Throwback Thursday is a weekly meme hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books.
Pick any bookish or literary-related media (or non-media item) released more than 5 years ago.
Write up a short summary (include the title, author, and cover art, if applicable) and an explanation of why you love it. Make sure to link back to The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books in your post.
Link up your post at The Housework Can Wait or Never Too Fond of Books.
Visit as many blogs as you can, reminisce about books you loved, and discover some “new” books for your TBR list – or some other classic!
I remember the first time I saw Fight Club. I was in college, and still trying to figure out exactly what my taste was. I watched chick flicks and action movies and Deep and Serious Films (spoiler: I didn’t wind up too keen on Deep and Serious Films). This movie was different from anything I’d seen. I wasn’t sure how to classify it. All I knew was that I loved it.
Fight Club follows an unnamed narrator (Norton) who starts faking ailments so he can crash various support groups as a cure for his insomnia. At one of these groups, he meets Marla (Bonham Carter), who is also crashing. They agree to stay away from each other. The narrator also crosses paths with Tyler Durden (Pitt), a businessman he met on an airplane, and they become friends. One night, outside a bar, Tyler tells the narrator to hit him. And he does. And they draw a crowd of other men who want to hit and be hit, and thus Fight Club is born. Tyler and the narrator also both develop a complicated relationship with Marla. Meanwhile, fight clubs have been spreading all across the country, and have morphed into an anti-materialist organization called Project Mayhem, whose exploits quickly escalate from misdemeanors into dangerous territory. The narrator has second thoughts, but Tyler is gung-ho, and their differing stances ultimately clash in an explosive and mind-bending final confrontation.
*With, of course, the stipulation that if you are under 17, this will not cause angst between you and your parents, as it would have with mine if I had watched this as a young teen. I don’t want to be the cause of your family trauma.
1. They comprise 50% of my reading material in high school and I can’t go back in time and make my past self read a wider variety of authors (the other 50% was John Grisham).
2. Michael Crichton books are awesome, as long as he sticks to hard sci-fi. When he branches out, things get…iffy.
So Timeline is — and I realize I say this a lot — one of my favorite Crichton novels (yes, I have about five different “favorite” Crichton novels. Deal with it). It’s got time travel and castles and medieval swordplay and Frenchmen. The basic premise is a team of modern scientists/archaeologists travel back in time — for science, because actually traveling to 14th-century France is more educational than excavating relics from 14th-century France — and wind up getting stuck there. Oops. And then of course they have to get back, but that is not a simple task, and in the meantime there is INTRIGUE and HORSEBACK RIDING and DID I MENTION THE SWORDPLAY?
It’s action-packed page-turning anachronistic fun, and I love it with my whole heart, or at least the part that loves sci-fi (which is, I’d say, a good 87% of it).
Also, we have a winner for our Throwback Thursday Prize Pack giveaway! If it’s you, check your email. You have 48 hours to respond before another winner will be chosen. Thanks for playing along!
The giveaway is still going on! Put up a Throwback Thursday post this week to participate! Rafflecopter is in the bottom of this post, and you can see all the AWESOME Prize Packs you can pick from in this post!
It’s Valentine’s Day, so I thought I’d pick a sappy romantic movie, and what better movie than the one that made millions of women everywhere fall head over heels in obsession with Ryan Gosling? I actually did read the book first in this case, although it was in high school (read: years before the movie came out), so I don’t remember a ton about it, except that it gave me the sappy romantic sad feelings, and later I thought the movie did a pretty great job with the adaptation.
For those of you who don’t know, The Notebook follows the story of Noah and Allie, teenage sweethearts pulled apart by Allie’s controlling parents, only to find each other again years later after Allie is engaged to another man. We flip back and forth between the story of young Noah and Allie’s hot-and-cold romance, and an elderly couple in a nursing home, where a man named Duke is reading this story out of an old notebook to a woman with dementia. And of course, through the course of the story, we ultimately find out what happens to Allie and Noah, and to Duke and his friend.
This is my go-to happy-sappy-sobby movie, which my husband will never, ever watch with me.
Here, since it is Valentine’s Day and I like you, I have found you a sappy video to go along with it. With Taylor Swift, whose songs I often like against my better judgement.
Participating this week gives you another entry into our giveaway! Check out the awesome prizes, and earn those entries!
Throwback Thursday (February 7) + GIVEAWAY!
It’s finally here! The giveaway Mandi and I have been teasing for a month! Are you EXCITED?
Go to the bottom of my Throwback Thursday post to view the AWESOME prize packs, along with ways you can win — even if you’ve never participated in Throwback Thursday before!
It doesn’t get much better than Shakespeare — unless it’s an updated ’90s teen movie retelling of Shakespeare. Cameron (Gordon-Levitt) is smitten with Bianca (Oleynik), but the only problem is that she’s not allowed to date until her older sister – surly and anti-social Kat (Stiles) – decides she will also date. What’s a love-sick teen to do? Obviously, convince Bianca’s other, wealthier suitor to pay Aussie bad-boy Patrick (Ledger) to woo Kat. Once Kat is romantically entangled, Cameron will be free to swoop in and sweep Bianca off her feet. Except nothing ever goes according to plan.
10 Things is one of my absolute favorite modern literary adaptations. It’s witty, it’s fun, it’s cute and romantic, and it includes Heath Ledger performing Frankie Valli while accompanied by a marching band. If that alone isn’t enough to sell you on this movie…I don’t know what to tell you. You may need help.
While we love all the great finds Throwback Thursday has brought to light, participation isn’t where we wish it was. This is probably mostly our fault – Mandi took a blogging break for a couple months, and then I took one immediately after she got back. No hosts = no meme. And also, for a while when it was just books, it was hard coming up with new ideas each week! After all, we can’t exactly go back in time and read more/better books, can we? But now we’re back, and it’s easier than ever to participate, so we figured it’s time to get the word out!
In keeping with the new multi-media approach to Throwback Thursday, we have a selection of 10 Book & Movie Throwback Prize Packs to pick from! All you have to do to enter to win is participate in Throwback Thursday or help us spread the word! If you win, you can select your choice of Prize Pack.
You must be 13 or older to enter.
This giveaway is open INTERNATIONALLY! However, depending on where you live, we may have to do some finagling on the Prize Pack of your choice, depending on which one you choose and how much it costs to ship to your country. Don’t worry – we’re sure we can settle on something you’ll love!
Winner will be notified by email and will have up to 48 hours to respond. After that, your prize will be forfeit and another winner will be chosen.
If you win, you can let us know your preference for your movie, Blu-Ray or DVD. We will do either up to $15, subject to availability.
This giveaway will run TWO WEEKS (not one like we said before), giving you MULTIPLE chances to participate in Throwback Thursday, even if you never have before! The winner will be announced on our blogs February 21, 2013.
Enter via the Rafflecopter form below, and make sure to FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS. We will be checking to make sure you actually participated.
These are all Throwbacks (more than five years old) and we tried to pick from a variety of genres so that we’d have something for everyone! And of course, since we wanted BOTH prizes to be fun, we feel that all of these books and movies are worth a re-visit! Also, all of these movies are rated PG-13 or under.
We couldn’t pick which movie we liked more (okay, that’s a lie, we both like the ’71 version more…but on the other hand, Johnny Depp) to go with this book, so you get to pick.
Hard choice isn’t it? Glad I don’t have to make it.
NEXT WEEK on our Throwback Thursday posts, we will put up a list of Throwback Book/DVD combo prize packs. No, I’m not telling you what the selection will be yet, but trust me, there will be something for everyone. There will be a Rafflecopter to enter. The giveaway will run for one week, and when it ends, the winner will get to pick the prize pack of their choice.
ALL THROWBACK THURSDAY POSTS AND COMMENTS FROM JANUARY WILL QUALIFY AS ENTRIES. There will be space on the Rafflecopter to let us know how involved you’ve been in Throwback Thursday this month. The more you participated, the better your chances.
So what are you waiting for? Link up, and we can’t wait to unveil our prize packs next week!
And Throwback Thursday is no longer limited to just books! Throwback Thursday is dedicated to shining the spotlight on any book-related old favorites that need to be remembered.What’s your favorite classic television show or movie adaptation? What about your favorite song? Was your favorite toy a character from a book?
Pick any media (or non-media item) released more than 5 years ago. Remember to keep it book-related!
About a Boy (2002), starring Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, and Nicholas Hoult.
Based on the book About a Boy by Nick Hornby.
I honestly can’t remember why I decided to watch this movie the first time, but I’m glad I did. Grant plays Will, a 38-year-old slacker who lives in off the royalties of a cheesy Christmas song his dad wrote, and who has never worked a day in his life. Will decides that it is a brilliant idea to date single mothers, because they will ultimately not want to commit to him and he will always be left looking like the good guy. It’s a terrible plan, and obviously it backfires. But before it crashes and burns, Will winds up crossing paths with Marcus (Hoult), a quirky and socially awkward twelve-year-old living with his depressed and sometimes-suicidal mother (Collette). To escape from his worries about his mom, Marcus foists an awkward-yet-endearing friendship upon a reluctant Will. And soon, although the last thing Will wanted in life was the trust of a weird little boy, he and Marcus learn they’re better together than they were apart.
I seriously love this movie. It’s a fabulous balance of quirky and sweet and awkward and witty and touching. It’s also the reason that it weirds me out now when I see Nicholas Hoult doing movies like X-Men and Warm Bodies and Jack the Giant Slayer. To me, he will always be Marcus Brewer, singing with his eyes closed. I love the humor, the friendship, the occasionally cringe-worthy awkwardness, and the British accents. Give it a try.