Lifetime’s Miniseries “The Red Tent,” Based on the Best-selling Novel by Anita Diamant

From the myLiftime website

Lifetime’s miniseries “The Red Tent,” based on the best-selling novel by Anita Diamant, premieres December 7 and December 8 at 9/8c. “The Red Tent” is a sweeping tale that takes place during the times of the Old Testament, told through the eyes of Dinah, the daughter of Leah and Jacob. Airing over two nights, the all-star cast includes Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Minnie Driver (“Return to Zero,” “About a Boy”), Emmy nominee Morena Baccarin (“Homeland”), Golden Globe nominee Rebecca Ferguson (“The White Queen”), Iain Glen (“Game of Thrones”), Will Tudor (“Game of Thrones”) and Academy Award, Golden Globe and Emmy nominee Debra Winger (“Terms of Endearment”).

The miniseries begins with Dinah’s (Ferguson) happy childhood spent inside the red tent where the women of her tribe gather and share the traditions and turmoil of ancient womanhood. The film recounts the story of Dinah’s mothers Leah (Driver), Rachel (Baccarin), Zilpah and Bilhah, the four wives of Jacob (Glen). Dinah matures and experiences an intense love that subsequently leads to a devastating loss, and the fate of her family is forever changed. Winger portrays Rebecca, Jacob’s mother while Tudor stars as Joseph, Dinah’s brother.

 “The Red Tent” has sold millions of copies worldwide and has been translated in 28 languages. The novel is a New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today and Entertainment Weekly Top Ten Best Seller.

   

The Vampire Diaries: The Awakening by L. J. Smith (contains spoilers)

Book Description from Amazon.com

A deadly love triangle Elena: beautiful and popular, the girl who can have any guy she wants. Stefan: brooding and mysterious, desperately trying to resist his desire for Elena . . . for her own good. Damon: sexy, dangerous, and driven by an urge for revenge against Stefan, the brother who betrayed him. Elena finds herself drawn to both brothers . . . who will she choose?
I am a huge fan of the TV series The Vampire Diaries. It's embarrassing to admit considering I'm 38 yrs old but I completely fangirl over Ian Somerhalder. My computer background is fanart of Elena and Damon. Yesterday I was wearing a Damon t-shirt. If you ask me about the most recent season finale I may choke up a bit. I'm still traumatized.
Because of the heartbreaking season finale, I decided to keep myself busy reading The Vampire Diaries novel series. Unfortunately most of the first book left me feeling anything but anxious to read the rest of the series.
Elena Gilbert is the queen bee of her school who can have whatever boy she wants. So when the mysterious Stefan Salvatore starts school and completely ignores her, she makes it her mission to make him her boyfriend. The reason Stefan ignores her is because, as a vampire, every time he's near her he can't think straight because all he wants to do is taste her blood. She also happens to look like the woman who broke his heart in a love triangle with his vampire brother about 500 years ago. 
Elena is pretty much unlikable. She's vain, cares too much about her status in the popular clique she's in, and spends an unbelievable amount of money on a custom made Halloween costume then admiring how beautiful she looks in said costume. Most people who read the book complain about Elena's character but I think they forget this is a book series. If the character did a 180 and became a different person in the first book what's left for her to do in the rest of the series? I am going to read on only because I hope Elena grows as a character into someone well...not so shallow.
As a fan of the TV show one thing that I love is the supporting characters. In the book, all the same names are there but very little is written about them. The other characters don't factor into the story much and are never developed.
Stefan finally starts paying attention to Elena when she is a damsel in distress and he needs to rescue her when a drunken Tyler tries to rape her. Yes, you read that right. The main character is almost raped! After Stefan rescues her he beats Tyler almost to a bloody pulp. Yet neither of them get in trouble with the police. Elena refuses to press charges against Matt and the police are too busy dealing with a dead homeless man that got his throat ripped out.
The love story left me rolling my eyes most of the time. Elena instantly fell in love with Stefan declaring how much she loved him only days after they have had their first kiss. There is absolutely no development of their relationship even though months go by.
Nor is there any buildup of Elena suspecting that Stefan is a vampire. Almost the whole story is just utterly boring. Even Catherine is boring. She's a sweet and innocent vampire who just couldn't decide between brothers. Anyone who watches the tv show can't possibly imagine Catherine as sweet and innocent much less boring. I'm hoping the bad ass version of Catherine is in the later books.
The novel's saving grace is Damon. Damon is just as sexy, dark and tempting as he is in the tv series. What's even better is that I didn't have to wait several seasons before Damon and Elena are attracted to each other. The attraction is there from the first time they meet. In fact, Damon makes it his mission to make Elena his. Whether it's because he's truly in love with her or doing it as revenge on his brother isn't clear. At one point the vampire brothers are literally fighting for Elena. That scene alone made up for the rest of the book being dreadfully boring and pretty predictable. (It wasn't hard to figure out who really was the murderer.)
Not to mention that Damon has magical powers in the book. He can shapeshift into animals and control the weather. Why wasn't that in the tv show?
I will continue reading the book series mostly for the character of Damon but do hope Elena becomes a better person. Stefan's character is mildly interesting. As for the rest of the book and characters, it just, forgive the pun...sucked.My rating

Game of Thrones Readalong

In an earlier post I wrote about how I had just bought the book A Game of Thrones. Well guess what? There's a readalong in January hosted by Adventures of 2.0!

Here's more info:

The December Wolf Hall readalong has inspired me to tackle another long book that I’m scared to start by myself: A Game of Thrones. I loved the show and Kwame loved the book so I asked for volunteers to read it with me this January. The awesome Jenn from Booksessed responded and we’ve decided to get more people involved by hosting a readalong! We’ve spread it over 4 weeks so hopefully we’ll get through it together.

How to Participate:

• Enter your blog site on this post. (If you don’t have a blog, just add a comment and start reading!)
• Optional: Write a post to drag more readers into the fray with us
• Optional: Stick the button in your sidebar! :)

Schedule

(Page numbers from my paperback copy, I’ve put the names down to help you find it in your book but it’s not too important to get it perfect)

• January 1: Reading starts (or has started already)
• January 8: Progress post #1; Pages 1 (Prologue) - 189 (End of Jon)
• January 15: Progress post #2; Pages 190 (Eddard) - 395 (End of Daenerys)
• January 22: Progress post #3; Pages (Bran) 396 - 617 (End of Tyrion)
• January 29: Final progress post; Pages 618 (Sansa) - 807 (End of Daenerys)
  

2012 TV Addict Reading Challenge

Belle at Belle's Bookself is hosting a brilliant challenge called the 2012 TV Addict Reading Challenge.

Here's more info:

I watch a lot of TV. The fiancé and I are big fans of box set marathons. At the moment we’re going through Dexter, and when I discovered that it’s based on a book series, it got me thinking about how a LOT of my fave TV shows are based on books. And about how I want to read them. Then, whilst browsing the available challenges on A Novel Challenge, I had a light bulb moment: Why not turn my quest to read the book versions of my fave TV shows into a challenge?

So here it is! The rules are simple (coz I’m not so good at following them myself):

-The challenge runs from January 1 2012 – December 31 2012. The idea is to read the books that TV shows are based on. Where it's a series, read the books that correspond to the TV seasons available (read the whole series if you want to, of course!). What you do from there is up to you: review the books, do book/show comparisons, review the TV shows, do recaps… whatever tickles your fancy!

-Pick the level you want to achieve in this challenge from the list below, create a post on your blog about it and pop it in the sign-up linky! Non-bloggers are welcome to participate too – do your thang in the comments.

-Each month I’ll create a post where you can come and link up your reviews or comment about the books you’ve read/shows you’ve watched as part of the challenge.

-You don’t have to plan in advance what books you’re going to read - though of course you can if you want to! Here are some ideas (let me know if I’ve missed your faves):

•The Vampire Diaries by L. J. Smith. There are four books in the original series, plus The Return trilogy and one book in The Hunters trilogy (with two more to come). There’s also Stefan’s Diaries, which are four books (with more to come) based on the TV show. Just to make things easy. Ahem.
•Pretty Little Liars by Sara Shepherd. The series currently stands at nine books, with three more to come.
•A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, which Game of Thrones is based on. There are five books out now, with two more coming. There are also six novellas connected to the series.
•Dexter by Jeff Lindsay, which consists of six books.
•­The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris, which True Blood is based on. At the moment there are 11 books out in the series, with at least two more to come.
•Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar. There are 13 books in the original series, 10 books in the It Girl spin-off series and four in the follow-up series, The Carlyles.
•Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell.
•The Secret Circle trilogy by L. J. Smith.
•Chief Inspector Barnaby series by Caroline Graham. There are seven books in series, and the first five were the basis for Midsomer Murders.

Challenge levels
1.Single play: Read the books that correspond to ONE TV show.
2.Mini-series: Read the books that correspond to TWO TV shows.
3.Series: Read the books that correspond to THREE TO FOUR TV shows.
4.Soap opera: Read the books that correspond to FIVE OR MORE TV shows.

Since this is my own challenge, I'm going to aim high and go for "soap opera" level. Remember, you don't have to read the whole series to complete the challenge, just the books that correspond to the seasons of the TV show (e.g. the first four books of the Southern Vampire Mysteries, which formed the basis for the four seasons of True Blood that are currently available).

I, Julie, would also like to recommend the many Buffy the Slayer books as well. (I love True Blood and The Vampires Diaries but BtVS beats them both!) And I think I will be doing Level 3: Series.