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Reading, Wellington, and whatever else – teenblog@wcl.govt.nz

Tag: Top 10

Top 10: Movie Books Part 2

Here are ten twelve popular books that are being turned into movies, which you may or may not know about. Let me know if you know of any others.

  1. The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, John Boyne. I’m not as excited as other people, but that’s okay. Here’s the trailer (YouTube).
  2. book coverNick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Rachel Cohn & David Levithan. Two teens meet at a punk rock club and fall in love. This is coming out in February next year. Plenty of time to read the book, if you haven’t already (we’re getting more copies and a reliable source has told me that it’s good).
  3. Inkheart, Cornelia Funke. The story of a girl whose father brings book characters to life by reading out loud. Visit YouTube to see the official trailer, and IMDB. It’s supposed to be around in February next year.
  4. book coverCoraline, Neil Gaiman. Some very cool graphics in here (including buttons). You can check out teasers and featurettes on his website.
  5. House of Night, P C Cast. Because vampires are so hot right now they’re turning this series by P C Cast into a movie and riding the wave.
  6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (July 2009). It will have been ages since the last one by that time. Meanwhile, you can amuse yourselves by viewing Robert Pattinson smoulder in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and check for any sparkling skin.
  7. X-Men Origins: Wolverine. More Hugh Jackman.
  8. New Moon, Stephenie Meyer. They say that this is definitely going ahead (2010) because Twilight has opened so well.
  9. book coverFantastic Mr Fox, Roald Dahl. Cool, eh? George Clooney is Mr Fox and Cate Blanchett is Mrs Fox. This should be around at the end of next year.
  10. The Book Thief, Markus Zusak. This is supposed to be coming out in 2010 but it’s quite hard to find some actual information about it (and it’s also quite hard to imagine how they can turn this into a movie!).
  11. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley. They’ve had a couple of goes at this as a TV series. Trivia: apparently the 1980 version was nominated for a couple of primetime Emmys. IMDB tells me I need to have IMDBPro if I want to find out anything about it. Huh!
  12. book coverWonder Woman. Children of the eighties will be particularly excited (she was the coolest thing on TV). An estimated release date for this is 2011.

 So there you go.

Top 10: YA CDs old enough to have a YA card

The Young Adult CD collection is, on the whole, about what’s hot in the popular music world. However, CDs that are just about ready to sit NCEA exams shouldn’t necessarily be sniffed at as something only your parents would bother listening to; some of them are pretty special really.

  1. Nirvana, Nevermind (1991). When Nirvana released ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ (their first commercial hit) they created a stir that hasn’t really been seen since. The song even made a weird, cabaret-style guest starring appearance on Moulin Rouge!, the movie, in 2001. But never mind ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’; there’s also ‘Come as You Are’, ‘Lithium’… Nevermind is a truly classic rock album.
  2. Massive Attack, Blue lines (1991). The first hip hop masterpiece. Massive Attack was cutting edge and they’ve been hugely influential in the hip hop, dance, electronica, dub scene.
  3. Rage Against the Machine, Rage Against the Machine (1992). Critics say this is their best. It’s got ‘Killing in the Name’, which is what Rage is best known for… Zack de la Rocha sounding really annoyed and Tom Morello doing weird things with his guitar without – he is quick to point out – pedals and stuff like that.
  4. Stone Temple Pilots, Stone Temple Pilots (1994). ‘Vasoline’ and ‘Interstate Love Song’ are awesome – Allmusic.com calls ‘Interstate Love Song’ “a concise epic as alluring as the open highway”. Scott Weiland’s got a great rock voice, which you can also hear in Velvet Revolver, the band he formed with the Guns n’ Roses musicians.
  5. Soundgarden, Superunknown (1994). You can’t beat Soundgarden; shame about the break up. Soundgarden fans must despair of Chris Cornell doing things like the movie theme for Casino Royale (the Bond movie with Daniel Craig). “How can you sing that after stuff like ‘Spoonman’, ‘The Day I Tried to Live’, ‘Fell on Black Days’ and ‘Black Hole Sun’?” they must ask while crying into their Starbucks coffees and wiping their noses on their plaid shirt sleeves.
  6. Blur, Parklife (1994). ‘Parklife’ the song was really incredibly irritating, because a lot of marginal Blur fans liked to sing it and the only words they knew were ‘Parklife’… over and over… The album is about British life in the early 1990s, so maybe in a couple of years it’ll be a set text for History courses.
  7. The Cranberries, No need to argue (1994). Had to put this one in because it has a girl singer! So, there’s no need to argue…
  8. Shihad, Killjoy (1995). Will be getting its YA card some time this year. Go Wellington music!
  9. Green Day, Insomniac (1995). I was going to put Dookie but someone lost the young adult copy… for shame! Dookie has ‘When I Come Around’ on it of course, but Insomniac is also pretty good. You’ll know Green Day for songs like ‘American Idiot’ and ‘When September Ends’ on the American Idiot album (2004).
  10. Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon collie and the infinite sadness (1995). I could have put Gish here (1991), and critics think that Siamese Dream is their best (1993), but Mellon Collie’s got ‘Tonight, Tonight’ on it, one of my favourite songs ever, and this is my list! It’s a double album with a gazillion songs on it, including ‘1979’ and ‘Bullet With Butterfly Wings’ to name the other well known ones.

So that’s my list. You should check them out, for an education if nothing else.

Top 5 Music Websites

Music guru Jack has compiled a list of his five favourite music websites. Perfect for a rainy weekend!

  1. allmusic.com – This site is huge and does pretty much what its name would suggest. It covers all music from nu-rave to classical, hip hop to country. You can search by artist, album or song title and find bios, reviews, audio and more. Each artists page has links to artists that influenced them, similar artists, their genre(s),and more. It’s a great place to stop by to check out reviews and find out about older bands/performers. There are even blogs and newly released albums on the front page to keep you totally up to date. The most comprehensive music site on the internet.
  2. lastfm.com – Do you love a particular band and wish you could find more in a similar vein, but find it difficult? Try lastfm. I only came across this one recently, but it’s been a great find. Type in an artists name and you get streaming audio of them and similar artists along with bios. It’s a great way to discover new bands you haven’t heard before and try them out, along with reading the user reviews. This site also works as a great customisable online radio station, type in something you like and away it goes providing great background noise for parties, studying etc.
  3. pitchforkmedia.com – Want something a little more under the radar, a little more obscure and underground? Then it’s on pitchforkmedia. Easily the most music-snobbish site on the list, you can learn what’s hip right now and then make fun of your friends for being behind the times when they discover it 6 months later. They won’t like you anymore, but you’ll feel a sense of superiority. Or you can just enjoy the comprehensive review section and keep up to date with the lastest news in the alternative scene along with links to video and audio.
  4. ilike.com – With ilike you can buy and download new mp3s the legal way. Yay! And you can get exclusive free tracks too as a bonus. A lot of bands signed up with ilike will send you notifications of upcoming release dates and tours and you can also get these via your facebook profile. ilike will also see what bands you’re into and offer you suggestions of what else you could try out. Also on the site is the ilike music quiz which surely must be the most enjoyable time waster ever invented for music lovers.
  5. nzmusic.com – This sort of works like a wikipedia for New Zealand music that you can use to get all the latest news and check out what’s happening in your local area. There are also forums to chat to/argue with other music fans around the country. A good site to keep in mind with New Zealand Music Month just around the corner.

Top 5 Sport Websites

Sporting expert, Jack, has compiled a Top 10 5 list of sport websites. If you can add any, leave a comment!

  1. cricinfo.com – All the goings-on in the world of cricket. Includes all the latest results, news, blogs, opinions and the most comprehensive archived statistics section I’ve ever seen. It even has a games section packed full of fun flash based mini-games to try. If cricket is your sport, then this should be your homepage!
  2. www.stuff.co.nz/sport – Everything you need to get up to speed on what’s happening in New Zealand and international sport. From Rugby to Running, Bowls to Basketball, it’s all covered here with articles from national newspapers, opinion pieces, videos and blogs.
  3. espn.com – If you follow any of the major American sports (Football, Basketball, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Nascar etc.) or just want an American perspective on the world of sport then this should be your first port of call. The site includes all the latest news, results, statistics and opinions, but that is just scratching the surface. There are also podcasts by leading sports journalists and highlights videos sourced from the ESPN network. There certainly are a lot of options here!
  4. allblacks.com – Rugby is New Zealand’s national sport and this is the website for our national team. Keep up to date with the Tri-Nations, Super 14 and Air New Zealand cup competitions with all the latest news, results and fixtures. Also download desktop wallpapers and watch videos all while pretending the 2007 World Cup never happened!
  5. motorsport.com – Whether you enjoy cars going around in circles very quickly (Nascar, Indycar), cars flying through snow and mud very quickly (World Rally Championship), motorbikes going around in circles very quickly (superbikes) or some other sort of really fast motorised vehicle (F1, drag-racing) it’s almost certainly on here. Keeping up to date on the fast (haha!) world of motorsport is made easy with motorsport.com’s sheer amount of up to the minute news and results. Other more specialised sites may go deeper, but none have a scope quite this wide.

Top 10 DVDs based on Books

There are several big films due to come out that are based on books. Books that we have in the library! Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, The Chronicles of Narnia : Prince Caspian , and Iron Man, for example, are all due out this year. But we do have plenty of DVDs already available that are based on books. Some aren’t very good, but some are great. And here are the ten greatest!

  1. Clueless – This is Jane Austen’s Emma, brilliantly transposed to modern (well, mid-90s) LA. Hilaaaarious.
  2. Howl’s Moving Castle – based on the Diana Wynne Jones book of the same name.
  3. To Kill a Mockingbird – based on Lee Harper’s classic book. It is also the 25th best movie ever.
  4. The Colour Purple – based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-prize winning book. You will need a box of tissues.
  5. Hellboy – based on the excellent Hellboy comics. Hellboy II is due out this year! I can’t wait.
  6. Sleepy Hollow – based loosely on Washington Irving’s 1820 tale, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. It stars Johnny Depp and the fabulous Miranda Richardson.
  7. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban – this is one of the better Harry Potter films yet, I think; it’s darker, more exciting, and if you had not seen any other of the series you’d still enjoy it.
  8. Lord of the Fliesbased on the novel, this – the 1963 version – is better than the 1990 version. There, I said it!
  9. The Lord of the Rings trilogy – of course.
  10. I, Robot – not a particularly good film, but the book that it’s based on is.

Top 10: Antiheroes

So what’s an antihero? Counter-intuitively, an antihero isn’t a villain, they’re just a regular character with regular (and sometimes major) failings. We’re so used to reading about perfect characters in novels (see for example Peekay in The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay) that when we find one that’s kind of human they can sometimes seem worse than they really are. Personally, I find antiheroism a much more rewarding read. Here are some goodies:

  1. Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel by the Baroness Orczy. “They seek him here, they seek him there, those Frenchies seek him everywhere. Is he in heaven or is he in hell? That demmed elusive Pimpernel”. Poor Lady Blakeney; she thinks she’s married to the biggest, most cowardly git in Europe. Little does she know! The Scarlet Pimpernel is an absolute classic novel set in the reign of terror following the French Revolution.
  2. Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. The best antihero since Percy (see above), I think. Never has a man worried more about his hair and his clothes in the midst of imminent disaster and an incredibly messy home.
  3. Book CoverVictor Frankenstein in Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Poor old Dr Frankenstein, all he wanted to do was create life. What he got was a (largely misunderstood) monster, and several generations of people who think that Frankenstein *is* the monster, not the creator. There are really two antiheroes in this novel; Dr Frankenstein, who gets more than he bargained for and reacts badly, and the monster, who really only wants to be loved (a nature versus nurture-type thing plays out to a grim conclusion). If you haven’t read it, Frankenstein’s great.
  4. Ed Kennedy in I am the Messenger by Markus Zusak. Ed’s an underage taxi driver living with a very smelly dog who plays a lot of cards with his mates (Ed, not the dog). At the beginning of the book he almost accidentally apprehends a bank robber, and his life takes some really weird twists and turns from there.
  5. Book CoverAnd on the subject: Death in The Book Thief, again by Markus Zusak. I was thinking it’d be a bit unfair to call Death a villain, so if Death’s not a villain then perhaps antihero is a better label? Check out Death in the Discworld series by Terry Pratchett as well.
  6. With death on the brain now; Gabe Nevins in Paranoid Park by Blake Nelson (this has been made into a movie by Gus Van Sant). Here a young skateboarder “gets mixed up in a fight that leaves someone dead”. How do you handle that sort of secret guilt when you’re just an average teenager? If you like this you should give Right Behind You a go (Gail Giles): Kip McFarland accidentally sets someone alight; they die, and this is his huge and terrible secret.
  7. Holden Caulfield, narrator of The Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger. All that whining and moaning: honestly, who could put up with it? But The Catcher in the Rye is a great read mostly because of old whiny, moany Holden. If you like The Catcher in the Rye, try King Dork by Frank Portman.
  8. Book CoverEnder Wiggin in Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card. Can Ender save the planet?
  9. Troy in Fat Kid Rules the World by K L Going. Making fun of the fat kid’s an obvious and tiresome sort of thing to do, and being made fun of can turn you into a most interesting antihero. This book’s got some good reviews and if you’re into music it’s worth a read.
  10. Gen in The Thief and The Queen of Attolia, by Megan Whalen Turner. Cocky, brash and extremely uncooperative, Gen is incarcerated for stealing from the king himself. But what happens when the king is the one in need of his services? In The Queen of Attolia, Gen rots in an Attolian prison awaiting his comeuppance… with unexpected results.

Okay, so they’re all male. Why is this, I wonder? Maybe the expectations of a patriarchal society hinder women from revealing their flaws? Maybe female writers can’t bring themselves to admit that girls do have the odd flaw? But that doesn’t make any sense. Would a female antihero work? Are there female antiheroes out there? Will keep investigating.

p.s. if you’re looking for a challenge then read The Astonishing life of Octavian Nothing, traitor to the nation, Volume 1: The pox party by M. T. Anderson, set in Boston in the 18th century during the American Revolution.

Top 10: World War II

There’s a surprising amount of fiction about World War II, much of it inspired by true events.

  1. Book CoverThe Boy in the striped pyjamas by John Boyne. Currently everyone’s favourite Holocaust novel. How to describe without spoiling it? A story told from the perspective of an innocent boy who doesn’t realise he’s caught up in monstrous times.
  2. Milkweed, Jerry Spinelli. Again, having an independent, innocent narrator telling the story of one of the most terrible times in recent history results in a compelling novel (this time set in Warsaw, Poland): brace yourself if you’re the kind of reader who doesn’t cope well with sad stories! See which you like better, this or The Boy in the Striped Pyiamas.
  3. Falling by Anne Provoost; translated by John Nieuwenhuizen. About Holocaust denial and racial tension. The book’s won several literary awards in Europe.
  4. Yellow star, Jennifer Roy. The true story of the author’s aunt Sylvia’s experiences in the Lodz ghetto during the Nazi occupation of Poland.
  5. Book CoverThe Book thief, Markus Zusak. World War II and its fallout from the point of view of Death. We keep recommending this book because it’s good.
  6. Robert Moran, Private by Ken Catran. A New Zealand perspective.
  7. Escaping into the night by Dina D. Friedman. A horrible title, but a good book. Loosely based on actual events, the story’s about a 13 year old girl who escapes from the Warsaw ghetto. There’s adventure, mystery, and a pretty cool heroine.
  8. Book CoverEmil and Karl by Yankev Glatshteyn ; translated by Jeffrey Shandler (children’s fiction). Originally published in 1940 in Yiddish, which makes the story unique to say the least. Two boys (one Jewish, one not) find themselves family-less in Vienna (Austria) on the eve of World War II… suspenseful. This is in the children’s fiction collection, but worth a go.
  9. Maus, Art Spiegelman (graphic novel, adults). I might be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure this was the first graphic novel to win the Pulitzer Prize. Maus tells the story of Art Spiegelman’s father’s experiences during World War II.
  10. The Dark Room, Rachel Seiffert (general fiction). Again I keep recommending this one – people must be getting sick of me. This is a really thoughtful book about the lingering guilt of being German post World War II. It’s also a really, really good example of “less is more” writing. If you’re interested in creative writing and you don’t like it when people attach three or more adjectives to everything they describe then read Rachel Seiffert. We can do with less of that flowery, over the top stuff.

Cheers, G.

Top 10: “adult” books for young adults

There’s some great stuff in the “adult” fiction collection that’s a good read for people who aren’t, well, old. If you’re looking for something different you could try one of these:

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Top 10: Literal Biters

Kym, Children and Youth Services and list-making Specialist, has an interest in books about vampires and werewolves. Here’s her Top 10 young adult fiction titles about people who like biting other people:

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Top 10: Fight Scenes

A well-choreographed fight can often make an action film worth watching. It might be the awesome special effects that make it so great, or that the outcome of the battle determines the fate of humanity … or else it just looks cool. Or (usually) it is all those things. Here, then, are some exceptional fight scenes from DVDs held in the Young Adult area:

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Top 10: Dystopia

“Dystopian” is the opposite of Utopian, a description derived from Utopia by St Thomas More (he was just a Sir when he wrote it), a book about an island society where everything’s perfect. So if Utopian is perfect or ideal, then dystopian is…

Dystopian themes show up heaps in fiction. We love dystopian novels, since they serve a double purpose: warning about how bad things could get and celebrating the fact that they aren’t… yet. Here are some classic and recent dystopian novels, after the jump:

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