Book Discussions

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month they chose JM Barrie's Peter Pan which is about a free-spirited and mischievous young boy who can fly and never grows up, Peter Pan spends his never-ending childhood having adventures on the mythical island of Neverland as the leader of the Lost Boys, interacting with fairies, pirates, mermaids, Native Americans, and occasionally ordinary children from the world outside Neverland. Peter Pan has become [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month they chose The Princess Bride, a 1973 novel by William Goldman that centers on the love of Westley and Buttercup that sparks a whole adventure in Florin. It was adapted in 1987 by Rob Reiner starring Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Andre the Giant and others. The book has a fascinating history that translates into the book as evidenced through some of its literary [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month they chose What Dreams May Come, [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month they chose The Time Traveler's Wife, [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month they chose The Perfect Storm, [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month they chose Gerry Conlon's Proved Innocent, an autobiography about one of four innocent people convicted of a terrorist bombing in Guildford, England, that tells of the miscarriage of justice that resulted in imprisonment for him and members of his family, including his father. It describes the struggle to clear his name. A movie starring Daniel Day-Lewis was released in 1993 putting to screen Conlon's [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month they honor Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, which celebrates its 30th year. First published in 1988, it is the sequel to Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon. Both novels feature the cannibalistic serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter, this time pitted against FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling. This book has been adapted into the 1991 critical and box office success movie of the same [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month they discuss A Farewell to Arms. The book, published in 1929, is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a lieutenant ("tenente") in the ambulance corps of the Italian Army. The title is taken from a poem by 16th-century English dramatist George Peele. A Farewell to Arms is about a love affair between the expatriate American Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies.   Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. In this festive month, they gleefully chat about one of Dicken's most influential works A Christmas Carol. Many have seen an adaptation of it, but [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. This month, they analyze Neil Gaiman's Stardust, which has a different tone and style from most of Gaiman's prose fiction, being consciously written in the tradition of pre-Tolkien English fantasy, following in the footsteps of authors such as Lord Dunsany and Hope Mirrlees. It is concerned with the adventures of a young man from the village of Wall, which borders the magical land of Faerie. [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. In episode five, they discuss an alternate world in Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. The novel is about friends Kathy, Tommy and Ruth who grow up together at a seemingly idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. When they leave the school and the horrible truth of their true purpose is revealed to them, they must simultaneously confront deep-seated feelings of love, jealousy and [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. In episode four, they venture into the wilderness of Wyoming in Michael Punke's 2002 novel The Revenant. The novel is based on a series of events in the life of American frontiersman Hugh Glass in 1823 Missouri Territory. The word "Revenant" means someone who has risen from the grave to terrorize the living. This book has been adapted in 2015 by visionary director Alejandro G. [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. In episode three, they enter the world of magic at a time when electricity was just taking off to discuss Christopher Priest's 1996 novel The Prestige. The novel tells the story of a prolonged feud between two stage magicians in late 1800s England. It is epistolary in structure; that is, it purports to be a collection of real diaries that were kept by the protagonists [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. In the second episode, they venture off into the jungle to learn the laws of nature as they discuss Rudyard Kipling's 1894 book called The Jungle Book. It's a collection of fables, using animals in an anthropomorphic manner to give moral lessons. A principal character is the boy or "man-cub" Mowgli, who is raised in the jungle by wolves. Other characters include Shere Khan the [...]

Love books? Love movies? Hosts Marisa Serafini and Phil Svitek love them both too... equally. So they decided to marry their love of both into a monthly dedicated series where they discuss books that have been adapted into movies. In the inaugural episode, they thought it fitting to kick things off with a book that also marries the love of movies, pictures, and words all into one! They discuss Brian Selznick's 2007 historical fiction steampunk book called The Invention of Hugo Cabret which is about an ORPHAN, CLOCK KEEPER, AND THIEF named Hugo who lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station. [...]

NIGHT FILM follows a broken journalist's investigation into the haunted life and death of Ashley Cordova, the mad director's beautiful daughter. It begins as a mystery with overtones of dream-like horror. It flickers and dims and deepens into a study of people who burn too brightly, burning up the souls around them until their aftermath is a legacy of ashes. It's about art that goes too far and the fanatical religious passion such art can trigger in those strangelengs who are attuned to its frequency. It's about the nature and function of fantasy, the damage done to the ties that bind by those who [...]

It is winter in Area X, the mysterious wilderness that has defied explanation for thirty years, rebuffing expedition after expedition, refusing to reveal its secrets. As Area X expands, the agency tasked with investigating and overseeing it--the Southern Reach--has collapsed on itself in confusion. Now one last, desperate team crosses the border, determined to reach a remote island that may hold the answers they've been seeking. If they fail, the outer world is in peril. Meanwhile, Acceptance tunnels ever deeper into the circumstances surrounding the creation of Area X--what initiated this unnatural upheaval? Among the many who have tried, who has gotten close to [...]

It is December 6, 1941. America stands at the brink of World War II. Last hopes for peace are shattered when Japanese squadrons bomb Pearl Harbor. Los Angeles has been a haven for loyal Japanese-Americans—but now, war fever and race hate grip the city and the Japanese internment begins. The hellish murder of a Japanese family summons three men and one woman. William H. Parker is a captain on the Los Angeles Police Department. He’s superbly gifted, corrosively ambitious, liquored-up, and consumed by dubious ideology. He is bitterly at odds with Sergeant Dudley Smith—Irish émigré, ex-IRA killer, fledgling war profiteer. Hideo Ashida is a [...]

David Cronenberg, the celebrated Canadian film director, lauded by The New York Times for creating “some of the best, most challenging, most unusual English-language films of the last twenty years,” and named a chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France—turns his remarkable talent to the haunting, disturbing intersection of desire and decay in Consumed, his highly anticipated debut novel. In the book-filled, artfully messy Paris apartment of the famous French intellectuals Celestine and Aristide Arosteguy, an astonishing discovery is made—the grisly, butchered remains of Celestine, partially eaten. Her husband, sought by police for questioning, is nowhere to be found. Naomi [...]

The world Cal and Frida have always known is gone, and they've left the crumbling city of Los Angeles far behind them. They now live in a shack in the wilderness, working side-by-side to make their days tolerable in the face of hardship and isolation. Mourning a past they can't reclaim, they seek solace in each other. But the tentative existence they've built for themselves is thrown into doubt when Frida finds out she's pregnant. Terrified of the unknown and unsure of their ability to raise a child alone, Cal and Frida set out for the nearest settlement, a guarded and paranoid community with [...]