Having seen the film I decided to read the book. The Hollywood ending of the film spured me on to find out how the book really ended. I found the book had much more depth than the film. Jackson's way of writing is so intimate that you can feel, hear and perhaps even smell Mr. Don Birman, who is the central character in the book. Jackon takes you inside his main character and slowly brings you down, down, down into the murcky...
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This book is definitely an instance of the book being better than the film, mainly because there is a wealth of inner dwelling in the book that cannot be captured on a screen. Jackson's prose starts out seeming a bit overblown, but quickly develops into a selfish, self-absorbed, and often offhandedly comical muse of the befuddled brain. Charming gallantry, lies and fictions, excursions seeking pawn money, reminiscing of...
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In more than 60 years, I don't believe any book or film has so vividly captured the madness of alcoholism like "The Lost Weekend." The movie with Ray Milland is a chilling adaptation of Jackson's masterful novel. One weekend in an alcoholic's life, as he begs, lies and steals in order to begin a bender that will end in a funhouse horror descent into insanity. Jackson's novel was brilliantly written, a voyeuristic look inside...
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I read "The Lost Weekend" after seeing the fine movie starring Ray Milland. The movie gripped me, and hit close to home, but I felt that there was a quality to the writing that made me seek out the book (which was out of print at the time). Boy, am I glad I did. "The Lost Weekend" is an absolute literary masterpiece, capturing a 5-day drunk from an inveterate alcoholic with such chilling accuracy that it actually becomes a...
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For all the obeisance we pay to literature, it is remarkably rare for a novel to actually change, or help change, the culture. Nor is it necessarily, nor even likely, the "serious" books that effect the change. In terms of it's political impact, there may never have been a more important novel than Uncle Tom's Cabin, which is hardly the stuff of academic studies and literary criticism. Similarly, The Lost Weekend, though in...
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ThriftBooks is ringing in a milestone anniversary this year—twenty! In celebration, here are twenty terrific book-to-screen adaptations, spanning a variety of genres, that have come out since we were born.
Are you excited for the Oscars next month? If so, you might want to catch up on the literature that served as inspiration for some of the nominated movies. Plus, check out a few of our favorite book-to-screen best picture winners from the last quarter century.
We've been busy revisiting everything Game of Thrones in preparation for HBO's new House of the Dragon series. Along the way, we've learned some pretty interesting things. Here are ten little-known facts we've uncovered.