Academy Award Nominated Books

January and February may technically be a part of winter, but to me and many others they comprise a totally different season: awards season! The Golden Globes and the Academy Awards are two of the most exciting nights in Hollywood, and there's nothing I like more than joining in on that excitement from the comfort of my own living room. In order to do that, I like to try and watch as many nominated movies as I possibly can. This includes a little bit of guess work before the nominations actually come out, but when you're as involved as I am, you can smell an Oscar-bait film from a mile away. So far this year, my money is on The Revenant for Best Picture (though my favourite was The Martian), Leonardo DiCaprio for best picture (it could finally be his year!), and Cate Blanchett for Carol.

One thing that I found especially interesting about this years nominees - so many of them came from books! Adaptations comprise seven of the eight Best Picture Nominations, and many others are nominated in categories for acting, music, screenwriting, and more. Check out the list below for a sample of awards season appropriate reading material!

The Martian by Andy Weir 
Nominated for Best Picture, Actor in a Leading Role, Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Visual Effects, and Adapted Screenplay.
"Six days ago, astronaut Mark Watney became one of the first people to walk on Mars. Now, he's sure he'll be the first to die there. After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking him dead, Mark finds himself stranded and completely alone with no way to even signal Earth that he's alive - and even if he could get word out, his supplies would be gone long before a rescue would arrive. Chances are, though, he won't have time to starve to death. The damaged machinery, unforgiving environment, or plain-old "human error" are much more likely to kill him first. But Mark isn't ready to give up yet. Drawing on his ingenuity, his engineering skills - and a relentless, dogged refusal to quit - he steadfastly confronts one seemingly insurmountable obstacle after the next. Will his resourcefulness be enough to overcome the impossible odds against him?" publisher

The Price of Salt by Patricia Highsmith (Movie has been renamed to "Carol")
Nominated for Actress in a Leading Role, Actress in a Supporting Role, Cinematography, Costume Design, Original Score, and Adapted Screenplay.
"A chance encounter between two lonely women leads to a passionate romance in this lesbian cult classic. Therese, a struggling young sales clerk, and Carol, a homemaker in the midst of a bitter divorce, abandon their oppressive daily routines for the freedom of the open road, where their love can blossom. But their newly discovered bliss is shattered when Carol is forced to choose between her child and her lover." publisher


The Danish Girl by David Ebershoff
Nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Actress in a Supporting Role, Costume Design, and Production Design.
"Loosely inspired by a true story, and a New York Times Notable Book, this tender portrait of marriage and identity asks: What do you do when the person you love has to change? It starts with a question, a simple favor asked by a wife of her husband while both are painting in their studio, setting off a transformation neither can anticipate. Uniting fact and fiction into an original romantic vision, The Danish Girl eloquently portrays the unique intimacy that defines every marriage and the heroic story of Lili Elbe, a pioneer in transgender history, and the woman torn between loyalty to her marriage and her own ambitions and desires. The Danish Girl’s lush prose and generous emotional insight make it, after the last page is turned, a deeply moving first novel about one of the most passionate and unusual love stories of the 20th century." publisher

The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Michael Punke
Nominated for Best Picture, Actor in a Leading Role, Actor in a Supporting Role, Cinematography, Costume Design, Directing, Film Editing, Makeup and Hairstyling, Production Design, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, and Visual Effects.
"The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Hugh Glass is among the Company's finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. Two Company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies. When the men abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out crawling inch by inch across more than three thousand miles of uncharted American frontier. The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits, and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution." publisher

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
Nominated for Actor in a Leading Role, and Actress in a Supporting Role.
"Based on more than forty interviews with Jobs conducted over two years—as well as interviews with more than a hundred family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and colleagues—Walter Isaacson has written a riveting story of the roller-coaster life and searingly intense personality of a creative entrepreneur whose passion for perfection and ferocious drive revolutionized six industries: personal computers, animated movies, music, phones, tablet computing, and digital publishing." publisher
Room by Emma Donoghue
Nominated for Best Picture, Actress in a Leading Role, Directing, and Adapted Screenplay.
"To five-year-old-Jack, Room is the world... It's where he was born, it's where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn. At night, his Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where he is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. Room is home to Jack, but to Ma it's the prison where she has been held for seven years. Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space. But with Jack's curiosity building alongside her own desperation, she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.Room is a tale at once shocking, riveting, exhilarating--a story of unconquerable love in harrowing circumstances, and of the diamond-hard bond between a mother and her child." publisher

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis 
Nominated for Best Picture, Actress in a Supporting Role, Directing, Film Editing, and Adapted Screenplay.
"When the crash of the U. S. stock market became public knowledge in the fall of 2008, it was already old news. The real crash, the silent crash, had taken place over the previous year, in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn’t shine, and the SEC doesn’t dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can’t pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren’t talking." publisher

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin
Nominated for Best Picture, Actress in a Leading Role, and Adapted Screenplay.
“'One of the most unforgettable characters in contemporary literature' (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette), Eilis Lacey has come of age in small-town Ireland in the hard years following World War Two. When an Irish priest from Brooklyn offers to sponsor Eilis in America, she decides she must go, leaving her fragile mother and her charismatic sister behind. Eilis finds work in a department store on Fulton Street, and when she least expects it, finds love. Tony, who loves the Dodgers and his big Italian family, slowly wins her over with patient charm. But just as Eilis begins to fall in love, devastating news from Ireland threatens the promise of her future." publisher

Dolphin and Whale Documentaries

Ever since I was a child watching movies like Free Willy and Flipper (and more recently family-friendly films like (Big Miracle, Dolphin Tale, and Whale Rider), I’ve been captivated by stories of highly intelligent marine mammals: whales and dolphins—or cetaceans, for their scientific name! Since then, there has been more attention paid to these creatures in the wild, including how they play and strategize, how human activities affect them, and what we can learn from them. While I enjoy reading books about dolphins and whales, I also love watching nature documentaries: in these movies, the world under the sea comes to life thanks to the work of many skilled filmmakers and high-definition underwater cameras. They reveal amazing sights previously hidden to us and reinforce how humans can be both a source of danger and of hope to the ocean. Check out these fascinating dolphin and whale documentaries:


Ocean Giants

Narrated by Stephen Fry, this 3-episode documentary series features many different types of whales, including the blue whale, the largest known animal to have ever lived on Earth—bigger even than the dinosaurs! This series is unusual because it explicitly tells the story from the perspective of the cameramen, those who are usually silent behind the camera. Experienced underwater cameramen Doug Allan and Didier Noirot are some incredibly brave people, venturing into Arctic temperatures and getting as close as possible to such huge creatures who could seriously injure or even kill them with a flick of their tail.

Blackfish

Although I loved visiting Sea World as a kid and sitting in the “splash zone” at Shamu Shows, I would feel seriously conflicted about going back after watching this profoundly disturbing documentary. The film covers a killer whale in captivity named Tilikum, who has been responsible for killing several of his trainers. Such attacks happen often in captivity but are rare in the wild. The filmmakers posit that keeping such intelligent wild creatures in small artificial tanks is the height of cruelty. One of the most haunting images in the film is that of the collapsed dorsal fins that many orcas in captivity develop, which are unusual to see in the wild (hypothesized to be because the whales in captivity don’t have enough space to swim around and keep their fins upright).

If you saw Blackfish and want to learn more, check out the book that spawned the influential documentary, Death at SeaWorld: Shamu and the dark side of killer whales in captivity.

Disneynature Oceans

Pierce Brosnan narrates this documentary, which was filmed all throughout the globe, touching on creatures in each of the five oceans. While whales and dolphins are heavily featured, the film includes many other oceanic dwellers, such as sharks, birds, crabs, turtles, otters, and the lovely colourful sea slug called the “Spanish dancer.” All films about the ocean tend to be visually stunning, but this one is particularly so. I would have loved to see it in the theaters or even on an IMAX big screen. In addition to presenting scenes of wonder, though, the film meditates on the current state of the oceans due to the effects of pollution, rising sea temperatures, overfishing, and other environmental problems, ending with the line, “Instead of asking, ‘What exactly is the ocean?’ maybe we should be asking, ‘Who exactly are we?’”

The Cove

Awarded the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2010, this documentary works more like a fast-paced thriller with the filmmakers trying to get photographic evidence of a horrifying secret dolphin hunt that goes on in the small cove of Taiji in Japan. The documentary is told from the perspective of activist Ric O’Barry, a former dolphin trainer who helped capture the wild dolphins who shared the lead role in the television series Flipper (based on the movie of the same name). After the movie and TV series helped to popularize dolphin shows, O’Barry became consumed with guilt and remorse when he witnessed how captivity caused the dolphins such suffering. In Taiji, the filmmakers go into detail about how those involved in the hunt attempt to suppress reporting and prevent locals from knowing what goes on, and after seeing the visceral and distressing footage, I understood why. I appreciated how the filmmakers put the hunt into context and went into detail about whaling practices and what happens to the dolphin meat, which is dangerously high in mercury.

The Whale

Produced by Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson, this heartbreaking documentary tells the story of Luna, a two-year-old orca who in 2001 was separated from his family in Nootka Sound, off the coast of Vancouver Island. Because killer whales have strong social ties to each other and Luna was alone, he decided to make friends and play with local fishermen and townspeople, coming up to boats in the Sound and begging for attention. Watching the footage, it was clear that Luna had emotions and was lonely. But whether all that contact with humans was good for him was less clear. Luna eventually found himself in the middle of a political controversy between the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who wanted to take him away into captivity, and the local people, including those of the Mowachaht/Muchalaht First Nations, who believed Luna was a reincarnation of their former chief and wanted him to be left alone. Regardless of the politics, though, it was very moving to see the depth of the connections that Luna formed with the people of Nootka Sound.

If you want to learn more about Luna, check out the book, The Lost Whale: the true story of an orca named Luna.

North Korea and Film

As we celebrate Asian Heritage Month, I decided to check out a book that might shed some light on the history of North Korea, an isolated country shrouded in secrecy: A Kim Jong-Il Production: the extraordinary true story of a kidnapped filmmaker, his star actress, and a young dictator’s rise to power by Paul Fischer.

This book tells the incredible story of the lengths to which dictator Kim Jong-il was willing to go in order to improve the North Korean film industry: by kidnapping prominent filmmakers from South Korea. Shin Sang-ok, South Korea’s most famous director, and Choi Eun-hee (“Madam Choi”), a renowned actress who starred in many of Shin’s movies, were a formerly-married couple who had fallen on hard times in South Korean film industry. They were separately kidnapped, held in North Korea for a decade, and forced to make propaganda movies for Kim Jong-il after undergoing years of imprisonment and attempted brainwashing. Eventually, they gained Kim Jong-il’s trust and managed to stage their escape to Vienna in 1986. It really does sound like something out of a movie plot, and indeed, an upcoming documentary called The Lovers and the Despot will cover their story.

What I really appreciate about this book is not only the amazing fortitude of Choi and Shin but also the insights they and others are able to give us about what it was like living in North Korea: the staggering wealth inequality where Kim Jong-il owns countless luxury mansions while many of his people starve. I was stunned by the contrast between Jong-il’s lavish parties with personal entertainment while political prisoners are fed soup filled with rocks and forced to sit perfectly still for sixteen hours a day or be beaten. The book emphasizes that kidnappings to North Korea happened on a frequent basis, and once you were there, it was almost impossible to escape from the country. But the main message is Jong-il’s obsession with reinforcing his family’s regime through the power of film. The movies became one of Jong-il’s main tools in building and maintaining a national identity from worship of his father, Kim Il-sung, to himself and beyond.

This might help to explain the extreme reaction to the political satire film The Interview, starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, and Randall Park as Jong-il’s son, Kim Jong-un. Sony Picture’s theatrical release of the film was eventually cancelled due to threats of violence from hackers linked with North Korea, which unfortunately may have a chilling effect on future films satirizing North Korea.

Those wanting more satirical films could try the 2005 film Team America: World Police, made by the creators of South Park. Here, Kim Jong-il is made to look particularly ridiculous—but then, so is everyone else parodied in the movie, whose actors, amusingly, are marionettes.

While comedy films may invite us to mock the dictators of North Korea, we must remember the actual harm done to the everyday citizens who suffer under the regime, which seeks to suppress the free thought of its people and can have them and their entire families thrown into prison without a trial or even an official charge. The documentary Kimjongilia: the flower of Kim Jong Il shares appalling firsthand stories from six former detainees: survivors of the horrors of the prison system, sexual slavery, torture, mutilation, and starvation. While the inclusion of interpretive dancers distracts from the accounts, the harrowing tales have undeniable power.

For another documentary about North Korea, try National Geographic’s Inside North Korea, with correspondent Lisa Ling. She traveled to the elusive country by posing as part of a medical team under Dr. Sanduk Ruit, a Nepalese eye surgeon whose goal was to spend 10 days doing 1,000 surgeries to remove cataracts from North Korean citizens—including many children—who had become blind due in part to malnutrition, a chronic problem in the country. While unfortunately, the team was constantly monitored by government officials, simply gaining access to Pyongyang was quite a feat. One amazing scene in particular showed how strong Kim Jong-il’s cult of personality had become: when those who had been blind finally had their bandages removed, rather than thank the doctors standing there, each of them instead profusely thanked the pictures of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il on the wall.

Finally, try A State of Mind. The creators of this fascinating documentary were given unprecedented access to two young Pyongyang gymnasts who work tirelessly to bring glory to their country. Pak Hyon-sun (age 13) and Kim Song-yon (age 11) spent months training for the Mass Games, a gloriously colourful performance that requires up to 80,000 gymnasts in the floor display and 12,000 schoolchildren for the floor backdrop. The purpose of the Mass Games is to celebrate the unity of the people and the glory of the state and leader. While the spectacle of the Games was beautiful, perhaps more interesting were the scenes of relatively privileged everyday life in the capital city, including ubiquitous power cuts and accordion performances. These scenes help to humanize the people living in North Korea and remind us that they are doing the best they can to make a living in an oppressive environment.

African Heritage Month: Books to Movies

As we celebrate African Heritage Month, we look back on the heroes of the civil rights movement, an ongoing struggle that has made great strides toward justice and continues today. Here is a selection of books that have been adapted into memorable films about this revolution.

To accompany the movie Selma, the Oscar-nominated retelling of one event in the inspirational life of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. (played by David Oyelowo), check out the documentary King: a filmed record—Montgomery to Memphis. Without a narrator, this documentary consists of Dr. King’s stirring speeches and sermons, allowing archival footage and sound recordings to speak for themselves. For non-fiction works, there are many excellent explorations of King’s life and legacy (see some of them at this post). For a book that looks at just a small snapshot of his life, try Tavis Smiley’s Death of a King: the real story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s final year. This book recounts the events in the twelve months leading up to Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, showing all the setbacks he had to move past in order to lead the civil rights movement.



Civil rights leader Malcolm X’s autobiography was written with the assistance of journalist Alex Haley (who penned the family saga Roots, which itself was adapted into the television miniseries Roots). The Autobiography of Malcolm X inspired director Spike Lee to take on the challenge of a film adaptation in the biopic Malcolm X. Starring Denzel Washington in the mesmerizing lead role, this story chronicles Malcolm X’s troubled childhood and six years in prison, ministry with the Nation of Islam, advocacy for black pride, and work as a human rights activist until his assassination in 1965. For more about Malcolm X and Dr. King’s legacy after their tragic assassinations, try the film Betty and Coretta, about the men’s wives, Dr. Betty Shabazz and Coretta Scott King, respectively played by Mary J. Blige and Angela Basset.


On Monday, February 16, we observed Nova Scotia Heritage Day, celebrating local heroes like Viola Desmond, a human rights activist who was arrested for challenging racial segregation in a New Glasgow movie theatre in 1946 by refusing to leave a whites-only section of the theatre. Her bravery eventually led to an end to segregation in Nova Scotia. For a documentary about Viola Desmond, try Long Road to Justice: the Viola Desmond story. For a fuller biography of Desmond, check out Sister to Courage: stories from the world of Viola Desmond, Canada’s Rosa Parks, written by Wanda Robson, Desmond’s youngest sister, about the family and world that shaped both of them and their other siblings.


Rosa Parks is considered by many to be Desmond’s counterpart in the U.S. because of Parks’ arrest after refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, to a white passenger in 1955. Her act of defiance became a powerful symbol that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helped lead to the bus segregation law being declared unconstitutional. Her life was documented in the biography The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks by Jeanne Theoharis. Check out the film The Rosa Parks Story, starring Angela Basset, for a dramatic adaptation.


Finally, the movie Lee Daniels’ The Butler, starring Forest Whitaker and Oprah Winfrey, is based on the story of White House butler Eugene Allen, who saw eight presidents come and go during more than 30 years of service starting in 1957. This movie was based on a 2008 Washington Post article by Wil Haygood called “A Butler Well Served by This Election” and accompanied the release of Haygood’s book The Butler: a witness to history.

Staff Pick—The Taliban Shuffle by Kim Barker

Originally, I picked up Kim Barker’s wartime memoir The Taliban Shuffle after hearing rumors that it will soon be made into a movie starring Tina Fey with Martin Freeman as her love interest—two of my favourite comedy actors working together! I quickly found what attracted them to the material: the book is quirky, insightful, and illuminating, capturing what it was like to be a female journalist in very tense regions of the world. Barker’s account is a great combination of what was happening in Afghanistan and Pakistan with sprinklings of her personal life.

The book has a wide reach, discussing difficult topics like the increasing amount of “collateral damage” to Afghan civilians caused by the U.S. military. Along the way, Barker relates stories about the constant threat of being kidnapped that all journalists in the region face, the dangerous positions of Afghan photographers and translators (some of whom disguise themselves to prevent recriminations for working with Americans), and her own experiences with sexual harassment in the region: by men when she was standing in large crowds and by women during invasive private security checks.

In addition to learning about having a social life in a warzone, Barker relates her impressions of leaders like the female Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. She also shows readers what Afghan weddings are like (segregated by gender), discovers what young Afghan men search for on the internet, visits the “most decrepit circus on the planet,” witnesses the corruption due to the opium drug trade, overhears the response to the first woman on the American Idol-style show Afghan Star, and even speaks with U.S. soldiers regarding the prevalence of “DBIEDs”—that is, Donkey-Borne Improvised Explosive Devices. In addition, Barker sadly notes the cutbacks at her newspaper The Chicago Tribune as a sign of a declining interest in professional journalism and international affairs.

To me, her text is most effective when she delves into a kind of macabre humor about the situation in Afghanistan—the only way, it seems, to deal with conditions that can be outrageously sad and depressing with atrocities around every corner.

One of the most vivid illustrations of this is Barker’s account of the besieged Kabul Zoo, which became a nightmare prison for animals when rampaging Taliban soldiers pelted it with rockets, killed and ate the deer and exotic birds, tortured the monkeys by prodding them with sticks, fed narcotics to the bear, and blinded the lion by throwing a grenade into his den. To replace the dwindling zoo population, we are told, China donated new animals, which later developed rabies. Barker presents such unhappy facts in a wry tone, using humour as a technique to distance herself emotionally from these and other atrocities.

I was interested to read Barker’s ideas about why foreign policy continues to fail the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan and how the area could be stabilized—not by repeated quick military fixes but with an ongoing commitment to civilian infrastructure and educational programs. But the best part of the book is how Barker conveys her dedication to her job, her sense of adventure, and the thrill and purpose she feels at being on the front lines as history unfolds.

For another recently published account of the war in Afghanistan, try Kevin Sites’ Swimming with Warlords: a dozen-year journey across the Afghan War. From the publisher: “An American war correspondent who first entered Afghanistan in October 2001 recounts his five visits to the country, including a trip in the summer of 2013 to revisit the people and places he saw the first time, and discusses conditions.”

For more about Benazir Bhutto, the first female prime minister in the Islamic country of Pakistan, check out the documentary Bhutto. This film covers the time period up to Bhutto’s assassination in 2007, an incident for which Barker was present, and recounts Bhutto’s efforts with her father, former prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, to bring democracy and stability to Pakistan, including taking steps to advance women’s rights.

For a book about the future of the region after so much war and foreign intervention, check out Ahmen Rashid’s Pakistan on the Brink: the future of America, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. This book discusses the difficult choices America must make with regard to its involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Finally, try Babylon’s Ark: the incredible wartime rescue of the Baghdad Zoo by Lawrence Anthony with Graham Spence. Although Kim Barker touches on the nightmarish fate of Afghanistan’s Kabul Zoo in her account, this book discusses a similar situation that took place in Iraq’s Baghdad Zoo, showing how human warzones cause suffering not only to other humans but also to animals.

The Book of Negroes and other novels destined for film

Last night was the much anticipated television movie version of Lawrence Hill's best selling novel The Book of Negroes. It's always exciting to see our own province featured in film and also to see Canadian actors like Allan Hawco of Republic of Doyle along side actors like Cuba Gooding Jr and Lou Gossett Jr. The Book of Negroes tells the story of Aminata Diallo who was kidnapped from her home in Africa and had to endure slavery, revolution, exhilarating highs and despairing lows while attempting to secure her freedom.

Keep an eye out over the next few weeks for other films based on novels.

The Mortdecai trilogy by Kyril Bonfiglioli

Booklist wrote of the third book in the trilogy Something Nasty in the Woodshed, "Straight from the era of joke cocktail napkins, this 1972 Brit-farce mystery marks the end of a trilogy featuring "degenerate aristocrat" Charlie Mortdecai. This outing finds Mortdecai having a jolly time tracking down a masked serial rapist near his home on Jersey with the assistance of lusty wife Johanna and insolent manservant Jock Strapp, hasn't quite aged like fine cheese. And yet, this reprobate's rapier running commentary on all things debauched, debased, and dunderheaded is not without its aggressively tasteless charms. Anyone who fails to suppress a smile at arch zingers such as "Never let a day go by without making an enemy, is what I say, even if it's only a woman" might find Mortdecai a boon companion all the way through to the mystery's surprisingly dark and sober resolution."

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

"Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape, is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away. In turns heartbreaking, inspiring, and terrifying, Still Alice captures in remarkable detail what it’s like to literally lose your mind... " publisher

And, of course, the long anticipated Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James

"When literature student Anastasia Steele goes to interview the young, enigmatic entrepreneur Christian Grey she encounters a man who is brilliant, beautiful, and deeply flawed. Lured by her looks, stung by her wit, and challenged by her independent spirit, Grey is determined to make Ana his sexual possession -- and what Grey wants he gets. But can their relationship ever go deeper than that? Will Ana ever penetrate Grey's cold armour, and if she does, will she still love what she finds? Erotic, amusing, and deeply moving, the Fifty Shades Trilogy is a tale that will obsess you, possess you, and stay with you forever." Discover

Can't Wait for The Fault in our Stars movie?

Our thanks to Guest Blogger Heather for this post.

By this point in time, with all the buzz surrounding the movie, you've probably already heard of John Green's The Fault In Our Stars. If you haven't, TFIOS is about a teenage girl named Hazel Lancaster who meets Augustus Waters, the love of her life, and has her whole life turned upside down. Oh, and she's suffering from terminal cancer. While this is a self-described YA book, it is so well written and richly detailed that a person of any age could enjoy it. It has a little taste of My Sister's Keeper, while still managing to tell a totally unique story about illness, grief, and living life anyway. Here's the movie trailer to give you a better idea:

While The Fault In Our Stars is definitely my favourite John Green novel, he's written or co-written several other really great books as well, covering topics from the myth of the manic pixie dream girl, to homosexuality, to failed relationships. So, if you've already read TFIOS (or are planning to check it out) here's a list of John's other works to keep you busy until the movie hits theatres in June.

Paper Towns

"Quentin Jacobsen has spent a lifetime loving the magnificently adventurous Margo Roth Spiegelman from afar. So when she cracks open a window and climbs back into his life - dressed like a ninja and summoning him for an ingenious campaign of revenge - he follows. After their all‑nighter ends and a new day breaks, Q arrives at school to discover that Margo, always an enigma, has now become a mystery. But Q soon learns that there are clues - and they're for him. Urged down a disconnected path, the closer he gets, the less Q sees of the girl he thought he knew." publisher

I would recommend picking up this one first, as it's John's next novel in line to become a feature film. It's being brought to us by the same people who made the TFIOS movie

Looking for Alaska

"Miles Halter is fascinated by famous last words - and tired of his safe life at home. He leaves for boarding school to seek what the dying poet Francois Rabelais called the "Great Perhaps." Much awaits Miles at Culver Creek, including Alaska Young. Clever, funny, screwed‑up, and dead sexy, Alaska will pull Miles into her labyrinth and catapult him into the Great Perhaps." publisher

An Abundance of Katherines

"When it comes to relationships, everyone has a type. Colin Singleton's type is girls named Katherine. He has dated - and been dumped by - 19 Katherines. In the wake of The K‑19 Debacle, Colin - an anagram‑obsessed washed‑up child prodigy - heads out on a road trip with his overweight, Judge Judy‑loving friend Hassan. With 10,000 dollars in his pocket and a feral hog on his trail, Colin is on a mission to prove a mathematical theorem he hopes will predict the future of any relationship (and conceivably win the girl)." publisher

Will Grayson Will Grayson

"One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens - both named Will Grayson - are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns‑of‑heart and the epic production of history's most fabulous high school musical. Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan's collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both them legions of faithful fans." publisher

If you get through all of these novels and are STILL looking for more John Green, did you know that he and his brother run a pretty popular YouTube channel called the Vlogbrothers? They started it in 2008 as a project called Brotherhood 2.0, where they attempted to go a full year with no textual contact, making video blogs for each other every day instead. This quickly took off and over the last six years has evolved into something quite different, gaining a mass following of teens and adults alike, who call themselves the Nerdfighters. It's rife with book suggestions, videos explaining complex world issues, silly songs about a wide range of nerdy topics, updates on the brothers' lives, and really a whole lot more. You can watch the entire process of The Fault In Our Stars, from the early stages of John writing the novel to a pretty detailed account of what the production of the movie was like (really interesting to see this through the author's eyes). Definitely worth checking out!