Our Favorite YA Novels Featured on Children's Book Review

Amy and I shared our favorite YA titles with Children's Book Review. You can see all our picks here. Let us know what you think!

Quiz: Who's Your Ideal Shakespeare Boyfriend?



Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Shakespeare Theme Songs

Shout out to Shakespeare Geek for posting our "Scottish MacHillbillies" lyrical spoof this morning. Check out his blog to see some other great Shakespeare parodies set to famous TV themes songs.

Wuthering Heights, Take Two: The TV Series

I fleetingly wondered if this might be something from The Onion when I first read it. A TV-series based on Wuthering Heights, but set in Napa? Anyone who's ever been to Napa knows it's a bit tonier than "the moors" described in the novel, but I'll give them points for creativity. A Gossip Girl scribe is helping to pen the series. Hmmmm. I hope they don't make this too "soapy." For some reason I keep hearkening back to that 80s-era TV miniseries Fresno which revolved around a raisin-producing dynasty.

Macbeth and Time Travel in Looper

Till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane

Proving once again that, if you look hard enough, you can find Shakespeare in just about anything, Adam Sternbergh at the New York Times has an interview with Looper director, Rian Johnson, where Johnson mentions Macbeth as inspiration for his sci-fi flick:

"[Macbeth is] ...a kind of time-travel story itself, insofar as the main character is told, right at the start, what the future holds, and that knowledge affects all his subsequent actions, 'right up to the fact that Macbeth does all these horrible things to retain this vision of what the future could be,' Johnson says."  

You'll want to read the interview for more of Johnson's sources, including Casablanca. (Amy and I both saw Looper this weekend and thought it fantastically entertaining.) Sadly, thanks to the recession, my "hipster" neighborhood is already starting to resemble the urban dystopia shown in the film. You can read more about Looper and its portrayal of income inequality at Ed Champion's Reluctant Habits. --Kim

Wuthering Heights

As with "Downton Abbey," we Yanks have had to wait patiently for the U.S. release of Wuthering Heights, the latest film adaptation of Emily Bronte's achingly romantic masterpiece, directed by Andrea Arnold.

I first borrowed the novel from my classroom library in eighth grade, and because the copy was battered, and the cover was torn, my teacher let me keep the book after I'd read it. It was then and has remained one of my favorite novels of all time, despite the fact that Cathy and Heathcliff's love story is, well, certainly no fairy tale.

Adapting the book for film has proved a tough nut to crack, for a variety of reasons. Fans of the novel generally get a little aggro when it comes to depicting Heathcliff properly, and many film versions fail to get it right.

The last film version I watched was courtesy of Masterpiece Theater in 2009. Tom Hardy (whom I adore, but not necessarily for this role) played Heathcliff. Frankly, I'm not sure any actor can ever live up to my imagination, though Ralph Fiennes, Timothy Dalton and Laurence Olivier have all given it a shot. Still, I'm more-than-thrilled to keep watching new versions in the hopes that one might finally get it right. Could this one succeed? If you've already seen it, let us know!

Was Shakespeare A She?

No Sweat Shakespeare Blog has an interesting and succinctly written primer detailing which alternate candidates could (but probably don't) deserve credit for penning all those great plays, including one female candidate: Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke.

Shakespeare in Withnail & I

Richard E. Grant (as Withnail) memorably performs a monologue from Hamlet in the final scene of Withnail and I, but it occurred to me last night while re-watching this favorite flick that it's also inspired by Shakespeare's Henry IV. Marwood ("I") is Prince Hal, of course. Fans of the movie, did you think so, too? --Kim

Shakespeare Hits the Small Screen!

Kim and I aren't the only ones embracing modern adaptations of Shakespeare. TV execs apparently are, too! "America's Son" (which sounds, in a nutshell, like "Revenge" meets "Hamlet") is on deck at Fox, while ABC is cuing up a version of "West Side Story" (which is "Romeo and Juliet" re-told.) Here's the story from Cinema Blend.

Mia Wasikowska Between the Covers...Again!

With Joe Wright's Anna Karenina bound to leave us doleful about the plight of unhappy wives (here's an early review, by the way), adding a dose of Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary next year is certain to leave brides-to-be second-guessing their paths to happily-ever-after. Nevertheless, following her film turns in Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland (2010) and Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (2011), Wasikowska is the sort of book-loving beauty we're happy to root for at the box office.