It's Sunday. Let's Talk BOOKS 📚

Let’s talk about anything about books:

• Your favorite book(s)
• Your favorite author(s)
• Your book you wrote
• What book you still remember 20 years later (or 10 or 5 or 1)
• What book astounded you and why

Stuff like that.

I’ve always loved to read; I learned early and books, and the stories which lived inside their covers (back when I read dead-tree books), have been my life’s delight — right behind my kids and grandkids. 

The truth is, that it is the stories inside the covers that I love, not the format so much. Which brings me to this week’s subject. 

When I was a kid, it was the books. I read a few comics, but that short form just didn’t do it for me. Even as an elementary school aged reader, I wanted a bigger, fuller story. I remember quite fondly the tales of Tom Swift and Tom Swift Jr. 

• Tom Swift [https://tomswift.net/ts1.htm]  
• Tom Swift Jr.[http://www.tomswift.info/homepage/index.html]

I think Tom was a teen and Jr was a pre-teen, but it’s been a lifetime since I read one of them, sometime in the late 1960s. Mostly it was the Jr stories, the Tom Swift tales were in the regional library and something like 60 or more years old when I was a kid, so hard to find even back then. A smart, adventurous kid who fixed problems.

But as I got older and into my late teens, I started to love movies nearly as much as those books I’d been reading. Because they are both stories, one is the written word and the other is the written word portrayed with live action or animation, or a mixture of both.

What I’m wondering, is how many of you have read a story, or a series of stories; and then later saw it in film version?  Or vice versa, saw a film and then went and read the story it was based on.

Which did you prefer, or it is an individual choice for each story/film.

For me, it’s an individual story kind of thing.

I saw 2001 A Space Odyssey years before ever reading it. I liked the movie better, I can’t remember why at this point, 40ish years later.  But do clearly remember that when I was reading the line “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave” (and, oh boy, I can still hear it in my head, too) this is what I saw in my mind’s eye:

I read All The President’s Men long after seeing that, too. I also like the film more. 

I read BiCentennial Man, by Isaac Asimov decades before the Robin Williams film. It was a great rendition of the work, but I still like the written version more. 

I read Timeline, by Michael Crichton right when it got published in 1999, saw the film long after it was in theaters, probably a rental DVD from Blockbuster.  While the acting was good, the written version is different (I never understand why they take a great written story and change elements for no reason whatsoever), and it’s better because of those differences. 

The Stephen King story The Stand is better than either of the tv series adaptations, by far. 

When it comes to J R R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings? Both versions have things I like, the written version and the Tom Bombidil story arc; the backstory of the lives after Mt Doom of Samwise Gamgee and his family in the film version is enchanting. 

Personally, I’m still waiting for the Anne McCaffrey PERN stories to make it to a film version. They’ve had people riding flying dragons now since the first Avatar film over a decade ago. 

Oh, and they are my favorite written stories of all time, the PERN (parallel earth, resources negligible) stories. Which I read while I was growing up, starting in the early 1970s, until the last book she wrote in the series alone, Dragons’ Kin in 2003. I’ve probably read All the Weyrs of PERN 20 or 30 times; likewise the (chronologically) first story about PERN, Dragon’s Dawn. 

The final sentence of Dragon’s Dawn : 

“Admiral Benden, sir,” said Sean, rider of bronze Carenath, “may I present the Dragonriders of Pern”.

Which is the end of the origin story about how humans came to live on Pern and breed the flying, flame-throwing, teleporting, telepathic dragons which they bonded with — and whose ability to do all of those things kept humanity alive for 2,000 years on Pern. Until together, humans and dragons found a way to put an end to the enemy which dropped from their skies every 250 or so years. 

How about you guys.

Have any stories you found in both formats, and which did you enjoy more, the written format or the film version?