Ray Parker Jr. may not have been afraid of no ghost, but I certainly was as a kid, particularly after reading something from the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and Ruin Your Chances for an Unscarred Childhood series. Luckily there’s a new book from the stars of the Syfy show Ghost Hunters to help the nightlight-inclined be more proactive. Ghost Hunt: Chilling Tales of the Unknown, by real-life and TV-life spook-chasers Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson, puts kids on the offensive by giving them the necessary know-how to wander around a darkened room with a night-vision camera investigate paranormal activity via a series of stories based on actual cases. And for the adult unbelievers among you, the pair will be hosting a special live episode of their show this Halloween. Check out the exclusive video below of the two specter-detectors talking about their new book:
Tag: Book (81-90 of 120)
The stars of 'Ghost Hunters' tell kids how to show that ghost who's boss in an exclusive video
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'The Hunger Games' versus the ratings game: How will the movie get a PG-13?
Books are one of the last unrated media. It’s probably that old maxim, “Well, at least they’re reading,” that has kept the Tipper Gores and the Joe Liebermans of the world from slapping a parental warning on the cover of YA novels (“Warning: Graphic paragraphs ahead”). But once these books are turned into movies, all such bets are off. The MPAA gets to rub their hands together, purr “Exceeellent,” and slap on a rating that may or may not be complete nonsense.
The Hunger Games poses a particularly interesting problem. The book is designed for readers 13-and-up, the same group covered by a PG-13 rating, but this is no Harry Potter. As dark as the later books and films in J.K. Rowling’s series got, and as malicious and evil as Voldemort was, they in no way match the violence and horror of 24 individuals battling to the death as televised bloodsport. Arrows through the throat, spears in the side, faces chewed off by wolves. Add to that the fact that it’s children, as young as 12, on the receiving and giving ends of these attacks, and you can begin to understand how there will probably be some issues translating this story from the page to the screen. It’s important to note that all this killing serves a very distinct purpose in the books. The Hunger Games is a war novel, and Collins means it to reflect the horror and destruction that accompanies human conflict. No deaths are portrayed glibly, not even those of the villains. But it may be too much to ask the organization that cites “slime,” “quirky situations,” and “intense depiction of very bad weather” as reasons for giving a movie a harsher rating to recognize that distinction. So how will The Hunger Games movie pull off a PG-13?
Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan's 'The Fall': Shelf Life Book Club
There are two sides to every vampire. The first is the sensual, sexual half; the one that plays off the implied innuendo of exchanging the ultimate bodily fluid: blood. Then there’s the beast, the animalistic predator with an insatiable thirst and no soul or moral qualms to get in the way of its instincts. Nearly all depictions of bloodsuckers fall somewhere along this spectrum. True Blood favors the sloppy, sloshy, they-may-be-dead-but-their-libidos-sure-aren’t version, and so does Twilight, although there the sex and fang-hickeys are replaced by doe-eyes and lip biting.
Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s The Strain reached for the other end, with a vision of vampirism as a horrifying parasite not unlike its depiction in Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend or the more recent The Passage by Justin Cronin. Their creatures of the night, for the most part, don’t invite you into their castle for dinner or implore you, “Have more vine, it’s a vonderful vintage.” Rather, they’re more like the hinge-jawed monsters of del Toro’s Blade II: just out to kill. And where The Strain was the beginning of del Toro and Hogan’s reimagining of the Dracula mythos—a Boeing 777 subbing for the Demeter—The Fall picks up right where it left off.
National Book Award finalists announced: Where's Franzen?
The day after the Man Booker Prize was handed out, the nominations for the National Book Award have been announced. The fiction shortlist comprises Peter Carey’s Parrot and Olivier in America, Nicole Krauss’ Great House, Lionel Shriver’s So Much for That, Jaimy Gordon’s Lord of Misrule, and Karen Tei Yamashita’s I Hotel. The Australian-born Carey has previously won the Man Booker and his latest novel was also a finalist for that prize, but it also qualifies for the National Book Award because the author also has U.S. citizenship. However, the most notable aspect of this list is an absence: Jonathan Franzen’s best-selling, critically acclaimed Freedom is nowhere to be seen. This is especially notable since his previous novel, The Corrections, won the award nine years ago.
Patti Smith’s searing memoir Just Kids made it among the finalists for nonfiction, keeping company with previous National Book Award winner John W. Dower’s Cultures of War, among others. Here is the full list of finalists:
Fiction
Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America
Nicole Krauss, Great House
Lionel Shriver, So Much for That
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule
Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel
Nonfiction
Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy
Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar
Patti Smith, Just Kids
John W. Dower, Culures of War
Justin Spring, Secret Historian
Poetry
Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City
Terrance Hayes, Lighthead
James Richardson, By the Numbers
C.D. Wright, One with Others
Monica Youn, Ignatz
Young People’s Literature
Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker
Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
Laura McNeal, Dark Water
Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer
Kaya Scodelario and Lyndsy Fonseca receive 'The Hunger Games' script
Image Credit: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images; Joe Scarnici/FilmMagic.com; Dave M. Benett/Getty ImagesWho will play the girl on fire? It’s still early in the casting process for the upcoming movie adaptation of The Hunger Games, but there are already some names popping up in connection with the much-desired lead role of Katniss Everdeen. The heavily fan-touted Skins actress Kaya Scodelario apparently tweeted yesterday that she had received “a certain script for a film based on a book,” referring to the Suzanne Collins-penned screenplay. The tweets were later deleted, but a screen capture can be found here. Additionally, Lyndsy Fonseca of Kick-Ass and Nikita told NextMovie at New York Comic Con that she was also sent the script. Not to toot our own Magic 8-Ball—it usually just says “Ask Again Later”—but this means that for now it’s basically EW’s pick vs. EW readers’ pick.
Except…there are rumors abounding that Fonseca’s Kick-Ass co-star Chloe Moretz is lobbying for the part as well, which puts the age range of our potential Katnisses from 13 all the way to 23. Clearly there’s still a ways to go before we find out definitively who will be notching her first arrow as The Hunger Games heroine, but what do you think of the options so far? Is Moretz too young? Fonseca too old? Scodelario too just right? All three are hoping the odds will be ever in their favor, but there can only be one Katniss Everdeen. Who gets your vote?
Prepresentin': We chat with 'True Prep' author Lisa Birnbach about her bestselling followup to 'The Official Preppy Handbook'
Image Credit: Elena SeibertWe all know the external signs of a preppy: Boat shoes, shirts with alligator logos, well-honed après-ski skills, and a proclivity towards all things nautical. These signposts have been general knowledge since the beginning of time, or at least since the beginning of the 1980s, when Lisa Birnbach first penned The Official Preppy Handbook, a runaway bestseller that ended up, for many people, defining the subculture it was attempting to describe. Now, 30 years later, and with the help of über-book designer Chip Kidd, Birnbach has returned to her polo-shirted roots with True Prep, a sequel that tries to help explain the preppy’s place in the modern world. We talked with the author about unfair preppy stereotypes, very fair preppy stereotypes, and everything in between.
Anthony Bourdain is working on an ultra-violent food-themed graphic novel. Yum.
Image Credit: Alexander Tamargo/Getty ImagesIn the past, the ranks of comic book nerds and foodies didn’t tend to overlap, probably because Cheetos and a Big Gulp of Mountain Dew don’t quite go with haute cuisine. But now globe-trotting, pho-slurping, culinary badass Anthony Bourdain has announced that he’s working on a graphic novel for DC Comics. It’s called Get Gyro and Bourdain says it’s an “ultra-violent slaughter-fest” like “Fistful of Dollars meets Eat Drink Man Woman.” So it sounds like we’re pretty much guaranteed at least one death by chopstick.
Bourdain has plenty of experience writing, both nonfiction best-sellers like Kitchen Confidential and the new Medium Raw as well as fiction with his epicurean crime novels, but this will be his first foray into the world of comics. If Get Gyro turns out well enough, perhaps DC or archrival Marvel will ask him to contribute to some of their other titles. Fantastic Fork? Souperman? Maybe he’ll even team up with Alan Moore for Watchmenu or P for Pancetta. What say you, Shelf-Lifers? Excited for some tasty ultra-violence courtesy of Bourdain?
David Sedaris speaks of creatures great and small in an exclusive clip from 'Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk'
David Sedaris’ autobiographical essays have always read somewhat like fables. That is, short, clever and often containing some sort of lesson, usually at his own expense. Now he’s taking that to its natural end, rejiggering himself as a modern-day fabulist and composing a collection of tales that use animals to explore man’s many foibles. Of course, it’ll probably end up more acerbic than Aesop and more laugh-inducing than LaFontaine. Check out an exclusive clip from Squirrel Meets Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary, featuring Sedaris reading some clever rhyming couplets over original illustrations by Ian Falconer, which also feature in the book.
Tony Blair is accused of plagiarizing his fictionalized self in his new memoir
Image Credit: Rick Gershon/Getty Images; Laurie SparhamIn a case of life imitating art imitating life, screenwriter Peter Morgan is accusing Tony Blair of lifting lines for scenes in his recent memoir A Journey from Morgan’s fictionalized account of those same events in the 2006 film The Queen. The lines in question come when Blair meets with Queen Elizabeth in 1997 after becoming prime minister. Blair’s memoir reads, “You are my 10th prime minister. The first was Winston. That was before you were born,” while Helen Mirren’s dialogue in the film was, “You are my 10th prime minister, Mr. Blair. My first was Winston Churchill.”
Morgan tells The Daily Telegraph that he invented those lines out of thin air, meaning that it’s either a coincidence or that Blair “had one gin and tonic too many and confused the scene in the film with what had actually happened.” It’s a pretty rare occurrence to be accused of plagiarizing your own life, but Michael Sheen’s performance as Blair in the film was pretty convincing, so I think I could forgive the former 10 Downing Street occupant if he forgot which him was actually him. Just as long as he doesn’t start borrowing from The Ghost Writer, the thriller in which a thinly veiled Blair character writes his memoirs and people start getting mysteriously killed. That might be a bit much.
EW Exclusive: Premiere webisode for 'Nightshade'
Viral marketing for books is certainly getting involved. To promote Andrea Cremer’s upcoming debut novel Nightshade (Oct. 19), Penguin is releasing a series of webisodes starring the book’s protagonist, Shay Doran. Shay’s also getting his own Facebook page and blog, so he’s clearly getting to be a very busy and tech-savvy fictional character. And apparently, if you interact with “Shay” online, you’ll be eligible to be written into an online prequel by Cremer. There will be twelve webisodes over the next six weeks covering the events leading up to the start of the book, and EW has the exclusive premiere of the first one. Take a look below.
What do you think, Shelf-Lifers? Interested in sending a friend request to Shay?
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