So...What Are You Reading Now?

[Eliste]

See I would much rather read the books first and have a better understanding of the film/program With ASOIF it wasn't really a choice as I read them around 5 years ago, but I recently read The hunger games book trilogy and then really enjoyed the film so far I jave only seen the first one but i think they did a great job of sticking to the book.

For me ASOIAF started out as a "I'll read the books during the summer breaks in between the seasons" thing and I just haven't been able to keep up. I didn't want to read the first one while I was watching the first season, though, because I didn't want to know what was going to happen. LOL! I think nowadays I wouldn't care about reading ahead as much.

Hm, maybe I'm strange, but I prefer never to do both. If I enjoy the book, I will rarely watch the movie. If I watch the movie, I will definitely never bother reading the book.

In ways I think its because there is just SO MUCH TO READ and I don't like re-watching/reading the same story. Feels like a waste of time to me. (This may also explain my annoyance with the Dresden Files and his incessant need to re-introduce everybody all the time every time and OH DEAR GOD WE KNOW WHO HE IS ALREADY ITS BOOK 15!!!!)

[wozz90]

If its a story I have enjoyed I will quite happily read/watch it again. Although I quite enjoy re-reading books I have enjoyed also.

[MeiTow]

I had a friend that wouldn't keep movies he'd bought after watching them the first time (or wouldn't buy movies he'd rented and watched) just for that reason so I can see it. Supposed that keeps down clutter as well. LOL!

[Ally]

I'll go out on a limb and assume I'm the only one who insists on reading a book before the watching the movie adaptation (except for ASOIAF, it would have taken way too long as I've come to find I prefer the television imagining as opposed to the books). I don't find it spoils the experience at all; if anything I think I appreciate it more.

[nozomi]

I tend to read the books first, and avoid the film versions altogether. When you read a book, you imagine the characters in your own way, but once you watch a film, those imagined people are erased and replaced with the actors, and I don't like that. When I reread Harry Potter now, I will always see Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, and Daniel Radcliff in my head. They're not bad by any means, but it's a little sad how I will never be able to imagine the characters anew. It's the same with the Hunger Games, I should have never watched that movie. But Stardust was really, really good, far better than the book! So I lucked out there.

Been reading The Truth About Chernobyl and rereading Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series, and I'm in the fifth book, Kushiel's Justice now.

[RMDC]

I find I'm usually able to experience books and movies on separate tracks in my mind, so one doesn't overwrite the other.

That said, I really wish that the Harry Potter movies would overwrite the books in my head. I'm sure other people find Jay Kay to be a lovely writer, but I felt like I was grinding my face into fine-grade sandpaper getting through the first two, after which I gave up and went to the theater.

[Eliste]

That said, I really wish that the Harry Potter movies would overwrite the books in my head. I'm sure other people find Jay Kay to be a lovely writer, but I felt like I was grinding my face into fine-grade sandpaper getting through the first two, after which I gave up and went to the theater.

This was me with Tolkein, so I'm delighted good film versions finally came out. Got halfway through Lord of the Rings, through it across the room and never looked back.

[RMDC]

This was me with Tolkein, so I'm delighted good film versions finally came out. Got halfway through Lord of the Rings, through it across the room and never looked back.

Yeah, seriously. I've been reading The Hobbit to my girls periodically, which is better, but I remember what a slog it was getting through The Two Towers as a teenager.

And on the subject of things I've been reading to my girls: Susan Cooper's The Dark Is Rising sequence was a favorite of mine as a child. My eldest is firm that she totally hates it. She'll come around.

[MeiTow]

To be fair, the Potter series doesn't get good until Book 4.

[Ally]

I do love the Potter series too and while I believe JK Rowling to be a great storyteller and her world to be an absolutely magnificent one, I'm not so sure she's a very good writer so I don't think she quite did her creation justice. Having said that though, 'Prisoner of Azkaban' is one of my all time favourite books in general, mostly because it was such a different tone to the other books in the series.