From Books To Screen
Book adaptations and their plight on reader's lives.
Isn’t it annoying watching a book adaptation with an avid reader? I would know, I can annoy myself: ‘That’s not in the book!’, ‘Oh the book explains that so much better.’, ‘It’s just not as good as the book.’, are but a few common phrases you could expect. Embarrassingly many a line like this has fallen out of my mouth. In fact, I am so often passionately ‘team book’ that I revel in hatred of an impending book adaptation before a trailer is even shown. I’ll let you take a peak into my little fatalistic brain with this excerpt of a note I wrote in 2021 (for context, I had just read Daisy Jones and The Six, only to discover an adaptation was in the works):
Besides cringing at my clangour term: ‘old people’ (forgive me, it was a rush of initial thought), I still stick by my initial feelings - to an extent. My natural knee jerk default is to sulk at the creation of all book adaptations. I’m a stubborn mule like that. Can you blame me? Reading a good book is a personal affair, it’s an intimate connection. So, it’s hardly surprising that, in regards to Daisy Jones, I did expect to vehemently dislike the show - shockingly, I actually enjoyed it in the end.
The greatest disappointment was the decision to not match the book in it’s documentary style, in the book this added an air of realistic mystery when peaking into past events. Plus, I love music and am fascinated by the making of it - particularly the creations of lyrics (it’s the analytical poet in me I guess) so for me there was not enough focus on the songs and the making of music. Which is a shame because in the end I loved the music that was made for the show and have of course been listening obsessively on Spotify on repeat.
Usually the only way I enjoy a book adaptation is as long as I haven’t read the book beforehand. The power of writing stories is so impressive that I can usually tell if a show/movie was originally a book. The world building just hits different. There’s distinct intricacy that echoes at a book origin.
The success of a book adaptation can sometimes be driven by genre. Usually crime / detective novels translate better to screen whereas fantasy books rarely translate well to me. I will however contradict myself by admitting that I thought The Hunger Games films were excellent. But I didn’t read the book, so who’s to say. I loved the films so much I regret having not read the books. No doubt there are key narratives missed when trying to condense a complex written tale which takes days if not weeks to read, into a 90 minutes visual production…
The rule of thumb seems to be for me is if I enjoyed one medium first, I inevitably will hate the other. The one difference being, I always regret not having read the book. My loyalty to the book can probably be broken down into two ways - understanding characters inner thoughts and decision making will and can never be successfully translated to screen, and that I rather narcissistically imagine myself as the characters, in a strange dreamlike way where I both am and am not them - so to see another human being act it out crushes my soul. Knowing this, it’s easy to see why, even if I on the rare chance begrudgingly enjoy the adaptation, I’ll always be that viewing partner who emphatically claims: ‘It’s not as good as the book!’.