Made My Day

I woke up this morning with a notice that informed me that one of my best friends Katie had posted a comment on my Facebook wall. And what she wrote made me smile and put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

"i think you should know that i went to the library the other day armed with a list of all the books you've mentioned in your blog, and i walked away with an armful of jonathan tropper, jaspar fford, and neil gaiman. unfortunately, it would appear that the new canaan library sucks at life, and does not carry any books by stephanie meyer, but i fully plan on writing strongly worded letters until they have every one of your novels in stock.

ps i've already finished plan b and started on the book of joe... LOVE THEM."

I'm glad you like them, Katie. I probably would have stopped giving advice on books if you had decided that they all suck. And I'll have a few more to talk about within the next few days since Barnes and Noble was having this massive after holidays sale and I kind of went overboard. It now looks like my bookshelves threw up.

Wonderful News

I was so excited when I found these things out, I actually squealed. There have been updates concerning my two favorite novels, A Certain Slant of Light by Laura Whitcomb and Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. I'm actually smiling now just writing about this. And ironically, I just re-read these two particular books during this very cold and snowy weekend.

First with A Certain Slant of Light - the movie rights have been sold to Warner Brothers! Oh my god! My ultimate dream! If there was ever a book I read that I desperately wanted it to be turned into a movie, it is this book. Of course, the book will probably be destroyed in movie form and will lose all of the beautifulness that it is but for the time being, I'm so excited for this! I can't wait to hear more about this upcoming Hollywood project. I normally hate that movies have become so unoriginal that they have to steal ideas from books but if they do this right, this movie will be just as lovely and perfect as the book.

And with Twilight - MTv Films, Paramount and Maverick films have renewed the option to turn this book into a movie! They have until April 2008 to officially buy the rights to the story and fingers crossed that they do. Author Stephenie Meyer is so excited about this prospect that she has even casted her characters with actors she feels would be the best to portray them and she makes some good choices, even if the author has zero input on who is casted. On her website, Meyer also puts updates about all of the Twilight sequels and has even posted the first chapter of Midnight Sun*, a story told from Edward the vampire's point of view. Too bad that this book won't hit shelves for a least a couple years.
*to read the chapter, you need Adobe Reader.

Thank You Chuck

Back in October, I wrote about an opportunity Chuck Palahniuk fans could take. If you wrote him a letter by the end of October, 2006, Chuck would personally write you back. In case you don't know who he is, he wrote Fight Club, Haunted, Choke and many more. Robbie introduced him to me in college and since Robbie doesn't read, I took his suggestion to heart. I'm a new Chuck Palahniuk fan but I'm a fan nonetheless. He is an amazing author and I love his storytelling.

Today, well actually for the past few days, I've been a bit depressed. I don't want to go into details but I've been depressed all the same. I was home for lunch when my doorbell rang and a package was sitting on my front porch. It was a package from none other than Chuck Palahniuk himself. I almost screamed with glee. I couldn't believe it. I had almost forgotten about the letter I had written him. Inside, after sifting through the incredibly messy confetti, a treasure was awaiting me. I had told him about Baxter and training him and Chuck sent me a small stuffed dog, a few autographed pictures, some stickers, a few gold plastic coins, crayons, a Pirate coloring book, a Whitman's chocolate sampler, chewing gum, a folding pocket comb, birthday candles and since I'm a new reader to his books, he said that he sent me some cds of him reading his stories while on book tours. I couldn't be happier. And reading his personal letter to me, the letter that he took the time to write after reading mine, talking to me about all of the things I talked to him about, I almost cried. It was such a wonderful feeing to get this package today. I really needed it. And Chuck Palahniuk has made a fan for life.