BTT: Diaster, Paper to Film, and Giving Up

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I haven’t done one of these in a while, and when I finally see one I want to answer, I have connectivity issues! So without further ado, here are my answers to the last three BTTs, starting with today’s  —

9 September’s Booking Through Thursday:

You’ve just dropped your favorite, out-of-print book into a bathtub, ruining it completely … What do you do now?

Well, not very likely to happen — I take showers — unless I drop it into the toilet or into a sink full of water. But for the sake of the meme:

1.  Look for a copy on-line through a book swapping site or other secondary market; check local used book stores. If price is steep, decide just how dear the book really is to me and proceed from there.
2. If unable to find any paper copy anywhere, and absolutely must have it, check for e-book availability.

2 September’s Booking Through Thursday:

Even though it’s usually a mistake (grin) … do movies made out of books make you want to read the original?

Usually, very much so. And results have been mixed.

Exhibit A: The Moon-spinners by Mary Stewart. When I was a young girl, I saw the movie and loved it. My mother told me that the movie was based on the book. At the time, it would have been above my reading level, but I had hoped to read it one day. By the time I did, I had forgotten most of the movie, but I really loved the book, and wanted to compare it to the movie. Well, it took a few more years before I got around to seeing the movie again, and boy, was I ever disappointed with it!

Exhibit B: Jane Austen. Thanks to Colin Firth and the A&E/BBC production of Pride and Prejudice, I became a fan of Jane. Since this adaptation was so faithful, I can say that I love both book and mini-series.  I love the P&P mini-series so much, it is one of the few movies that I’ve bought over and over again, either from wear and tear (VHS) or wishing for a better, longer-lasting copy (DVD). And I recently bought a Blu-ray player — and found out that the mini-series is available in that format! Pure joy! As to her other books and their various adaptations, I have my favorites, but even the bad or indifferent versions have helped me better understand the books.

(A side note — My mother, thanks to me giving her my VHS box set, became a reader and fan of Jane Austen. Though my father will never actually pick up her books, he loves to watch the movies — and heckle the likes of Mrs. Bennett, Mrs. Elton, Anne’s family (Persuasion), and nearly half the cast of Emma Thompson’s version of Sense and Sensibility — it’s a pity he’s never seen Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey, he’d have a great time heckling Aunt Norris and the Thorpe siblings!)

I can’t recall, off the top of my head, any movie I thought was better than the written work.

26 August’s Booking Through Thursday:

If you’re not enjoying a book, will you stop mid-way? Or do you push through to the end? What makes you decide to stop?

Mid-way?  I’ll stop sooner if the book isn’t holding my attention, or I’m not enjoying it for whatever reason (flow, characters, plot, etc.).

So far, I’ve been pretty lucky with my reading choices. I’ve been able to finish nearly all the books I’ve started this year. I try to be fair and give the book a chance to hook me, but I have a huge “to be read” pile.  If I can’t get into a book for whatever reason, I have plenty of others to choose from.

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