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[personal] reading stuff
Jan. 14th, 2019 07:46 am For the past few months I've been tired of everything because applying to a bunch of jobs without any payoff is tiring and this will continue to be my reality for who knows how long (I get increasingly depressed about it every day), so I haven't really read anything outside of fanfic. In fact, before this weekend it had been a year and a half since I read a book. I used to love reading, but for some reason I stopped (aside from fanfic).
There's been a book in my purse since September, but that is actually not the book I read this weekend. With the whole Bird Box craze going on, I found that there was a book that the movie is based on, and since I didn't want to watch the movie but found the premise interesting, I got the book...
...and finished it within 24 hours of starting. It is definitely a page turner, and I have to say I'm a fan of certain kinds of end-of-the-world scenarios and some horror. It can be kind of hit-or-miss with me, but this kept my interest more because of the scenarios than anything else. I didn't really get attached to the characters, but that's fine. There were probably some pacing issues and things that all happened at once that were unlikely to happen at once, but that is also fine because I have those issues and actually, it didn't really matter in the end. Where it counted, the story was creepy, and despite not being overly descriptive or even very long it build up a slow sense of dread that was surprisingly effective. There were a few scenes that on the surface seemed simple, only for the dread to catch up later.
(Some vague spoilers from here.) Then I read a wikipedia summary of the movie and...it seems like it's a hot mess. From what I read, there were a lot of bizarre changes, like changing the characters (I get that characterization wasn't strong in the book, but there wasn't really a reason to switch them around or change them as they did.) Deaths, I guess, were more dramatic. It sounds like most things were on-screen, though I can't tell. A fair amount of the deaths in the book were "off-screen", mostly because no one can see but there were a few that just happened in another room, which I kind of prefer, because then someone has to go looking and they don't quite know what they'll find. It also sounds like they had the creatures actually make something happen even though the main character always remained blind-folded by creating auditory hallucinations. I don't really like that either, because there doesn't need to be more temptation to open your eyes beyond the fact that you never know what's happening around you.
And it sounds like no dogs died in the movie and the only animal part they kept was the birds in a box. Which is kind of a shame, because one of the best parts of the book was that the people in the house decided to find and use dogs as "seeing eye" dogs, assuming that the dogs and animals in general couldn't be affected by seeing the creatures. They'd gone out for long periods of time with the dogs working under this assumption, only for that assumption to be proven very much wrong, and the only reason they'd been successful before was that they just hadn't come across anything when they were out.
I probably won't watch the movie, partially because I saw the first few minutes and the filming was...not something I enjoy watching (unsteady cameras make me feel sick.) Gore is also not something I enjoy watching and the movie promises a lot of it. It's one of those concepts that seems better realized as a book unless someone really, really creative manages to get the rights to make it and then makes some bold decisions rather than adding more drama for the sake of drama.
(This definitely awakened the part of me that got a lesson in adapting material from books to screenplays back in grad school, and that's something I wish I could do because Iove that sort of thing, but sadly I don't have money to get rights to anything and apparently don't have the qualifications to get any sort of job in the film/tv/theater industry, let alone a writing one. But I WISH.)
There's been a book in my purse since September, but that is actually not the book I read this weekend. With the whole Bird Box craze going on, I found that there was a book that the movie is based on, and since I didn't want to watch the movie but found the premise interesting, I got the book...
...and finished it within 24 hours of starting. It is definitely a page turner, and I have to say I'm a fan of certain kinds of end-of-the-world scenarios and some horror. It can be kind of hit-or-miss with me, but this kept my interest more because of the scenarios than anything else. I didn't really get attached to the characters, but that's fine. There were probably some pacing issues and things that all happened at once that were unlikely to happen at once, but that is also fine because I have those issues and actually, it didn't really matter in the end. Where it counted, the story was creepy, and despite not being overly descriptive or even very long it build up a slow sense of dread that was surprisingly effective. There were a few scenes that on the surface seemed simple, only for the dread to catch up later.
(Some vague spoilers from here.) Then I read a wikipedia summary of the movie and...it seems like it's a hot mess. From what I read, there were a lot of bizarre changes, like changing the characters (I get that characterization wasn't strong in the book, but there wasn't really a reason to switch them around or change them as they did.) Deaths, I guess, were more dramatic. It sounds like most things were on-screen, though I can't tell. A fair amount of the deaths in the book were "off-screen", mostly because no one can see but there were a few that just happened in another room, which I kind of prefer, because then someone has to go looking and they don't quite know what they'll find. It also sounds like they had the creatures actually make something happen even though the main character always remained blind-folded by creating auditory hallucinations. I don't really like that either, because there doesn't need to be more temptation to open your eyes beyond the fact that you never know what's happening around you.
And it sounds like no dogs died in the movie and the only animal part they kept was the birds in a box. Which is kind of a shame, because one of the best parts of the book was that the people in the house decided to find and use dogs as "seeing eye" dogs, assuming that the dogs and animals in general couldn't be affected by seeing the creatures. They'd gone out for long periods of time with the dogs working under this assumption, only for that assumption to be proven very much wrong, and the only reason they'd been successful before was that they just hadn't come across anything when they were out.
I probably won't watch the movie, partially because I saw the first few minutes and the filming was...not something I enjoy watching (unsteady cameras make me feel sick.) Gore is also not something I enjoy watching and the movie promises a lot of it. It's one of those concepts that seems better realized as a book unless someone really, really creative manages to get the rights to make it and then makes some bold decisions rather than adding more drama for the sake of drama.
(This definitely awakened the part of me that got a lesson in adapting material from books to screenplays back in grad school, and that's something I wish I could do because Iove that sort of thing, but sadly I don't have money to get rights to anything and apparently don't have the qualifications to get any sort of job in the film/tv/theater industry, let alone a writing one. But I WISH.)
