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Actor Nicolas Cage will reportedly star in what producers hope will be a new, improved movie version of the best-selling, end-times thriller Left Behind.

It's Banned Books Week! But people are trying to keep great books out of libraries and schools every hour of every day, year round. And often, people's reasons for challenging these titles are really, really... outlandish. Here are 12 SF and fantasy books that people have given incomprehensible reasons for banning.

Atlas Shrugged - the movieFind Theater near you

If you live in New York you may have heard of him, but outside the area his name may be a mystery. Robert Caro, famed author of four books on Lyndon Johnson, wrote his first book about him for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. The book was later named one of the one hundred greatest non-fiction books of the 20th century. The man is Robert Moses and the book is The Power Broker. The book was written in 1974 (celebrating its 40th anniversary.) I have owned it for about ten years and finally tackled it on my recent vacation....

With Amazon's announcement of a new Kindle device in time for Christmas this year and major rivals Barnes & Noble and Kobo also revealing their new eBook readers recently, there seems no better a time than to consider that purchase. However, which should you choose? The eBook reader market has been simplified since Sony's withdrawal, but there are still three main competitors at the top end, each with their own flagship devices, so which of them draws your eye the most?

Sportsman Channel has renewed its original series Amazing America with Sarah Palin for a second season. Produced by Pilgrim Studios for Sportsman Channel, the popular show will return to air in early 2015. Read more: http://www.ammoland.com/2014/09/sportsman-channel-renews-amazing-america-with-sarah-palin/#ixzz3DlL3ucIv Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Follow us: @Ammoland on Twitter | Ammoland on Facebook

Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner has been dogging the compilers of the formerly prestigious New York Times best-seller list for trying to deny best-seller status to conservative authors. First it was Dinesh D’Souza’s book America. Now it's David Limbaugh's latest book Jesus on Trial. He reports the Times crew has "banished conservative legal author David Limbaugh's latest, Jesus on Trial, from its upcoming best seller list despite having sales better than 17 other books on the list." According to publishing sources, Limbaugh's probe into the accuracy of the Bible sold 9,660 in its first week out, according to Nielsen...

Today's genre books are full of future dystopias, which only have one weakness: teenagers. And everybody knows that most dystopias are kind of contrived. But here are 10 lessons from real-life rebellions against repressive regimes, that we wish the creators of fictional dystopias would pay attention to. 10. The Enemy of Your Enemy Is Not Your Friend [snip] 9. The Top Guy Isn't Always the Problem [snip] 8. Sometimes Making Concessions Leads To Rebellion [snip] 7. Two Downtrodden Groups Will Usually Be Fighting Each Other [snip] 6. Never Neglect the Practicalities [snip] 5. New Regimes Come With Crazy Ideology [snip]...

It is one of the tragedies of recent cultural history that, thanks to Mel Gibson's preposterous movie "Braveheart," the world knows more about William Wallace's short-lived Scottish rebellion of 1296-97 than about Robert the Bruce. For it was Bruce who, after 18 years of plotting and war making, finally threw off the yoke of the English king and consolidated a sense of Scottish identity. "Never will we on any conditions be subjected to the lordship of the English," said the Declaration of Arbroath, a diplomatic letter commissioned by Bruce in 1320. "It is in truth not for glory, nor riches,...

Fred Ross's change-making Axioms for Organizers is updated for the Internet age, and for a new generation battling discrimination and police brutality.Most residents of Ferguson, Missouri, have probably never heard of Fred Ross, Sr., but they could use his help now. Ferguson's population is two-thirds African American, but the mayor, almost all members of the city council and school board, and 95 percent of the police department is white, and in last year's municipal election only 7 percent of blacks came to the polls. Ross—perhaps the most influential (but little-known) community organizer in American history—had a successful career mobilizing people...

Happy National Read a Book Day! Celebrate with these essential sci-fi classics. Space, dystopian futures, robots, technology, aliens . . . what is there not to love about science fiction, a genre that stretches the imagination and offers a glimpse into what lies in a galaxy and time far, far away? Now that you've indulged on the most compelling, classic epic fantasy series, it's time to switch gears. Onward, futurists! We recruited our own POPSUGAR editors to help compile the ultimate list of geeky reads. And this week, we're showcasing the best sci-fi narratives, with all the traditional elements of...

He played Jaws, the towering bad guy with the steel teeth, in 'The Spy Who Loved Me' and 'Moonraker' Richard Kiel, the 7-foot-2 actor who played Jaws, the James Bond villain with the teeth of steel, died Wednesday. He was 74. Kiel broke his leg last week and died in St. Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, Calif., according to several media reports. Kiel's signature character appeared in the Bond films The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) and Moonraker (1979).

The matter remains unsettled, and probably will for quite a while. Many schools have gone with the flow of offering students a tablet or laptop computer that will contain all their most essential lessons. Many schools consider it a given, that within five to ten years, there will be no physical books at all. Every piece of study matter will be found on a computer owned or rented by the student. But wait, there is subtle pushback. Not so fast, say many of the students themselves. Most students, from elementary through grad school, have grown up surrounded with digital inventions,...

...Anna Karenina, is brought to life by Google with an image of Anna and Vronsky as they first meet ...His epic novel, War and Peace, is illustrated with Pierre Bezukhov, looking up at the great comet of 1812:

Discus­sions of English Language pet peeves pro­vide an enter­tain­ing forum for the expres­sion of ire. In fact, if a “pet” is some­thing we cher­ish, and a “peeve” is some­thing that annoys us, “pet peeves” are what we love to hate. Here’s a col­lec­tion of com­mon English solecisms—guaranteed not to lit­er­ally blow your mind:

Earlier this month, two fan conventions came to London: Nine Worlds and the World Science Fiction Convention, commonly know as Worldcon. Worldcon is in its 72nd year, a huge old dinosaur (or perhaps an aging dragon) of science-fiction fandom. This year more than 10,000 people paid for memberships, which included entrance to the annual Hugo Awards. The official guests of honor were revered science-fiction and fantasy authors, editors, and illustrators, all of whom were in their 60s and 70s. Nine Worlds was smaller, younger, and catered to a more varied crowd including comics, TV, and fanfic followers. But since both...

Too bad there's no such thing as White Out for sidewalks. Turns out, after the organizers of the Rainbow Honor Walk unveiled 20 "heroines and heroes" of the LGBT communities in San Francisco's Castro District on Tuesday, several eagle-eyed copy editor types spotted two glaring typos cemented in the sidewalk. Playwright Oscar Wilde’s plate, for example, says the writer was “known for his bitting wit.” And Christine Jorgensen, the first widely known person to have sex reassignment surgery, is called the “first trangendered American” rather than “transgendered.” The CastroBubble blog was the first online site to point out the mistakes,...

The Parthenon represents, for many, a golden age in human achievement: the 5th-century b.c. Greek flowering of democracy, sciences, and the arts. But what if its chief ornament, the Parthenon frieze, turned out to be not an embodiment of reason and proportion—of stillness at the heart of motion, quiet piety, and enlightened civic responsibility—but (or, rather, also) something darker, more primitive: a representation of the critical moment in an ancient story of a king at war, a human sacrifice, and a goddess’s demand for virgin blood? That’s the argument at the heart of The Parthenon Engima. The plot involves not...

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand is a fan of positive-thinking self-help book “The Secret” by Rhonda Byrne.

‘The Giver’ to ‘The Great Gatsby’: How the movie adaptations stack up to the books that inspired themDuring a panel moderated by The Washington Post’s film critic Anne Hornaday — Great Books to Great Movies on Saturday, Aug. 30 at 8 p.m. during the National Book Festival — authors E.L. Doctorow, Alice McDermott, Paul Auster and Lisa See, whose books were made into movies, will discuss and present in a multimedia exhibit clips from films based on their writing. But what happens when really good books fail to live up to people’s expectations in really bad movie adaptations? Or, the...