The Seattle Public Library's Reader Services team recently debuted a new monthly column in the Seattle Times. Read the article by Reader Services librarian Misha Stone on the Seattle Times website or below, where it's republished with permission.
The Seattle Public Library loves to promote books and reading. This column, submitted by the library, will be a space to promote reading and book trends from a librarian's perspective. You can find these titles at the library by visiting spl.org and searching the catalog.
Film adaptations of books often inspire audiences to go find those books that they may have missed when they were first published. This is especially heightened when the Academy Awards roll around and give an extra boost of attention to the film adaptations of the year.
Ahead of the 2024 Academy Awards, we highlight three novels that were adapted into Oscar-nominated films in 2023, each a worthy complement to the films they inspired and providing many of their own delights and twists.
"Poor Things" by Alasdair Gray
Often described as a feminist "Frankenstein," "Poor Things," by Scottish author Alasdair Gray, was published in 1992 and won the Whitbread Award Prize that same year. While the film, starring Oscar contender for best actress Emma Stone and directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, departs from Gray's Glasgow setting, it does capture the madcap, ribald and provocative tone of its source material.
The novel and the film follow the same arc, telling the story of Bella Baxter (played by Stone), a woman reanimated with the brain of her unborn child, and her Lothario suitor, Duncan Wedderburn (played by Mark Ruffalo, who is also up for an Oscar this year for best supporting actor). Bella is a tornado of pleasurable pursuits, and her childlike sensibility and greedy consumption of sensual experience fuel her puckish disregard for social norms.
Gray's novel folds experiment and eccentricity in its every page, constructed by letters and diary entries with medical diagrams and illustrations spliced throughout. The cheeky, raunchy splendor of this irreverent novel animates the adaptation and provides fertile ground to explore the complexity — and discomfort — of its characters and themes. Another reason to read the book: It boasts a surprise ending with a deliciously complex corkscrew conundrum.
"Erasure" by Percival Everett
Percival Everett, whose novel "The Trees" was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, has long been well-known among literary readers. But the adaptation of his 2001 novel "Erasure" into the 2023 film "American Fiction" will, and should, bring him legions of new fans. Known for its satirical wit and keen and cutting observational style, "Erasure" tackles racism in its many manifestations head-on.
Thelonious "Monk" Ellison (played by Jeffrey Wright in a performance that was nominated for best actor), is a writer who is often told that he is not "Black" enough in academia and publishing. When he pens an exploitative work, like another recent bestseller he detests, he is astonished to get a lucrative publishing deal and a movie offer.
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