Book Visions

     I just finished reading "Juliet, Naked" by Nick Hornby.  It wasn't flat out marvelous like "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" but it was light and fun and it was about music and aging, two of my interests at the moment.  (The latter, reluctantly.)
     And I'm reading it, to borrow a phrase, because he had me at Minneapolis.  I live in Minnesota, you see, and the book begins in the past when Tucker Crowe, a famous, Dylanesque, singer-songwriter, goes to the men's room during a gig at a Minneapolis club, has some epiphany, comes out, ditches the show and the band and becomes a recluse in Pennsylvania.
     "Juliet, Naked" refers to the naked as in unplugged version of the Tucker Crowe album called "Juliet."  And Juliet was the love of his life, an actress/muse person who lived in San Francisco.
     Nick Hornby is also the author of "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy."  Both of these books became movies and this one's gonna be a movie, too, and that's what drove me crazy the whole time I was reading it. I couldn't read a word without thinking of the book as a movie and my mind wandered on every sentence as I tried to cast the characters.  
     Who would play Tucker Crowe, the aging, reclusive ex-folk/rock star? I'm seeing Jeff Bridges fresh off another music character in "Crazy Heart." And who's going to play Duncan, the tiny town Brit obsessed with webbing and blogging to keep the flame lit for an addicted world wide group of Crowe fans?  He, of course, will be played by Hugh Grant.  Who else? Grant stared out at me from every page and it was most disconcerting.
     That leaves Annie.  Who will play Duncan's girl friend who becomes Tucker's girl across the pond friend? It could be Renee Zellweger as in Bridget Jones since Hollywood will probably choose an American who has to do a British accent the whole movie .But it probably won't be Julia Roberts since that would be too much like "Notting Hill," wouldn't it? I think Kate Winslet or Minnie Driver would do a great job but maybe Andie MacDowell will get the part and  have to do the accent so at least it would not be exactly the same as "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
     God!  Do you see what I mean?  This book was so good and so frustrating all at the same time but the good news is I've already seen the movie!