If you are looking for some new movies to watch, try some of my picks for movies you might have missed. You can find all of these in our DVD collection!

The Fall (2006)

In a hospital on the outskirts of 1920s Los Angeles, an injured stuntman begins to tell a fellow patient, a little girl with a broken arm, a fantastic story of five mythical heroes. Thanks to his fractured state of mind and her vivid imagination, the line between fiction and reality blurs as the tale advances.

Starring: Lee Pace, Catinca Untaru, Justine Waddell

Help Shreve Memorial Library win a contest to bring FIVE bestselling Young Adult authors for a Q&A panel, a book signing, swag, and more!

Maria Lu (Legend, Prodigy)

Marissa Meyer (Cinder, Scarlett)

Beth Revis (Across the Universe, A Million Suns, and Shades of Earth)

Victoria Schwab (The Near Witch and The Archived)

We are definitely in the running at 6th place, up from 9th place last week! All you have to do is vote at: http://ya2u.blogspot.com/

Simply click on CONTEST to vote, enter Shreveport, LA as the city you would like to win, and Shreve Memorial Library as the specific place you would like the authors to visit. You will also need to enter your name and email address. Please only enter once, as duplicate votes will be thrown out.

The Big Muddy: An Environmental History of the Mississippi and Its Peoples from Hernando de Soto to Hurricane Katrina  (Oxford University Press) by Christopher Morris is a sweeping history of man and nature in the lower Mississippi Valley. Morris examines how people from hunter-gatherers to contemporary Americans viewed this landscape and acted on their respective visions. It is an ambitious book based on sources in several languages and multiple disciplines including history, science, archaeology and economics. This wide-ranging material is incorporated into a plain-English study grounded in centuries of personal experiences. I love this book.  

Awww, man! I loved Le Grand Meaulnes. I'd say it's the best book I've read all year, but I guess I don't have much with which to compare it. I don’t remember exactly where I came across it, but I think it might have been in the introduction to John Fowles’s The Magus. He listed Le Grand Meaulnes as an influence. What’s funny is that so far, I’ve tl;dr-ed The Magus because it’s so long (though I don’t think I can hold it off for much longer), but I’d heard of Le Grand Meaulnes somewhere else, too, and the Goodreads blurb sounded intriguing, so I figured I’d look it up.

And boy was I impressed. I enjoyed every minute of this one.

It’s basically a French coming-of-age novel set in the 1890s and very early 20th century. The narrator, Francois, meets Meaulnes, at school. Both are roughly seventeen. One day, Meaulnes runs off and gets lost in the countryside, where he finds this grand estate and crashes a wedding party. The whole thing seems magical, sprinkled with fairy dust. While he’s there, he meets the most beautiful woman he could imagine. The party ends abruptly, and he’s forced to leave without seeing her again. He returns to school but becomes obsessed with finding her. He tells Francois his story, and both boys work to discover clues about the estate’s location (the English translation I read is titled The Lost Estate) and what happened to the girl.

Oh, it was so good, and it’s clear how it influenced several novels I’ve read, probably including Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Alain-Fournier’s story is amazing, and I was lucky enough to stumble upon a good translation. That makes all the difference. Le Grand Meaulnes really makes me want to dig in to The Magus to see the influence.

This weekend, the husband and I went to see The Hobbit. I'd been looking forward to it since I heard it was being made, as I'm a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien. I've read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings multiple times, and I love the Lord of the Rings movies.

So I was excited! We went to the earliest Sunday matinee to try and avoid what we figured would be ridiculous crowds (The Hobbit made by far the most money over the weekend), and it worked! There were very few people in the theater. That also might have had something to do with our choosing to see the old-school non-3D, 24 frames per second version instead of the new, fancy one. 3D gives the husband headaches, and I've heard that the higher frame rate looks weird and jumpy. From lots of comments I've seen on social networks, we made the right choice.

If nothing else, The Hobbit is a pretty movie. As I expected, it was very well-made (I guess it had to be for all of the money they spent on it). The whole movie (okay, three movies) is a flashback from the day of Bilbo's 111th birthday party, the same day that Lord of the Rings begins. (Which, of course, is not the same day on which the novel begins.) It was nice, though unnecessary, to see Frodo and the familiar older version of Bilbo. Most other throwbacks to the Lord of the Rings movies were exactly the same, too, which lands you back in the same world in which you've already spent nine hours.

And prepare yourself for nine hours more! Because Peter Jackson saw fit to split The Hobbit, a book not half the length of any of the three Lord of the Rings books, into three movies, which I think is entirely ridiculous. Here's what I didn't like about this movie: they expanded and moved around storylines to fill the (almost) three hours. I was convinced that they'd entirely invented characters and scenes, but a friend who had very recently read The Hobbit corrected me: they just made a big deal out of something merely mentioned by Tolkien. For those of you who have read the novel, I won't ruin the surprise(s).

Overall, I think The Hobbit is a good movie. It's certainly worth seeing, whether or not you've read the book. In fact, I think you'll enjoy it more if you haven't read the book, as the discrepancies I mentioned earlier won't bother you. If you have read the book, I'm sure you're already chomping at the bit to see the movie, and as long as you're not picky about every little plot point (like I guess I am), you should thoroughly enjoy it.

More BBC action, actually, it really is action-ish.

So, I trolled through the catalog looking for BBC produced shows that I might not have seen or even be aware of, and low and behold, there was one. Oh, it’s not Downton Abbey; although, that does have some action. And, no, it’s not one of the Doctor Who spin-offs; again, action is present. This is actually something in the somewhat here and somewhat now: New Tricks.

During a high profile bust, a well-respected Det. Supt. Sandra Pullman (Amanda Redman) shoots the wrong dog; actually, it wouldn’t matter if it was the right or the wrong dog. She shot a dog, becoming the focus of some very bad press. To find her way back into the good graces and possible back on track to a more prestigious career, the detective takes on a project that is expected to be a very lost cause.

She heads a team of consultants containing three older and retired inspectors, who each have personal issues:

• Gerry Standing (Dennis Waterman) – a man with three wives and possibly looking for one more, or maybe just a good time.
• Brian Lane (Alun Armstrong) – a fellow trying to free himself from the past and to regain his good name.
• Jack Halford (James Bolam) – a recent widower and Sandra’s old boss and mentor, Sandra’s new employee.

The team is created to handle cold cases and hopefully drum up good press for the local police department. It’s a long shot, but somehow our new team with all its personal and professional baggage begins to solve old cases and get a few new ones. Whatever the cases it is usually one deemed beyond or beneath the “normal” police’s scope.

The title of the series has the obvious meaning of “Teaching old dog new tricks,” the old dogs being the three retired detectives turned consultants. They learn new technology and procedures, but they aren’t the only ones learning new tricks. Sandra learns more than a few tricks from the old guard police detectives; sure, those tricks seem outdated, but they work. While they solve cases, they also begin to deal with their baggage, bit by bit, helping each other out and growing.

This is a long-ish running show, starting in 2003, so there’s a good bit to see. Unlike some BBC shows that are either new, short lives, or just plain short. After the first series (season), the series run for about eight to ten episodes. So, it’s not too short, and it’s not too long. Then again, for me that’s just enough to get interest and still want more without wondering when will it ever end? Though, if I’m wondering that, I probably shouldn’t be watching.

So, take a peek at this group of interesting characters who solve crimes and life problems, as well as give a giggle on more than one occasion. Why not start here with the first series?

Now, here's a hard one to write about. It's also my favorite book so far this year, though I'm sure this review will in no way reflect that, as I tend to make my favorite books sound like I (should) hate them. Anyway.

Along with being my favorite, Absalom, Absalom! is also the most difficult book I've read in a long time. I'd rank it up there with Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses or Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Autumn of the Patriarch - or Faulkner's own The Sound and the Fury, for that matter. The story is jumbled in a similar way, at least.

It's set in Yoknapatawpha County, as most of Faulkner's novels are. Thomas Sutpen, a man with no clear past but who is determined to make a name for himself, to make himself East Egg when he's really a West Egger - and he doesn't even have the money yet. (Get the reference? More on that in a minute.) He's also determined to have a son to inherit the vast wealth he plans to accrue. Sutpen's actions destroy his family and those of others with which he becomes involved. Which is not a spoiler because I'm pretty sure you learn all of that in the first five pages, or so, if you're paying attention.

And this novel requires a lot of attention.

If you're up for a battle, this is your book. It doesn't have that much to do with Faulkner's other novels, though most of it is narrated by Quentin Compson, who you might recognize from The Sound and the Fury. It does, though, deal with one of his favorite subjects, decaying southern families. Like the Compsons.

One of my high school teachers had a master's degree in English. Her thesis was on the American Dream in Absalom, Absalom! and The Great Gatsby (get the earlier reference now?). Somehow, I had never read Absalom, Absalom!, but I wondered for years what a Faulkner novel could have to do with Gatsby. A few pages in, and it's obvious: Sutpen is trying to fulfill Ye Olde American Dream, and the result is disastrous. Read both novels (if you haven't already), and think about it.

To summarize: If you want a challenge, get a copy of Absalom, Absalom!, and settle down for a long, intense read. It's totally worth it.

Check it out!