EPBOT Readers discussion

Hi everyone!

I put up the check in late last week, so I dont have tons of progres this week.

I finished The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye which was alright. I found it a bit predictable and some of the storylines felt pretty forced together. But it did seem to set up for the next book, so maybe they'd get resolved better later.

Currently I'm reading The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women it's alright so far. It reads a bit like Hidden Figures but more tragic.

Did everyone see that popsugar posted the new reading list for 2018? https://www.popsugar.com/entertainmen...

Some I'm looking forward to, others less so. But it'll be fun! I'm going to enjoy a couple months of no challenge reading first.

How's everyone else doing?

I'm also excited about the list--there's lots of good prompts on it that I can already fill with books I wanted to read once I was done this year's list. But I'm also looking forward to some list-free reading in later November and December.

I'm still chipping away at The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. I admit that I haven't done much reading of it in the past few days--there's just been a lot on the go. Also, on Tuesday I had to return a book to the library and ended up checking out Good Behavior. I'm pretty much obsessed with this TV show right now, so when I found out it was based on a series of novellas, I couldn't resist, and I even found a place for it with my remaining prompts: apparently it's a Mystery-Suspense (with more than a touch of noir), which I did not actually know was a thing, so it fell into my "book in a genre you've never heard of" prompt. This book brings together the three novellas that inspired the TV and includes notes from the author about how they were/were not adapted for TV. Fun fact: the author is also the guy who wrote Dark Matter and The Wayward Pines books, so he seems like kind of an "it boy" for having stuff adapted to TV right now. (I haven't read either of these and would love to hear about them from people who have.) The book was interesting, but I have to say I didn't love it The main character on the show is one of the best female characters I've ever seen in terms of depth and complexity, and she just didn't translate for me in the books. So, I gave it a solid three stars and chalked it up to this being one of those few times where the source material is not as good as the movie/series. It was, however, interesting enough for me that I read it all in one night, and I can't remember the last time I did that.

So, that leads me to the question: Have there been adaptations that you've loved more than the book? Or, have you ever been disappointed in a book character that you first came to know through an adaptation?

Stephanie,

I read Dark Matter, I didn't love it. The premise was kind of interesting but the author did a lot of the "and that was the last time he ever saw her" heavy handed foreshadowing that I decided I don't like. I also didn't like how he wrote the one woman in the book. I thought the ending was kind of weak too. Not the worst thing I've read, but I expected to enjoy it more.

I like True Blood way more than the novels. I didn't really care for them, and I only got maybe 6 in before I stopped reading. I thought that the show made the side characters way more interesting, and took focus of Sookie who I find to be kind of tiresome. I still don't love her in the show, but she's balanced out with Lafayette, Jason, Tara, Eric etc.

I HATED Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. I only finished the book because the 2015 book challenge had a prompt "book you started reading but stopped" . However the BBC miniseries was excellent! I devoured it! They fixed everything that annoyed me about the book. (Too much long winded descriptions of imaginary books, terrible pacing, read like the driest history)

So it does happen!

Hi all - Sadly not much to report here. Work and life have sucked away all my free time in the last week and a half, so I'm still working through World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. Work is finally letting up, so I'm hopeful that I can read a bunch in the next few weeks. Only 5 prompts to go (from the 2016 challenge... haha!).

The 2018 list does look fun! This is the first time I've done a reading challenge and I was sure that once I finished this set of prompts, I wasn't going to do another one. After all, it's taken me 2 years to complete. But after looking through the 2018 PopSugar list, I might change my mind. Before I saw that list I was thinking I might read a banned book each month or maybe every other book was a banned book. Hmmm... lots to consider, but first to get through the current challenge I guess.

Adaptations that I liked better than the books.... Not sure that this counts, but a friend highly recommended the TV show based on The Magicians. I hated the book. It covered way too much - it seemed like the author was in too much of a hurry to properly tell the story. I wasn't attached to the characters or invested in their storylines and at the end I wondered why I had bothered reading it. I haven't watched the show yet, but I'm going to give it a try.

Hello! I finished Nuts this past week and really enjoyed it. I have the next book in the series on order at the library. It was time for a light-hearted romance.

Right now I'm most of the way through If I Understood You, Would I Have This Look on My Face?: My Adventures in the Art and Science of Relating and Communicating. I am really enjoying it! As someone in STEM (software engineer) I definitely think that being able to talk about science/tech to non-technical people is really important. It talks a lot about connecting with the audience, relating to people as you speak to them and weaves how improv techniques apply in so many situations. His book is inspiring me to investigate improv classes at our local theater. I almost want to look up to see if his center at Stony Brook University offers classes during the summer. How cool would it be if he taught them!! Anyway, improv classes would be terrifying as I am a total introvert. My husband wants to read it too, maybe we'd do it together.

Sheri - I saw The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women in the book store. Please share more about it when you're done as I think I will add that to my library list. It looked really interesting.