Dream Casting: Alive In Necropolis

Officer Mike Mercer is a confused young cop with a Colma beat (pop. living: 1,200 pop. dead: 2 million) whose life is spiraling out of control. Then he starts seeing ghosts. Author Doug Dorst keeps the plot zipping along without sacrificing character and there's something here that feels coming of age, in a good way. It's the sort of coming of age familiar to us Gen X and Yers who are forever hovering over the line between childhood and adulthood--just like Colma's ghosts hover between this world and the next.

Alive In Necropolis certainly has what it takes to cross over into film: cops, ghosts, drug overdoses, car crashes, romance, and for a backdrop, the haunting streets of San Francisco. My casting picks: Casey Affleck, James McAvoy, or Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Michael Mercer, Giovanni Ribisi as "Doc" Barker, Ryan Gosling as optimistic aviator Lincoln Beachey, Peter Sarsgaard as Toronto, Jesse Eisenberg as Jude, and Lili Taylor as Fiona. Read it and let us know what you think. --Kim

Quiz: Think You Know Your Shakespearean Phrases?

Take our quiz and match the phrase with the correct play.

Victorian Cemeteries & Drood

I began Dan Simmons' Drood in earnest this afternoon after a false start a couple of weeks ago. There's a description of Dickens' era London cemeteries during one particularly stifling summer--you can almost smell the vile stench wafting from the pages. Le Monde diplomatique's article on the history of the Victorian's "see and be seen" cemetery Highgate made a nice companion read for the day. More on Drood to come. --Kim

It's a Mad, Mad World

Vanity Fair has some great pics of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Queen of Hearts and Mia Wasikowska as Alice in Tim Burton's highly-anticipated (at least, by us) 3-D version of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland! I barely recognize Johnny Depp in this picture, but that's probably a good thing...I was worried he'd look exactly like he did when he played Willy Wonka.

The Time Traveler's Wife Trailer

Nicki Richesin alerted me to the new trailer for the adaptation of The Time Traveler's Wife, starring Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana. It seems to be in the spirit of The Notebook. Is that good or bad? Let us know your thoughts in the comments. --Kim