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The Hunger Games, in cinemas now, is based—you probably know this, but just in case—on the 2008 novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins. The story’s about a teenaged girl, Katniss Everdeen, who competes in a to-the-death contest against other teens in a widely popular reality show. It’s an intriguing story with a premise [...]

Warning: Here be spoilers of book and film. Turn back lest ye be spoiled. Seriously. I mean it. I saw the Hunger Games. I didn’t see it twice in the same weekend like I did with Star Trek, because, alas, I’m not quite the nerd I used to be. However, I did take a road [...]

Have a burning question about etiquette or literature? Ask a book! Dear The Hunger Games, I work in a medium-size office with 23 coworkers. People are generally polite, and we get along pretty well, but there is one problem that’s driving me crazy: someone keeps stealing my lunch! I’ve tried everything, from sticky notes to [...]

Have you seen The Adjustment Bureau, the recent movie based on Philip K. Dick’s 1954 short story “Adjustment Team”? It’s a good movie, with a mind-bending premise and a rather touching love story, but oh boy is it different from its source material. In the movie, a politician (Matt Damon) stumbles onto a secret organization [...]

I finally watched 2009′s A Christmas Carol, written and directed by Robert Zemeckis, with Jim Carrey as a motion-captured Scrooge. I was seriously impressed. Despite what some critics have said, I think the film’s visual style perfectly suits the material. Charles Dickens’ 1843 story is a fantasy about ghosts, time travel, and Christmas. It can [...]

A while back I briefly mentioned Fatherland, the 1994 television movie based on Robert Harris’s 1992 thriller about a German police detective investigating a homicide (and uncovering a high-level conspiracy). I recently watched the movie again, and I’d forgotten just how gripping it is. The novel is set in 1964. Preparations for the celebration of [...]

So, I’ve been away for a while. Now that Sarah Hunter is doing a fine job taking over the awards beat, I’ve had a little more time to nurse my growing Hunger Games addiction. Annie Bostrom has been kind enough to let me share my rabid anticipation of the film and fill in for this [...]

After there was Cowboys & Aliens the movie — well, not after: at roughly the same time — there was Cowboys & Aliens the novel, published by Tor and written by Joan D. Vinge. Novelizations, books written from screenplays, can be pretty awful (I have a few things to say about them over here), but this [...]

In a few hours, I’ll be out the door and on my way to a four-month sabbatical leave. Before I go, I’m pleased to report that I managed to knock off another title from my New Year’s resolution reading list. As Likely Stories and REaD ALERT readers know, earlier this year I decided to get [...]

It’s come to my attention that David Fincher, director of such excellent films as The Social Network, Zodiac, and Se7en, is going to be making a movie out of Jules Verne’s 1870 novel 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This won’t be the first movie, of course. In fact it won’t be the fifth. There  have [...]