Banned Books Week Virtual Readout Posted!

Okay, I have done it! I can never remember from time to time how to upload properly to YouTube, because when I just "share" in .mov format I get something that looks like a badly dubbed movie of the kind sent up in Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes, where the lips and the voice are just not in sync! There is a help page on YouTube, though, which says that YouTube really doesn't work well with .mov and suggests you save (share) it to Quicktime. I did this once, but saved it to the wrong format, for iPhone and iPod, but not for computer.  Whoops! Did it again, this time correctly, then clicked on Share, which had a YouTube option. And here it is! Why not watch it and have a go at doing your own? I will be happy to put in links from here if you let me know. If you don't have your own YouTube channel, you can set one up on the Banned Books Week web site. Don't be shy - if I can do it, middle aged and overweight, why not you?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lnpRzvayms&feature=youtube_gdata_player

It's a bit longer than last year's, because this year, according to the criteria, you have to say why it was banned or challenged and, hopefully, why you chose it. I had to do my readout twice, because I want it up on the Banned Books Week channel as well as my own.

I chose the scene in Fahrenheit 451 where the hero, Montag, is called out on a job and sees a woman burn herself along with her books rather than give them up. This changes his life, although he was already thinking his life needed something more.

An interesting situation: many US film versions of books published elsewhere Americanise them. This one, written by the quintessentially American Ray Bradbury, was filmed by Francois Truffaut, with mainly British accents - Julie Christie, for example, played the wife and the landscape was very British. Oscar Werner played Montag, though not, of course, with a British accent. It was a long time before I realised the novel was written by an American ( I was in my teens when  I saw it, then read the book later). The edition I read for this was a 50th anniversary one, with an introduction by the author, who says the film version made some changes, but in the end, he realised Truffaut was right.

And yes, I know the cover is mirror-reflection, backwards. I still haven't worked out how to flip it, no matter what software I use. The reading is what counts.