Books to Read Before the Summer Blockbuster Movies Come Out
Some of our all-time favorite novels and memoirs are about to have their debuts as films. Here's what to enjoy on the page, as well as on the screen.
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Palo Alto: Stories
By James Franco
228 pages;
Scribner
This edgy collection of stories by James Franco
makes you glad you've outgrown all that teenage angst and all the
confusion and loss that goes with it. We're partial to "Lockheed," where everything
about summer seems about as dull as the protagonist's internship, until
violence erupts. In the movie version, director Gia Coppola, granddaughter of
Francis Ford and niece of Sofia, has handpicked the most provocative tales and
stitched them into a longer narrative that makes for a compelling film. But
reading the stories—and the jarring cuts between various characters' acts of debauchery—gives you the
truly unsettling feeling of youthful despair and a glimpse of adulthood that
isn't
all it's
cracked up to be.
— Jordan Foster
Published 05/19/2014