Libraries Aren't Just Books Anymore

Tuesday, 19 May 2015

41 Books Becoming 2015 Movies

by Shannon Vestal 4/21/15

We're always looking for a good book to read, and Hollywood has a pretty good line into the next hot novels, since they're always in the process of adapting so many books for the big screen. There are a lot of books becoming movies right now, and a lot of them will finally hit the movie theater next year. Check out this list for the hot adaptations being released in 2015, and add some new titles to your bookshelf too!

2 Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews

7 Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

8 Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials by James Dashner

10 Black Mass by Dick Lehr and Gerard O'Neill

16 In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

17 The Revenant: A Novel of Revenge by Michael Punke

18 The Ninth Life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen

19 The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman — 19 The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry

Wednesday, 13 May 2015

Happy Birthday Little Free Library!

This Saturday marks the third anniversary of Little Free Library as a non-profit organization. In honour of this celebration Little Free Library is asking that people donate books to their local LFL. And, if you do so, you might as well have some fun! Take a picture of yourself dropping off books in the libraries and post it with #givebooks on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram for your chance to win Little Free Library swag!

Tuesday, 12 May 2015

Spring is in the Air!

After the long and cold winter we had this winter, it is a relief that spring has come. Those of us who live in the Niagara Peninsula are lucky to have all the wonderful orchards that flower in white and pink at this time of year. The blossoms bring the promise of wonderful peaches and cherries for the summer.

It is also a great sight to see the vineyards starting to green up. Unfortunately, some of the grape varieties were hit hard this summer, but there will still be some great Niagara wines made this year.

The summer festivals are always fund to attend. There will be a new Food and Wine event at our new Beamsville home, the Fleming Centre, in June. It has just been announced that the Beamsville Farmers Market will also be held at our new building.

This is why I love living in Niagara!

Tuesday, 5 May 2015

25 Films You Might Not Know Were Based On A Book

Via Mentalfloss

They say originality in Hollywood is dead. In actual fact, it may never have been alive. Many more films had their origins in print than you might think...

2001: A Space Odyssey

The film and the novel were developed concurrently, but both were based on Arthur C Clarke’s short story The Sentinel, about discovering a buried alien artifact on the moon.

Airplane!

Although a spoof of disaster movies, Airplane! was technically a remake of the 1957 film Zero Hour, which itself was based on a teleplay and novel by pilot Arthur Haley.

Ben Hur

Not only were all the various Bens Hur based on a novel of the same name, said novel was the best selling American novel of all time, at least until Gone With The Wind.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

The Audrey Hepburn classic was based on a novella by Truman Capote

Chocolat

At the time, the Johnny Depp movie was known for being based on a book by Joanne Harris, and for its rather aggressive Oscar campaign. It’s now largely only remembered for all the Oscars it didn’t actually win.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

A case of older than they think, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Other Jazz Age Stories was first published in 1922.

Die Hard/Die Hard 2/Die Hard 4

Den of Geek has written at length on the Die Hard films (for good reason), but it’s worth mentioning that three of the films originated in print. The original being an adaptation of the sequel to The Detective, Nothing Lasts Forever, Die Hard 2 an adaptation of 58 Minutes, and Die Hard 4.0 (released elsewhere as Live Free or Die Hard) is an adaptation of an article in Wired magazine, A Farewell to Arms.

The Exorcist

William Peter Blatty adapted his own novel for the screenplay, after adapting a supposedly true story for his novel.

First Blood

It’s odd to think of Rambo starting life as comparatively low-key thriller, but First Blood (note how the title doesn’t even contain the name Rambo) was based on the novel of the same name. David Morrell later wrote the novelisations of the sequels, which makes for an odd continuity error, as in his version Rambo committed suicide in the finale.

The Fly

Most people will remember David Cronenberg’s 1986 film. Some will remember the original 1958 version. No one remembers the short story by George Langelaan, which was published in Playboy, of all places.

Freaky Friday

The all three versions of the classic Disney film were based on a 1972 novel by Mary Rodgers, who adapted her own novel for the first, Jodie Foster film, as well as writing three sequels, two of which themselves were adapted for television in the 1970s. However, the original novel was itself largely based on another story...

Vice Versa

Many accused the 1988 Reinhold/Savage film of being a lukewarm rehash of Disney’s Freaky Friday (or any of the umpteen body swap comedies of the late 80s), ignoring that film versions of Vice Versa had been released in 1948, 1937 and 1916, all based on an 1882 novel by F. Anstey.

Hellraiser

Clive Barker’s 1987 horror film (and its nine sequels) was based on his own novella, The Hellbound Heart.

I Am Legend/The Omega Man/The Last Man on Earth/I Am Omega/Night of the Living Dead

Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel has spawned more than you might think. I Am Legend was generally regarded as a poor rehash of Charlton Heston’s The Omega Man, itself a remake of The Last Man on Earth, starring Vincent Price, conveniently forgetting the novel. There was also a cheap knock off version made to cash in on I Am Legend, called I Am Omega, but George A Romero’s Night Of The Living Dead also started life as an adaptation. In Romero’s own words: “I had written a short story, which I basically had ripped off from a Richard Matheson novel called I Am Legend..”

Jaws

Take a look at the original poster. “Based on the No. 1 best seller.” That would be Peter Benchley’s novel of the same name.

Mary Poppins

Disney’s 1964 musical was based on the series of books by P L Travers, which changed the setting from the 1930s to the 1910s, and the main character from a vain and grumpy magical being to someone “practically perfect in every way”. The adaptation process itself received an adaptation, in 2013’s Saving Mr. Banks.

The Neverending Story

As the novels are almost unheard of outside Germany, few people realise the film was an adaptation. It didn’t help that author Michael Ende hated the adaptation, and removed his name from the credits. One of the changes he hated the most - the film never explain why the story is neverending.

Pirates Of The Caribbean

You might know that the movies were based on the Disneyland ride, but did you know the ride was originally based on the 1950 film Treasure Island? Obviously that was based on the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, but did you know that itself was based on a map he drew one day with his stepson? Not the map in the book though, as he lost the original and had to redraw it for the novel. So, Pirates of the Caribbean - the films based on a ride based on a film based on a book based on a map.

Scarface

Before being an Al Pacino film that defined the 80s (or a Howard Hughes film from 1932), Scarface was a novel by the excellently named Armitage Trail.

Soylent Green

SPOILER FOR THE FILM IN THIS ENTRY.
Not only does Soylent Green vary from person to person, but also from adaptation to adaptation. In the original novel (and the even more original short story), Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison, Soylent Green isn’t people at all.

There Will Be Blood

Paul Thomas Anderson has a reputation for making original works, which is why most people don’t realise he adapted Upton Sinclair’s novel Oil!, or at least part of it.

The Third Man

Everyone knows the film The Third Man; Graham Greene wrote the screenplay based on his novella, which he eventually published after the film was released.

True Grit

The Coen Brothers remade the film that won John Wayne his only Oscar, but that film itself was adapted from a John Portis book.

Vertigo

In addition to being one of Hitchcock’s greatest films, it was a superb novel, Boileau-Narcejac's The Living and the Dead.

Withnail & I

The famous comedy about two actors who went on holiday by mistake was originally a semi-autobiographical novel by director Bruce Robinson, although it went unpublished. It does, however, explain where the fantastic stage direction in the screenplay comes from.
“Dostoyevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs. A young man sits in one.”

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Thank You Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore!

Baltimore Libraries Stay Open Through Riots, Because ‘The Community Needs Us’

All library locations, including those at the epicenter of the riots, are welcoming patrons today.

by Kat Rosenfield MTV 7h ago

You can find more than books at the Baltimore public library today, as all branches remain open and fully staffed in the wake of protests and riots that have rocked the city.

With a state of emergency declared and schools closed citywide Tuesday morning, the Enoch Pratt Free Library has chosen to stay open, providing a hub of comfort and community to all Baltimore neighborhoods, including the ones most affected by the mayhem.

“It’s at times like this that the community needs us,” library Director of Communications Roswell Encina told MTV News. “That’s what the library has always been there for, from crises like this to a recession to the aftermath of severe weather. The library has been there. It happened in Ferguson; it’s happening here.”

Reports of violence, looting, and coordinated gang activity have been coming out of Baltimore since Monday night, erupting within hours of the funeral of Freddie Gray. Gray died late last week from injuries he apparently sustained while in police custody, resulting in an outpouring of anger from protesters who point to his death as the latest in a nationwide epidemic of police violence against unarmed black men.

At the time that we reached Encina, he and other members of the Pratt Library leadership were on their way to the library’s Pennsylvania Avenue branch — a location which is right at ground zero for the worst of the devastation, including the widely-televised burning of a neighborhood CVS Pharmacy.

“We’re across the street from that,” Encina said of the fire. “We just want to show the folks we’re there for that community.”

The Pratt had already received an outpouring of support on Twitter early Tuesday morning, with users from all over the city and the U.S. praising the decision to keep the doors open.

Tuesday, 21 April 2015

For Libraries, It’s Their Time

by Glen Pearson, The Parallel Parliament

Ferguson Library During the Crisis

LOOKING BACK ON A LIFE THAT HAD FAR more twists and turns than most of us could endure, Lemony Snicket considered one aspect of his journey that provided him solace: “A good library will never be too neat, or too dusty, because somebody will always be in it, taking books off the shelves and staying up reading them.” To that list could be added the extra dimensions of viewing, listening, dialogue, and social media.
It’s likely we know this already, yet in some of the most significant happenings of modern life – many of them tragic in nature – libraries having taken on the roles of consolers, citizen guardians, event educators, and, in some senses, emergency agencies. Some examples.
Consider how Ferguson, Missouri’s, libraries stepped into the breach of social conflict, legal confusion, and general unrest following the Grand Jury’s decision to decline to indict the police officer who shot Michael Brown a year ago. By any measurement the community was facing a defining moment. With local schools closed, along with others buildings, the city’s library system went to work in ways nothing less than transformational. They remained open and welcoming for students to be taught by working and retired teachers, in what was termed as the city’s “ad hoc school on the fly.” Reaching even further, the libraries hosted the U. S. Small Business Administration in order to provide emergency loans, and the U. S. Secretary of State Department to provide document recovery and preservation services. Extending their reach out into the community, library staff circulated “healing kits,” filled with books, stuffed animals, and activities to help Ferguson’s children cope with the tensions of what they were seeing and feeling. When the worst of it was over, citizens realized that they could never quite look at their libraries the same ever again.
Libraries in Connecticut and New Jersey welcomed residents under assault from Hurricane Sandy, and who found themselves without power, by providing spaces for emergency services. They also hosted citizen dialogue sessions that encouraging locals to “talk through” with one another their stories, frustrations, and sense of loss. Those conversations inevitably became circles of hope – something that would never have transpired unless the libraries moved beyond their traditional mandates.
Public libraries are now more popular than at any other time in their existence, which is saying something, considering that they were some of the first physical structures to appear in our communities. In a world changing every day through dramatic technological innovations, libraries have kept themselves relevant by keeping pace with such developments.
And they are discovering new ways to enhance those communities in which they function. In London, Ontario, the city’s library system has taken on the vital partnership role of helping its community to think of how the Thames River might take on a more pivotal role in the quality of life of citizens. In an effort spearheaded by the London Community Foundation, local libraries will serve as information collection and disbursement centers, as individuals, organizations, businesses, and entire neighbourhoods are consulted as to how the historic waterway system might assist us in coming to terms with our future in ways that will preserve river’s integral and sustainable relationship with a people and its land. More will be announced by the London Community Foundation as to public sessions and the library’s vital role in it all.
“Whatever the cost of our libraries,” noted Walter Cronkite, “the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant nation.” And now we can add the observation that our libraries are now healing and transforming communities, helping them to discover a new future. Quite a bargain.