SHORTLIST: 25 Songs Inspired By Books

shortlist.com has a fun list of 25 songs that were inspired  by books.  What's even cooler -- the videos are embedded in the article, so you don't have to hunt them down.

Several of my favorite books were mentioned, authored by people like Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, George Orwell and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Below is from the article.  But the full post at shortlist.com is great.

PET SEMATARY

Artist/Song: Ramones – Pet Sematary (from 1989’s Brain Drain)
Book: Stephen King’s Pet Sematary
Lyrics: “Molars and fangs, the clicking of bones/Spirits moaning among the tombstones.”
Also: The Ramones’ Pet Sematary was written for the movie adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. It was also covered by the German industrial metal band Rammstein.

THE ROCKET MAN

Artist/Song: Elton John – Rocket Man (from 1972’s Honky Chateau)
Book: Ray Bradbury’s The Rocket Man (short story)
Lyrics: “She packed my bags last night pre-flight.”
Also: Bernie Taupin’s lyrics condense the plot of Bradbury’s short story, which tells of an astronaut leaving his wife and son on a journey into space.

1984

Artist/Song: David Bowie – 1984, (from 1974’s Diamond Dogs)
Book: George Orwell’s 1984
Lyric: “They’ll split your pretty cranium and fill it full of air/And tell that you’re eighty, but brother, you won’t care/Beware the savage jaw of 1984.”
Also: Other tracks on Diamond Dogs feature other Orwell references including the song titles Big Brother and We Are The Dead (Winston Smith’s final words before being captured by the thought police in the book). Bowie was intending to do a 1984 musical, though the project was killed off when Orwell’s widow objected.

LORD OF THE RINGS

Artist/Song: Led Zeppelin – Ramble On (from 1969’s Led Zeppelin II)
Book: Tolkien’s Lord Of The Rings
Lyric: “'Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor/I met a girl so fair/But Gollum, and the evil one crept up/And slipped away with her.”

PARADISE LOST

Artist/Song: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Red Right Hand (from 1994’s Let Love In)
Book: A poem, more specifically – the title is taken from John Milton’s Paradise Lost
Lyric: “On a gathering storm comes/a tall handsome man/in a dusty black coat with a red right hand”

BRAVE NEW  WORLD

Artist/Song: The Strokes – Soma (from 2001’s Is This It?)
Book: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World
Lyric: “Soma is what they would take when/Hard times opened their eyes.”
Also: Soma is the name of a hallucinogen given in Huxley’s Brave New World – the drug is also referenced by the Smashing Pumpkins and deadmau5 in their songs of the same name.

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH

Artist/Song: Rick Wakeman – Journey To The Centre Of The Earth (from the 1974 album)
Book: Jules Verne’s Journey To The Centre Of The Earth
Lyric: “Five days out on an infinite sea, they prayed for calm on an ocean free/But the surface of the water ws indicating some disturbance…”

WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE

Artist/Song: Alt-J – Breezeblocks, from 2011’s An Awesome Wave
Book: Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are
Lyric: “Do you know where the wild things go? They go along to take your honey, la la la”

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

Artist/Song: Metallica – For Whom The Bell Tolls (from 1984’s Ride The Lightning)
Book: Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls
Lyrics: “Men of five, still alive through the raging glow/Gone insane from this pain that they surely know.”
Also: The same book also inspired a Bee Gees song of the same name. Proof that literature doesn’t care how it sounds.

Four Past Midnight Journal 2: NOVELLAs

I'm wondering why King's Four Past Midnight gets sold on individual story at a time -- while Full Dark No Stars gets sold as one big book.  Does it matter?  Sure.  It's the difference in 1 audible credit verses 4.  Or, 1 month's payment verses FOUR.  Different Seasons is also broken up.

Know why I like Four Past Midnight? I do think the stories are pretty good.  I also think it is because I read them at a time when reading Stephen King was a little dangerous -- a little naughty.  I was a teen and it was pretty cool to read Stephen King.  I was pretty new to the world of Stephen King, having just come off The Stand and the first few Dark Tower novels, so I had a sense that anything could happen in a SK novel.  King novels did things that would never even come up in the books our High School teachers handed out.  I tried to endure Cat's Cradle, but really didn't know what Mr. Vonnegut was talking about.  King I did understand. 

So my excitement about this book my be as simple as emotional association; I read it when I was happy to be reading anything by Mr. King.  Some of the elements of the stories did disappoint me; but I still liked them.

I LOVE NOVELLAS!

I was first introduced to the wonderful world of Novella's with John Steinbeck's The Moon Is Down.  It was a great story -- and it was short!  As a kid in school, I was a big fan of the entire idea of a short novel.  The only problem was, the teachers wanted us to read those short novels faster.  The short novel was far better than the chopped novel -- parts of novels all cut up in "reader" textbooks.  Who wants to read the Readers Digest version of Great Expectations?

Novella's are often written in a big burst of energy.  They are just short novels that feel like the author is exploding all over the page!  It seems like you can sometimes feel the writers raw energy as he works, pressing an idea forward as if he is about to get run over by a train.

Animal Farm has been inflicted on numerous school children -- and for good reason!  Orwell tells his story with that raw energy of an idea being hammered out.  The story is a parable of government and power; how those promising to help  the underdog quickly use power to get special privileges.  Animal Farm is more than a Social Studies lesson, it's brilliant writing.  Farm Animals plot the overthrow of a farmer; I thought it was a great story!

My favorite King novella is THE MIST.  Again, you can feel King's energy flowing as he writes.  He is driven by a story that has to get out, and quick.  In fact, he doesn't even have  time to end it! So it's not processed through deeply -- it's just gutted out.  But sometimes what we find when a writer just goes with a story is delightful.  I kind of like those  paperback editions of The Mist that appeared in bookstores to promote the movie.  Something about seeing it all by itself -- kinda naked -- was great.  It didn't need all those other stories crowding around, it was ready to stand on its own two feet!

My favorite novella's:

• A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (But no more movies, please)
• Nightfall, Isaac Asmov 
• The Time Machine, HG Wells
• The Moon Is Down, John Steinbeck
• Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck
• Animal Farm, George Orwell
• The Hound of the Baskervilles, Arthur Conan Doyle

The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury exists in some strange world of novel/short novel/book of short stories.  What is it?  All the stories make a novel.  But not a long novel.  The narrative flow is uneven, but beautiful.  What is this thing? -- it's just Bradbury being wonderful.

Really, story length should not matter.  Often I don't know what a book is!  Is Joyland a novel  or a novella?  I dunno.  I guess you could do a word count, but in the end, does it really matter?  Nope.

Elizabeth Chadwick Includes King In BOOKS OF A LIFETIME

I enjoyed author Elizabeth Chadwick's post, "The Books of a Lifetime." She discusses books that stood out at various stages of her life.  A fun road trip probably all of us should  take.  I'm afraid that before Mr. King, I didn't actually finish many books!

Chadwick explains, "I have chosen five favourite books each from my childhood, my adolescence, young adulthood and maturity (if you can call it that)."

Naturally, Chadwick's choices are a mixture of classics and modern hits.  Stuff I'm familiar with, and some I didn't know existed.

Under the heading of Young Adult, Chadwick gives a short discussion of The Shining.  Here's what she wrote:

The Shining by Stephen King. This book is one of the very few where I have almost been too scared to turn the pages. Stephen King is a very powerful writer indeed and this story of a family falling apart and closed up for the winter in the haunted (and maliciously so) Overlook Hotel is a claustrophobic triumph. I re-read it at least once a year.

Wow!  That's pretty good.  I've read it through once, and just started re-reading in prep for Doctor Sleep.  She re-read's it "at least once a year."

Under the heading, Mature Adult, she includes The Green Mile.

The Green Mile by Stephen King. The second Stephen King on my list. I could carry on reading his work my life long. The Green Mile, I think, achieves absolute greatness for Stephen King. If the subject matter didn't involve horror and the supernatural, and if wasn't so mainstream and readable, this one would have been on The Booker list for sure. I'd certainly put it on my alternative Booker shortlist. There are lines in that book of such profound power that they bring tears to my eyes.

Chadwick's  full article is at historicaltapestry.blogspot.com

MY ANSWERS:

Okay, I have to clarify that I am discussing NOVELS and not religious works, The Bible, commentaries, devotionals and books that have given my life greater perspective, like The Purpose Driven Life.  Just fiction:

childhood: Fatal Vision.  I'm not kidding.  I read the whole thing when I was about 11 after seeing the mini-series.  It is the story of Dr. Jeffery MacDonald who is accused of killing his family.  

Also, Run Silent -- Run Deep, Star Wars (the novel by Lucas), V.

adolescence: 1984, by George Orwell.  I was first introduced to it as a radio play, then got the book abridged on tape. I found Orwell's world quite scary.  1984 is a precursor to The Hunger Games. 

Also, under adolescence, I  would include: The Martian Chronicles, The Stand, The War of the Worlds, IT, Night of the Moonbow, Sherlock Holmes and Swan Song. 

young adulthood: The Grapes of Wrath, which is absolutely wonderful!  A journey through America during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression.  We travel with the Judd  family from Oklahoma to California.  Steinbeck is such an effective writer that the reader suffers with the Judd's, burning with anger as they are delivered set back after set back at the hands of a very cruel world.

Also under young adulthood: Pillars of the Earth, Of Mice and Men, David Copperfield (though I'm still not sure what that book was actually about), The Pelican Brief, Cold Sassy Tree, This Present Darkness.

maturity: . . . riiight.

Your Turn! using the same setup Chadwick did, copy and paste in the comments section your answers:

childhood 

adolescence

young adulthood 

maturity

Novels We Should Like

Stephen King wrote in a recent post at stephenking.com,

"I couldn't vote for Moby Dick. Everyone says it's great and blah-blah-blah, but I drown in whale-oil every time I try it. My bad, people, I admit it."

I've not read,  nor been tempted to read, Moby Dick.  It did ge tme to thinking about some novels I should like -- that everyone loves -- but I just don't.  Some books  have their own version of "whale-oil" that we  drown in.

• Lord of the Rings.  I'm sorry. I sincerely, deeply apologize.  I know that for many of you, this is like saying you don't like Star Wars or something.  But I just have trouble with the whole fantasy genre.  I (gasp) think Lord of  the Rings is boring.  I KNOW, it's terrible of me to feel that way, I have great guilt about this and should probably see a doctor.  But I just can't get excited about three big novels about people walking around.  They walk and they walk and they walk and they walk -- they even walk with trees!

• Bleak House,  by Charles Dickens.  I've started it many times, but only read about three pages of the giant book.  But, chalk it up to Dickens and my difficult  relationship.  I love him -- I hate him -- but mostly love.

• Journey To The Center Of The Earth is a classic, but I couldn't get through it.  It just takes forever for them to get TO the journey.  Not only is there a lot of codes and maps and stuff, but then there are practice expeditions that suck up more space.  Yes, yes, once again -- very bad of me!  At some point I just wanted  Uncle Otto to get moving.  

• The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.  I've read the novel many times, but I'm not excited  or moved by it.  So why have I read and reread it?  Because I want to be moved!  I want to like it.  I think the radio and movie adaptations were far better than their source material.  But Wells was working with a fresh idea -- living creatures from another  planet actually landing and attacking with incredible machines.  What's neat is that it is written before cars -- so there are Machine's moving about London chasing horses and carriages.  

• Finally, The Talisman is a novel I have not been able to swallow yet.  It remains a book I've started so many times -- but have  yet to fall in love.  I'm not alone in this camp, George Beahm wrote in his original Stephen King Companion:

Try as I did on several occasions, I just couldn't get into the story.  Having read (and reread) virtually all the King novels  and a number of Straubs  novels, I find that The Talisman remains and oddity on my King bookshelf: The unread book.  (I might add that I felt the same way, initially about,about Tolkiens trilogy, Lord of the Rings.  On the third try, I got into the story and it swept me away.  When I finished, I was sorry that the story had ended.) 

I'll try again, of course, but what's interesting to me is that I'm not alone.  I've talked to other people  who read widely and deeply in and out of this field, people who have read all of King and all of Straub, and they either loved The Talisman or couldn't get into the story.

I wonder if he ever read it!  May I also point out that the novel's cover does nothing to make you want to read  the novel?!  Red and black swooshes with the author's names.  Rates right up there with Insomnia. Of course, Insomnia is a book I have not made it through -- I can't stay awake for it!

Novels that Surprised Me:

Here are some novels I did not plan to like -- but I was pleasantly surprised.

Both of George Orwell novels, Animal Farm and 1984, came as a surprise to me.  I find them delightful, and did not plan to.  1984 is dark, heavy and at times slow moving -- but as a teen I thought it was brilliant.  I think I liked Animal Farm just because the entire idea of animals throwing the farmer off his farm and running the place with delightful.

Of Mice and Men grabbed me from the get go and never let me go.  The story is short, well written (like anything by Steinbeck) and unforgettable.  Written like a play, each section is set up with narration, and then is carried primarily by dialogue.  It's an easy read.  And it's an emotional roller-coaster.  I read it out loud to my Grandmother.

Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Anne  Burns was a shock.  I bought it on audio as a teenager, not knowing what it was.  But back then, audio tapes were rare, so it meant I listened to things I might not otherwise choose.  The first time I read it was on audio, and abridged version. This was in the days when abridgments were only three hours!  I read it again in print, and then later on an unabridged  audio edition.  It's great!  Not  Pillars of the Earth great, but great.  It is where I learned the country phrase, "Boy Howdy!"

Finally, I was surprised by Paul Sheldon's novel, Misery's Return. In fact, I didn't like it at all when I first started.  I wanted the story to stay focused on Paul and his dealings with Annie.  But as the novel went  on, I was drawn in.  Having the girl buried alive might have helped!

What books  should you like. . . but don't?  And, what books surprised you?