union and was instead filmed mostly in Spain and released in 1965, starring Omar Sharif, Julie Christie, and even features a young Obi-Wan Kenobi - Alec Guinness.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1iQ5...

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith

I Capture the Castle is the first novel by the British author Dodie Smith, written during WWII when she and her husband Alec Beesley (also British and a conscientious objector) were living in California. She longed for home and wrote of a happier time, unspecified in the novel apart from a reference to living in the 1930s. Smith was already an established playwright and later became famous for writing the classic The Hundred and One Dalmations.

This coming of age story relates the adventures of an eccentric family, the Mortmains, struggling to live in genteel poverty in a decaying castle during the 1930s as told by Cassandra Mortmain, an intelligent teenager who tells the story through her journal.

In 2003 the novel was listed at number 82 in the BBC's survey The Big Read, and released as a film that same year with Bill Nighy as the author father who suffered from writer's block.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLpKo...

Toast: The Story of a Boy's Hunger by Nigel Slater

Charles Moore wrote a wonderful review of the book which starts:
Smells and tastes are much harder to describe than sights, yet they are famous for unlocking the memory. Perhaps the word "yet" in that sentence is wrong: perhaps it is precisely because smells and tastes are elusive that they have such a powerful effect of recall.

In his book Toast, Nigel Slater takes this principle of memory to extremes. His memoir of his boyhood is told through what he ate. As someone who grew up at roughly the same, culinarily unhappy time, I feel the thrill or horror of recognition at words such as Fray Bentos, Refreshers or Cadbury's Smash. And as the child of an economical household, where one was not allowed to eat between meals, I can identify with the intense pleasure he describes when food is prepared and produced.

Slater is right about toast – as evocative a one-word title about an English upbringing as one can imagine. "My mother is scraping a piece of burned toast out of the kitchen window, a crease of annoyance across her forehead" is the first, unbeatable sentence of the book.

Here he is on bread-and-butter pudding: "I love bread-and-butter pudding. I love its layers of sweet, quivering custard, juicy raisins, and puffed, golden crust. I love the way it sings quietly in the oven; the way it wobbles on the spoon. You can't smell a hug. You can't hear a cuddle. But if you could, I reckon it would smell and sound of warm bread-and-butter pudding."
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/c...

Nigel Slater is an English food writer, journalist and broadcaster. He has written a column for The Observer Magazine for over a decade and is the principal writer for the Observer Food Monthly supplement.

This book was made into a delicious film with muted colours like an old photograph in 2010 starring Freddie Highmore, Helena Bonham Carter, Ken Stott and Oscar Kennedy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-PGQ...

The book suggestions have now closed, and the Poll has opened for voting March 14 through April 14. Vote here...