BOOK NEWS
Depp may finally get “Rum Diary” on film
Hunter S. Thompson’s 1959 novel, “The Rum Diary,” first published in 1998 and set for film adaptation in 2000, may finally reach the screen with star-producer Johnny Depp, Warner Independent Pictures and Graham King’s GK Films.
Bruce Robinson, whose 1987 comedy “Whitnail & I” garnered a cult following, is writing the adapted screenplay and directing.
“Rum Diary” is loosely based on Thompson’s experience working as a freelance journalist in Puerto Rico in the late ’50s. Depp will play a reporter who works alongside a motley crew of self-destructive staffers at a struggling San Juan newspaper, where an erotic love triangle emerges.|Hollywood Reporter
Did you read yours?
For students starting college, August is the time to quit the summer job, dump the high school sweetheart and, finally, open the book their college asked them to finish before classes start.
Nationwide, hundreds of colleges and universities, large and small, public and private, assign first- year students a book to read over the summer, hoping to create a sense of community and engage students intellectually.
The range of books colleges use is enormous, covering fiction and nonfiction. Classics are largely absent, with most of the works chosen falling closer to Oprah than academic. |www.nytimes.com
FIRST LINE
The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Sherman Alexie, $16.99
I was born with water on the brain.
“Okay, so that’s not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skull. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctors’ fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skull, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded.
“My brain was drowning in grease.”
BOOK SENSE PICKS
1. The Rest of Her Life, by Laura Moriarty
2. Here If You Need Me: A True Story, by Kate Braestrup
3. The Septembers of Shiraz, by Dalia Sofer
4. The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman
5. How to Talk to a Widower, by Jonathan Tropper
6. On Kingdom Mountain, by Howard Frank Mosher
7. Bad Monkeys, by Matt Ruff
8. Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan
9. Killer Weekend, by Ridley Pearson
10. Mister Pip, by Lloyd Jones
