I'm a big fan of Patrick Ness' YA trilogy Chaos Walking, which imagines a world in which men's thoughts are audible, while women's thoughts remain secret, and then gets fascinating mileage out of exploring how different communities might address such a gender imbalance—some men learn tricks to disguise their thoughts, some towns segregate by gender, and some find it easier to get rid of the womenfolk altogether. (Plus: clever adventure, adorable dog sidekick, smartly written love story, aliens.)
Now Deadline is reporting that Charlie Kaufman—whom I love as a writer for films like Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mindand am less enthusiastic about as a director because god, Synecdoche, New York was boring—will be writing the script for the film adaptation of the first book in the trilogy, The Knife of Never Letting Go. This is a weird, inspired choice for a book that's going to be damn tricky to adapt—so much of the books are about this endless volume of "Noise" coming out of men's heads, displayed on the page in an all-caps alternate font which would be annoying if it weren't so necessarily in order to distinguish between spoken words, narration, and thoughts. But Kaufman has proven he knows his way around a clever adaptation (er, Adaptation)—I'm looking forward to this one.