Rating: 
Summary: Painful and Embarassing Letdown
Review: John Irving needs a reality check. The writing of this book is embarassing, arrogant, shallow and, worst of all, highly self-important. OK, so he's now making some big screenwriter bucks, unfortunately it has turned him into (or revealed him as) a highly unlikable person.I can only imagine what a tiresome dinner guest he would be if he spewed this garbage in person. So sad given the talent he has shown in the past. John, please get over yourself already. It really is embarassing for us to see you this way.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Book, But Will Appeal to a Select Audience
Review: Not everyone will be interested to read this book. If you are a fan of John Irving, however, or interested in the process of adapting a film from a novel, you'll find this a quick, fun read, and informative to some extent. What I found most interesting was Mr. Irving's views on adaptation and the glimpses on how those views changed over the years. Most authors and readers presume that the only good adaptation is one literal to the book. Mr. Irving shows why that isn't the case, and he does so by relating his own experiences as author and screenwriter. Most of the book is about the upcoming Cider House Rules; I would have liked to have read more about the previous films adapted from other novels. Nevertheless, as a novelist's honest assessment of adaptation, it is an unusual and valuable document.
Rating: 
Summary: Movie or book?
Review: This is a book for those that say, " the book was better than the movie." Irving relates many of the alternitive choices and reasons in cutting a big book into something "marketable." Who is in or out, which of your offspring are you willing to sacrifice for the common good, something a writer- screenwriter is loath to do. This is an education for those not conversant with movie making with allits permutations. Read the Novel, read this book, and see the movie. Ask yourself how you would have done it.Thank You, John Irving
Rating: 
Summary: A quick and interesting read
Review: This is a great book if you are interested in the process of making a movie from a novel. Not only does Irving talk about the fourteen years it took him to create Cider House Rules for the big screen, he also talks about his grandfather, who he based one of his characters in the novel on. He also goes into detail about his other novels-to-movies, The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire. If you're a fan of John Irving, or just a movie buff, pick up this book!
Rating:
Summary: The pictures were nice.
Review: This recollection of his writing (books and screenplays) varies from the personal to his gripes about the movie business. He admits that he is not a moviegoer, mainly because he is not comfortable sitting in dark rooms with a lot of strangers! And yet he devoted many years and frustrated efforts to get his novels filmed, using his own screenplays.
He speaks of his friendship with Salman Rushdie, author of THE SATANIC VERSES, to whom he dedicated his novel, A SON OF THE CIRCUS. He relates his experiences in India researching children who'd been sold to be performers in the circuses there. He was particularly interested in the dwarf clowns. It took him five and a half years to finish the novel; had no luck with getting the screenplay accepted.
Of his published books, the three most popular made into films were THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP (starring Robin Williams), which I thought was pretty weird, THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE (Jodie Foster) and THE CIDER HOUSE RULES (Tobey Maguire -- the reason I watched it).
He gives an in-depth account of the making of this movie and his involvement in every aspect except the advertising. He worried over what the poster would show. In the movie, he portrayed a train station master (that is his costumed acting on the front cover of the book), where an old steam engine similar to Knoxville's Rambler was used.
If you saw the movie about an abortion doctor and his protege, looking at the large photo layout in the middle of this book lets you re-live the emotions. It is based on his grandfather's practice in Boston as explained in his biography, SAFE DELIVERANCE, about the nationally Lying-In Hospital. His grandfather wrote nonfiction as opposed to John's novels based on his family background. Guess he used his imagination a bit.
He made demands that they use the reading of Charles Dickens' DAVID COPPERFIELD to the children in the orphanage. I think perhaps he lives in the past too much as he reminisces not about the good things but the negative which happened.
This was not one of my favorite movies (the subject matter is still a controversy which may never be resolved), but I did learn how to find a person's unlisted phone number: 'say you are calling about a death in the family.' It happened to this author when he lived in New York and asked a caller "how did you get my number?" Now, this I found interesting. That's the joy of reading -- you learn something in every book no matter how insubstantial the subject matter.
It's not exactly what I would call a "memoir" as it focuses on this film almost exclusively. The rest is peripheral.
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