Sharp Words

“Never judge a book by its movie.”
J W Eagan
[Quote supplied by the Quotations Page]

I think this depends on which came first, actually. I’ve found that if the movie is adapted from a novel, the novel is generally better; likewise, the original TV show or film is usually better than any novelisation.

But there are plenty of films and books which don’t fit either sweeping generalisation (J W Eagan’s or mine). Peter Jackson’s films of The Lord of the Rings were of course fantastic, doing justice to the source material, and I have hopes for Guillermo del Toro with The Hobbit as well. And the TV show True Blood takes Charlaine Harris’s excellent Sookie Stackhouse novels and turns them into something richer and darker without losing the spirit of the originals.

I’ve also read a few novels which were decent spin-offs of good films – though they were usually written by well-known writers.

There are films too, which are actually much better than their source material – the most recent was Angels and Demons, at which I was pleasantly surprised. OK, it wasn’t perfect, but it wasn’t as clunky as the novel, and it was massively better than the film of The Da Vinci Code. (I still have an aversion to Tom Hanks though.)

Anyway, anyone got any other suggestions for books or films/TV series which equal or surpass the originals?

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“Writing well means never having to say, ‘I guess you had to be there.”
Jef Mallett
[Quote supplied by the Quotations Page]

I just want to toss this one out to Ken, Susan and Hope, whose true stories (well, in Ken’s case, true-ish) make me laugh and cry. I am still reading blogs, even if I’m not posting much myself at the moment!

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Wizard and Glass, Stephen King (Book 4 of The Dark Tower). Borrowed copy, first read.
Just as the story from the first three books is getting into its stride (and vaguely comprehensible), we veer off into the gunslinger’s back story. It’s a good book, but it does feel like a major pause in the series.

Bridget Jones’ Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, Helen Fielding. Own copies.
Good bath-time reading. It’s depressing how far womankind hasn’t come since they were written in the mid-late 90s though…

Worldwired, Elizabeth Bear. Own copy.
Really really good sci-fi; I need to get hold of more of her stuff. (Could just buy it, I suppose?)

Where Demons Dare, Kim Harrison. Library book, first read.
I really like this series, but I wish I was reading it in order (I read #4, then #1, and this is #5) as it takes me a good third of the book to get up to speed. I probably should just try and reserve the others through the library. (Or again, buy them.)

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“If the English language made any sense, a catastrophe would be an apostrophe with fur.”
“If the English language made any sense, lackadaisical would have something to do with a shortage of flowers.”
Doug Larson
[First quote supplied by the Quotations Page; the second one found on BrainyQuote]

No real reason for posting these, except that they amused me. And what with it being Friday the 13th, I need cheering up. (I’m not usually superstitious in the slightest, but I have had a few things go wrong today, more than usual.)

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“You don’t have to suffer to be a poet; adolescence is enough suffering for anyone.”
John Ciardi (US poet, 1916 – 1986)
[Quote supplied by the Quotations Page]

Oh, so true – I wrote some poems I’m very fond of, back in my adolescence. A lot of them were about my own personal suffering; it really is that time of life when you feel everything so very deeply, because very often, you’re feeling that way for the first time.

The pain does wear off in time, and you learn to deal with it, current adolescents may be relieved to know (or may just not believe). Emotions are still felt deeply, but there’s an overlay of ‘this too will pass’. That has actually had an effect on my poetry (never mind the fact that I stopped writing it for a few years). If what I write these days contains any sort of suffering, it tends to be about that of other people rather than my own.

I was contacted recently about one of my poems, which might be considered to be about suffering, or at least about being different in an indifferent world. Someone at an online English tutoring service in Australia has decided they would like to use Alice as a tutorial piece. I did some checking on the service, of course, before I said yes – but really, if someone has read enough into one of my poems to think it will be a good comprehension exercise for high school students, then how can I say no? It’s incredibly flattering!

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“I  can’t understand why a person will take a year to write a novel when he can easily buy one for a few dollars.”
Fred Allen (US radio comedian, 1894 – 1956)
[Quote supplied by the Quotations Page]

I’m starting to lean towards this point of view, considering I’ve read four novels this week and only advanced my own half-written novel by a few hundred words.

I need to keep reminding myself why I want to finish writing this novel, and it’s not for fame and fortune (nice as those would be); it’s because I have a story to tell and I want to share it. Eventually. Some day.

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