Five top books that offer a new take on pre-existing works

At the B&N Reads blog Brian Boone tagged five adaptations or re-imaginings of earlier works, including:

The Sixteenth of June by Maya Lang is a remake of James Joyce’s Ulysses

James Joyce’s crowning achievement is Ulysses, an astonishingly detailed, hyper-realistic look at a single day in Dublin, Ireland—June 16, 1904. Commemorations of that day are now known as Bloomsday, after one the book’s many, many characters, Leo Bloom. Almost as real as Joyce’s physical descriptions are the richly rendered characters. “A day in the life” is a repeatable formula, but difficult to do well. Author Maya Lang pulls it off with The Sixteenth of June. It’s a cutting, insightful, emotional look at the good people of Philadelphia on June 16, 2004. A couple of people even throw a Bloomsday party! (Of course, if you want to get technical, Ulysses itself is a remake of the ancient Greek epic The Odyssey.)

Read about another entry on the list.

The Page 69 Test: The Sixteenth of June.

--Marshal Zeringue