books: Fight Club, + to-read list

Can't say for sure, but I think Chuck Palahniuk's Fight Club is going to be one of those rare, rare cases where I prefer the film version to the book*. It's probably my mistake of watching the movie before reading the book, but a comment like that wouldn't do the movie justice. On it's own it's a captivating film, the stark violence and blunt dialogue and the spot-on-acting from Helena Bonham-Carter, Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, and I think the plot of Fight Club works better on screen, with music and loud noises and bright flashes of color.

Hopefully I will have more things to write in the February round-up post, but my immediate response to finishing the book was this: good, but I liked the movie better.

Books I'd like to read in 2011, in order:

1. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro
2. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Steig Larsson
3. Game Change, John Heilemann & Mark Halperin
4. Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond
5. something by Charles Dickens, okay, because it's a classic and I haven't even read an abridged version of Oliver Twist or something. OH! Or maybe some Hemingway. I haven't read a Hemingway in so long.

More to be added as time goes on. Hopefully other people will recommend some good books, too! I'd like to brush up on the classics in 2011. Looking forward to Never Let Me Go, and not just because my heart goes doki-doki for Andrew Garfield**, who is in the film adaptation with the adorable Carey Mulligan and beautiful Keira Knightley.

* I am holding out for the hope that Jodi Picoult's My Sister's Keeper will be another one of those rare cases, but I can't decide if I can stomach the possibility of watching it only to find out that I hate the movie too, and now I've wasted even more time on it.

** For some reason every time I look at Andrew Garfield's face I feel like the older sister even though he's almost 6 years older than me. I just want to hold him close and make him food while he and his girlfriend are sitting at the kitchen table and tell her all his embarrassing childhood stories and tease him about his outrageous crush on Jesse Eisenberg.