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8 FAMOUS FILM ADAPTATIONS THAT SURPASSED THEIR BOOKS
We’ve all heard the mantra: the book is always better. Except when it’s not. Sometimes, a film adaptation doesn’t just honor its source material—it transcends it. These are the rare cases where directors, screenwriters, and actors capture something the page alone couldn’t contain. This doesn’t mean the book versions of these works are weak. Quite…
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FROM PAGE TO STAGE: HOW THEATRE AND CINEMA SHAPE THE BOOKS WE READ
In an era when content moves fluidly across mediums, the relationship between stage, screen, and page has never been more dynamic. Theatre productions become films, films inspire novels, and books are reborn as immersive theatrical experiences. But beyond adaptation, something deeper is happening: theatre and cinema are reshaping how books are written, designed, marketed, and…
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Theater Review: CAMELTON (Stephen Cole’s One-Man Show About One Man’s Wild Ride)
THERE’S NO BUSINESS LIKE SHOW BUSINESS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MIDDLE EAST Stephen Cole’s backstage Qatar saga is stranger than fiction—and just as entertaining In the story category of “truth is stranger than fiction,” and well worthy of inclusion in an edition of Ripley’s Believe It or Not, comes the mind-boggling saga of how…
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THE ROLE OF FAITH-INSPIRED LITERATURE IN CHILDREN’S STORYTELLING
Storytelling has been central to childhood development for centuries, long before modern entertainment reshaped how children consume content. Through stories, children learn language, empathy, emotional awareness, and social understanding. Books provide a safe space for young readers to explore complex ideas in ways that feel approachable and engaging. Even today, when screens dominate daily life,…
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Event Review: A CONVERSATION WITH KAMALA HARRIS (“107 Days” Book Tour)
FIGHTING FOR THE FUTURE You wouldn’t know that former Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2024 presidential election if you’d been standing outside the Chevalier Theater in Medford, Massachusetts (a near suburb of Boston) early Saturday afternoon. The line to fill the 1900-seat theater had already formed by noon for a show slated to begin…
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Feature Story: RAYMOND MUNRO (On Adapting Works by Raymond Carver into Story Theatre on Film)
Raymond Munro (photo by Stephen DiRado) TWO RAYS UNITE IN A JOURNEY OF STORY THEATRE Theatre, by its nature, is ephemeral. That is part of its allure, and part of what we love about it. It forces us into the here and now- ever changing and ever present. We are also keenly aware of the…
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Book Review: A PLAYWRIGHT’S DOZEN (13 Short Plays by Gregory Fletcher)
THIRTEEN WAYS OF LOOKING AT A PLAY Writing short plays is a refined art unto itself, demanding precision, discipline, and a flair for economy that borders on the surgical, a very difficult thing for writers of all genres. In A Playwright’s Dozen by Gregory Fletcher there are no leisurely strolls through exposition, no long-winded monologues…
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Book Review: THEATRE KID: A BROADWAY MEMOIR (Jeffrey Seller | Simon & Schuster)
STANDING OVATIONS, INNER DEMONS By the time Jeffrey Seller is having sex in a gym sauna—one of the more unfiltered anecdotes in Theater Kid—it’s clear this isn’t your typical Broadway memoir. The marquee names are there, and the triumphs are big—but what sets the book apart is its detour into raw, unglamorous emotional terrain. This…
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Book Interview: LAURA STEARNS (Author of “Daring to Heal”)
On Healing Out Loud, Reclaiming Joy, and Daring to Speak Truth Laura Stearns is no stranger to transformation. An accomplished actor, director, advocate, and author, she has spent decades making her mark both onstage and off. Having begun her career in professional theater at just thirteen, Laura has worked across nearly every department in theater…
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Book Review: WHATEVER HAPPENED TO ORSON WELLES? (Joseph McBride)
ALL’S WELLES THAT ENDS WELLES Another book about Orson Welles? Why? With very good reason as it happens. Unlike most previous biographies, Whatever Happened to Orson Welles? by Joseph McBride focuses on the last fifteen years of the great director’s life, from his return to Hollywood in 1970 after a long exile in Europe, until…
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Book Review: THE FAMILY BUSINESS (Wren T. Brown)
MAKE WREN T. BROWN’S FAMILY YOUR BUSINESS Wren T. Brown’s The Family Business is as much a celebration as it is a reckoning. Subtitled Four Generations of One Black Family’s Artistic Odyssey, it’s a beautifully rendered tribute to the Young and Brown families, who have left an indelible mark on American arts, but it also…
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Cinema Book Review: BLAZING SADDLES MEETS YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN (Bruce G. Hallenbeck)
BLAZING FRANKENSTEIN! Fifty years old this year, Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein remain at the top, or close to the top, of everyone’s list of Best Comedy Movies. There are many other titles on those lists, so why has Bruce G. Hallenbeck limited himself to just those two? The answer is simple – apart from…
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Extras | Theater: New Legacy Website Announced for Legendary Comic Playwright George S. Kaufman
The life and works of legendary comic playwright George S. Kaufman and his collaborators are being celebrated in an updated and revised legacy website that was launched officially this week. Produced by Laurence Maslon, Trustee of The George S. Kaufman Literary Trust and musical theater historian (who runs the Trust for Kaufman’s daughter, Anne, along with actor David Pittu), the…
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Book Review: LOVE IN COUNTRY (Richard Gayton)
The film Love in Country tells the story of two gay Vietnam Army Sergeants who fall in love while keeping their squad unified and alive despite a new officer’s tactics to sacrifice them all. Richard Gayton, who co-directed and co-wrote with Kurt Braun, has now penned the novel based on his film. Published by Northampton…
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Event Review: AN EVENING WITH AMOR TOWLES (“Table for Two” Book and Lecture Tour)
A GENTLEMAN FROM BOSTON IN BOSTON Amor Towles, author of the best-selling Rules of Civility, A Gentleman in Moscow, and The Lincoln Highway as well as the newly published Table for Two, regaled an appreciative audience with anecdotes about his own life, his writing process, and a glimpse into the origins of one of the…
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Books: UNLOCKING THE SECRETS OF E-BOOK SUCCESS
The landscape of publishing has been profoundly transformed by the advent of e-books, reshaping how readers engage with literature and nonfiction. E-books have introduced a level of convenience that traditional books cannot match, allowing instant access to a vast array of titles across different genres. This shift is not merely about format changes; it represents…
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Book Review: TOM AND HUCK SITTING IN A TREE (A Novella by Gregory Fletcher)
WHAT THE HUCK! Author Gregory Fletcher has had a bit of fun with Mark Twain’s classic tales of Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn and readers are likely to share in the romp. Fletcher has repurposed many of the characters and situations from Twain’s original: the characters are a little older, and some of the situations…
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Book Review: CINEMA SPECULATION (Quentin Tarantino)
From Grindhouse to Greatness: Quentin Tarantino’s Ode to 70s Cinema Quentin Tarantino‘s latest foray into the book publishing realm, Cinema Speculation, is an electrifying odyssey that mirrors the dynamism and distinctive aesthetic panache of his acclaimed cinematic oeuvre. This tome emerges as a multifaceted homage to the cinema of the 1970s’”a decade not merely revered…
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Book Reviews: OTHER PEOPLE’S CRAZY / OTHER PEOPLE’S DRAMA (Gregory Fletcher)
GO, BRANDON! If you have a young teen in your life, or if you hanker after some inspirational reading about said demographic, you’ll love Gregory Fletcher’s two-book series, Other People’s Crazy and Other People’s Drama. Protagonist Brandon Filips, age 15 and a high school sophomore when Other People’s Crazy begins, is the biggest kid in…
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Extras: HOW TO PERFECT YOUR SKILLS WITH TOP CRAPS BOOKS
When people think of casino games, they typically think of poker, blackjack, roulette, and slots. All of them are quite popular and interesting in their own right, but they’re not the only ones available on casino platforms. Craps is another popular casino game that has been around for some time. It’s a table game with…
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