Seasonal Plume

Today’s Booking Through Thursday:

Are there any particular worlds in books where you’d like to live?

Or where you certainly would NOT want to live?

What about authors? If you were a character, who would you trust to write your life?

I’d always liked to live in either Narnia or Prydain. Those were the two fantasy worlds of my relative childhood, and they weigh roughly the same in my estimation. For Narnia particularly, I’m more interested in the first days, after the creation of Narnia, than the time of the Pevensies as kings and queens of the land. And for Prydain, certainly the time before the end of the series ;)

I would certainly not want to live in some of the worlds/places in Stephen King’s Dark Tower; End-World would be the worst *shudder*.

As for authors I’d trust to write about my life…that’s a tough one. I initially thought that I would trust all my favorite authors to write about myself but I realized that Jane Austen would find my horrible flaws and might give up on writing about me; Charlotte Bronte might turn off some readers with a long chapter about my feelings as a child; C.S. Lewis would turn everything into symbolism; Janet Fitch would add more grit and grime and un-beauty into my life than I’m prepared for!

I’m kidding, I would be honored if any of them would write about me; unfortunately, I have no idea who would be a good “fit”: one who have written something along the lines of my life, and the kind of style that I like.

This Thursday’s Booking Through Thursday is Books vs Movies:

Books and films both tell stories, but what we want from a book can be different from what we want from a movie. Is this true for you? If so, what’s the difference between a book and a movie?

Interesting question, and I was actually talking about this in brief with Faye recently. I’m not a book purist, and I think that on average, I do enjoy movie/TV adaptations a lot, certainly on varying degrees of enjoyment. To me, a movie generally has to be more compact, but that’s because it has a lot of power to convey more in a short period of time, since movies and TV shows are highly visual. Show, don’t tell, is definitely the rule. It’s easier to reach a lot more people with movies, because they’re so much easier to stomach — what’s two hours, after all, in one day, in one week?

Books, on the other hand, require a bit more patience than a movie (since it won’t end after two hours I’m sure, unless it’s a very short book or you’re an amazing speed reader) but a well-written book can go so much deeper than a movie has time for, which I feel is great. It gives one the leeway to imagine as one wills, which can give a more powerful impact to the story than a movie, with its “set” visuals, can give. Those imaginings are highly personal, tainted by one’s own preferences, and one can definitely end up enjoying a book more than a movie simply because of the highly personal nature of one’s imagination.

Going back to the book versus movie debate, I sometimes even like it when adaptations deviate from the book, as long as the premise and spirit is the same, and this definitely has a lot of bearing on the skill of the actors and the screenwriter. For example, there was a bit of flack about the BBC 2006 Jane Eyre adaptation being rather, well, “forward”, but I thought it worked well, and I enjoyed the TV mini-series immensely. The 2005 Pride and Prejudice adaptation was also rather different, but it was admittedly pretty (even though I’ve found a lot of ways to poke fun at the movie).

This isn’t always the case, though. Just recently, since I had just finished reading Eragon (and Eldest), I tried watching the movie. Oh shock horror. I couldn’t get past Saphira flying down from the sky suddenly full-grown and wise. (Maybe I should have stuck to it more, since I later on found out that Rachel Weisz had voiced Saphira.) While I don’t think Eragon is omgamazingfabulous, the movie felt quite botched together. Roran not going off to find money to wed Katrina is alright, but everyone knowing about the new farm-boy dragon rider? Uh, no thank you. I don’t think I want to know how else they managed to make a rather stereotypical, predictable fantasy epic worse.

But naturally, there are also exceptions for me when a movie is better than a book. I quite enjoyed the 1999 Mansfield Park adaptation more than the book, even though I’m a staunch Jane Austen fan. Sadly, this is the only one example I can give of a movie being better than a book, but then my sister would say the same about Lord of the Rings (she couldn’t get past Fellowship of the Ring) — something we obviously disagree about ;)

Your mileage may vary.

Today’s Booking Through Thursday is “Manual Labor Redux”:

Scenario: You’ve just bought some complicated gadget home . . . do you read the accompanying documentation? Or not?

Do you ever read manuals?

How-to books?

Self-help guides?

Anything at all?

It usually depends on the kind of gadget, but since we’re talking complicated here, I assume that means that it needs assembling and that I haven’t used/assembled one before. In that scenario, yes, I do read accompanying documentation.

Otherwise, if it’s fairly straightforward (i.e., a digital camera) I’ll usually wait a while before I even crack open the manual (usually in search of some esoteric thing I want to do).

(Yes, I’ve decided to start on Booking Through Thursday.)