Film adaptations of popular novels all too often crash and burn, but some manage to be held in a higher esteem than their literary counterparts. This century-old debate will be tested over the course of this year as the Loft Cinema Book Club screens seven classic films, followed by moderated discussions of the books they’re based on.

Here’s the 2013 lineup for the Book Club, courtesy of the Loft website:

February
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
Milos Foreman, director (1975)
Novel by Ken Kesey

April
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER
Robert Ellis Miller, director (1968)
Novel by Carson McCullers

June
SLAUGHTER HOUSE FIVE
George Roy Hill, director (1972)
Novel by Kurt Vonnegut

August
LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE
Alfonso Arau, director (1992)
Novel by Laura Esquivel

Special September Anti Censorship Month screening
LORD OF THE FLIES
Peter Brook, director (1963)
Novel by William Golding

October
IN COLD BLOOD
Richard Brooks, director (1967)
Novel by Truman Capote

December
LITTLE WOMEN
George Cukor, director (1933)
Novel by Louisa May Alcott

• Courtesy of The Chocolate Storybox

If there’s truth to the sentimentality that “good things come in small packages,” a concept like The Chocolate Storybox brings much needed simplicity to one of the most commercialized holidays of the year.

The site, based in the United Kingdom, is making its official launch on Valentine’s Day with a unique product that speak volumes about the limitless nature of “the virtual world”: that is, for chocolate fans and bookworms. Visitors to the site can peruse short works of romantic fiction, written by Skye Phillips, by clicking on a picture of a corresponding (and of course, temptingly bite-sized) piece of chocolate, previewed in the image above. Meant to tribute the “attractive and indulgent” process of immersing yourself in a good book, according to the site’s media manager Fiona Smith, the chocolate images selected for the site were actually provided by local business Sabino Artisan Chocolates.

When Darryl Robert Schoon finished writing his first and only novel to date, he didn’t have any plans to distribute it to the masses. And, at least for a few years, it wasn’t distributed anywhere.

Schoon, who actually has spent most of his career as an author writing nonfiction books about finance and spirituality, recently published You Can’t Always Get What You Want under SchoonWorks, his own publishing company. He had finished writing the book nearly two decades ago in 1996.

The novel’s storyline follows a narrator working a summer job at a biological sciences lab at UC Davis. A man who drops acid frequently, the beginning of the novel sees the narrator having a one-way conversation with a monkey.

“Who do you think you are anyhow?” he hears the monkey say during a trip. “At least I know I’m in a cage.”

The novel then follows the narrator as he gives a beautiful woman a ride home. Much to his surprise, the woman turns out to be a lesbian, and her partner is the narrator’s former lawyer. The book is filled with further plot twists like these, and the message the monkey gives at the start serves as the story’s central theme, Schoon said.

For Miriam Ruth Black, her writing career came after her retirement, as a way to express an issue she felt was not focused on enough in novels these days.

Most popular novels highlight the lives of the young and glamorous, showing off their youth and the lifestyles that go along with that. Black, however, decided to write a book from a different angle.

Black’s novel, titled “Turtle Season,” is about a middle-aged woman, Anna Simon, who loses her husband of 30 years and learns of many betrayals on his end after his death.

While most women might use this as an excuse to let their lives fall apart, Simon uses this tragedy and her lost ties as her role as a mother, wife, and educator to pursue other interests and still maintain meaning in her life.

Local author Frank Babb used his experiences serving his country to create a fiction novel titled, “Hot Times in Panamá.”

The book follows the main character, Frank Blake, who is drafted and posted in the counterintelligence program in Panamá, because he had taken a year of high school Spanish.

As Babb states, the book is also “about personal relations of people.”

The novel also follows Blake’s love for a woman named Julia that he met at a party. After that, she disappeared and he never hears from her again until he receives a letter from her 45 years later.

Although the book does draw ties of Babb’s personal experiences in the war, he stresses that it is fiction.

“I emphasize the book in fiction, but like all fiction, things that happen sometimes get retold, refashioned, restated, and so on, for use of fiction,” said Babb.

Often, our dear Assistant Editor Irene Messina has the problem of having far too many books sent to her than our writers can review. Typically, we at the Weekly make an effort to do something constructive with them for the community (donations to charity, leaving them in bookstores to confuse the employees, etc.[note: only one of those is true],) but we've decided that we're going to be sharing the latest batch with our lovely readers.

Therefore, we're giving out four sets of four books, including a number of works by William W. and J.A. Johnstone, as well as books by Matthew Flynn, Elif Shafak and Matthew Parker.

If you're interested in having some extra reading material, send me a note at [email protected] with the subject "TW Book Giveaway!" The first four emailers will get their claim in the grab bag.

Pictures can serve as portals into worlds we’ve never been to, and the artistically-inclined need only draw those worlds before they step inside.

When New-York based writer and illustrator Steve Sheinkin first collaborated with academic and fellow author Ilan Stavans on an online comic, the unconventionality of sharing a story was surprisingly enjoyable for the pair. They enjoyed it so much, Sheinkin said, that they soon after launched a “bigger, more ambitious” project together, comparing drafts and scenes over dozens of emails and lunch meetings.

Writing has become a way for author, lawyer, and teacher Bobby Wilson to express his personal challenges and triumphs, as well as the corrupt issues of the country.

In his fiction novel, State of Mind, he used characters based on real Americans to describe the issues surrounding the nation’s financial crisis in a way that not many people knew was occurring until after it had unfolded.

“There was a tremendous amount of fraud and chicanery and just outright violations of the law that were taking place by the banks and the mortgage companies,” said Wilson. “No one ever was prosecuted, no one was ever punished, and all the outlaws just walked away scot-free.”

Out of his frustration and personal concern, he decided to publish his third novel, about the background of the crisis that not many people had yet been exposed to. He delves into the issues with the big businesses and how these companies were getting away with fraud.

“It just makes my skin crawl that these people did this disastrous thing to the American people again and they got away with it,” he said.

In the novel-writing business it pays to be persistent, but local author Kelly Frederick knows it also pays to know when to take matters into your own hands.

Frederick self-published her first novel, Umbrellas in the Sun, last year after turning a seemingly unrealistic goal into a reality. An avid reader, Frederick began to consider challenging herself to finish a novel and jotted down a first draft in a looseleaf notebook, despite having no formal training as a writer.

While her friends, family, and even her boss gave her feedback for future drafts, Frederick went to work on researching options for publishing, but literary agents who accepted drafts from unpublished authors were hard to come by.

Instead of hitting ‘save’ and moving on, Frederick enlisted the help of her husband, a graphic designer, to finish formatting the novel and design the cover art. They partnered up with Amazon, and a promotion on the site helped Umbrellas in the Sun reach over 800 downloads. The numbers excited Frederick, but admits they were misleading.

“Unless someone knows to go and look for it, they’re not going to come across it,” Frederick said, adding that self-publishing introduces the issue of self-promoting if you want your novel to fly off the shelves.

In 2011, Lawrence Wright profiled former-Scientologist Paul Haggis for the New Yorker and now he's taken that research a step further, looking into the celebrity culture and inner workings of the Church of Scientology in his new book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief. The Hollywood Reporter is running two excerpts in the next issue, one from the section on John Travolta and one, from which the passage below can be found, regarding Tom Cruise:

Cruise poured millions of dollars into the Church — $3 million in 2004. He was not simply a figurehead; he was an activist with an international following. He could take the Church to places it had never been before. Whenever Cruise traveled abroad to promote his movies, he used the opportunity to lobby foreign leaders and American ambassadors to promote Scientology....

In 2003, he met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, to express the Church's concerns over its treatment in Germany. Cruise had access to practically anyone in the world.

That same year, Cruise and Davis lobbied Rod Paige, the secretary of education during the first term of President George W. Bush, to endorse Hubbard's "study tech" educational methods. Paige had been impressed. For months, Cruise kept in contact with Paige's office, urging that Scientology techniques be folded into the president's No Child Left Behind program.

One day, Cruise flew his little red-and-white-striped Pitts Special biplane, designed for aerobatics, to Hemet, along with his Scientologist chief of staff, Michael Doven. Miscavige and Rathbun picked them up and drove them to Gold Base. Rathbun was in the back seat and recalls Cruise boasting to COB about his talks with the secretary.

"Bush may be an idiot," Miscavige observed, "but I wouldn't mind his being our Constantine," referring to the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity.

Cruise agreed. "If f—ing Arnold can be governor, I could be president."

Miscavige responded, "Well, absolutely, Tom."