Book News
Hollywood can’t get enough of comic books
Imagine getting away from all your problems by smashing someone through a brick wall or flying off into the sky to avoid rush-hour traffic.
It’s easy to see why comic-book movies are all the rage in Hollywood, to the point that with most of the major characters — Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and Hulk — already covered, anything remotely associated with comic books is optioned for big-screen treatment.
Richard Donner’s 1978 “Superman” is largely considered to be the standard bearer and official start of the comic- book film movement. Christopher Reeve captivated audiences and paved the way for unknowns like Hugh Jackman in “X-Men” to become overnight stars.
Tim Burton, Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson made Batman the movie franchise the 1990s.
On the brink of bankruptcy, Marvel Comics realized they might have a golden goose and signed off on more of their famous characters appearing on the big screen, with their two biggest franchises, “X-Men” and “Spider-Man,” at the forefront.
The X-Men trilogy brought in $606 million and the Spider-Man movies eclipsed the $1 billion mark. Not bad for six movies.
First Lines
Swan Peak by James Lee Burke
“Clete Purcell had heard of people who sleep without dreaming, but either because of the era and neighborhood in which he had grown up, or the later experiences that had come to define his life, he could not think of sleep as anything other than an uncontrolled descent into a basement where the gargoyles turned somersaults like circus midgets.
“Sometimes he dreamed of his father, the milkman who rose at three-fifteen a.m. and rumbled off to work in a truck that clinked with bottles and trailed a line of melting ice out the back doors. When his father re-entered the house off Magazine at midday, he occasionally carried a sack of Popsicles for Clete and his two sisters. On other days, his face was already oily and distorted with early-morning booze, his victimhood and childlike cruelty searching for release on the most vulnerable members of his home.”
Top sellers at independents
Fiction
1. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, by David Wroblewski
2. Fearless Fourteen, by Janet Evanovich
3. The Enchantress of Florence, by Salman Rushdie
4. The Art of Racing in the Rain, by Garth Stein
5. The Host, by Stephenie Meyer
Nonfiction
1. When You Are Engulfed in Flames, by David Sedaris
2. The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch
3. What Happened, by Scott McClellan
4. My Stroke of Insight, by Jill Bolte Taylor
5. The Secret, by Rhonda Byrne
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