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Reading fiction already seen (a bit) on screen

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    Reading fiction already seen (a bit) on screen

    I only dipped into Game of Thrones on TV, never followed it closely until the final season. Having enjoyed that (or just been swamped by its inescapable presence) I bought the first two books, and so I've started from about a decade ago, so to speak.

    It's been fun. I'm aware of who makes it to the end (or the interim end, as we wait for the next book). But I don't really know who all those people were, barring the headline acts like Jon Snow and Peter Dinklage's one. "Who is Ser Theydon Bois of Maida Vale? Is he Lady Aldwych's brother?", etc.

    Unfortunately, this also means I have to stay off the internet and avoid all human contact for as long as it takes me to plough through all these books, which could be years. Spoilers are lurking everywhere. Even throwaway references, like radio pundit X calls politician Y a "Lannister, not a Stark" ... Nooo!

    I'm sure I've read quite a few novels after they were BBC teatime dramas (Dickens et al). But either I forgot the details, or they simply weren't as prominent in popular culture. Game of Thrones is a whole new challenge.

    Starting a thread on it might not be the smartest move either. Oh well.

    #2
    Haven't and won't see or read any Game of Thrones but in general, reading a novel after seeing the screen adaptation often works for me. Helps me visualise the characters and locations. Knowing what happens next is seldom annoying if I remember (and when it's book first, it doesn't bother me on the screen either) and sometimes certain things are different, anyway, like the end of Little Children, say.

    Think I'd find reading American Psycho tedious (the brand-clothing descriptions, the Patty Fucking Winters show) if I hadn't seen the film a few times but I'm sticking with it because it's so vivid. Certainly less shocking than if I were reading without prior knowledge. Perhaps less funny and absurd too, though. Been meaning to get around to Ballard's High Rise for a while now. Doubt I'll enjoy it as much as Wheatley's film as The Drowned World and Concrete Island were fine but I doubt I'll re-read them.

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      #3
      I read The Shining after seeing the movie. It was an interesting experience, particularly in seeing masters of two different crafts employ two different sets of techniques to ramp up tension. In Kubrick's film there is a long sequence of Wendy driving a cart through the empty hotel, where you expect a jump scare around every corner that never comes. In the book, when Jack snaps and attacks Danny, King slows down time to ramp up the tension, describing everything in more detail so that fewer minutes pass per page. Both were worth my while, and I do not regret seeing the film first.

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        #4
        Originally posted by MonkeyHarris View Post
        Haven't and won't see or read any Game of Thrones
        Nor me. Anyone else?

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          #5
          There's a lot of us about...

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            #6
            Similar demographic, innit?

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              #7
              You mean we're old?

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                #8
                I've thought about reading GOT, but don't know if it's worth it. By the time I get around to it, I'll have forgotten the TV show.

                I read Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit after seeing the 70s animated ones and then reread all of that after seeing all the Peter Jackson ones. It allowed me to appreciate how it was adapted.

                I started to watch The Expanse before reading the books, so I started with an idea of what some of the characters looked like in the show, but am now five or six books ahead of the show. And by the time the show gets to a particular point, I've mostly forgotten reading it.

                Same with The Magicians. The show got me interested in the books. But the show deviates a lot from the books and is already longer than the books, so having read them doesn't provided much insight into where the show is going. It hasn't for a while.

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                  #9
                  Thrones is absolutely not my thing, I fucking hate Tolkien, for example but a postgrad whose judgement in popular fiction I had come to respect gave me the 1st one and I really liked it so persisted alongside the tv version.

                  There are lots of well publicised differences but the main one for me is that the hugely condensed form of the last two seasons detracted from Martin’s ability to world build in a way which provided social context and social motivation whereas the tv became about individual stars/characters.

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                    #10
                    I'm just reading Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, having seen the great film adaptation with Bogart et al at least 2 or 3 times. Fortunately those occasions were all a long time ago (starting in my school years in the good old days of the 1970s when the BBC used to broadcast loads of golden age cinema), so memory has faded a little bit and, whilst a lot of the scenes come back to me quite vividly, that's often as I read rather than before I read.

                    Chandler was an awesome writer. I mean, not without his faults - there are a bits of homophobia in TBS which were typical of that era, and there are also hints of misogyny - no strong positive female characters and very much a "man's world" - I'd be surprised if RC ever wrote anything which would pass the Bechdel test - and at least one really odd and arguably misogynistic outburst from narrator/lead character Marlowe - but bloody hell he had a gift for noir, with his sharp turns of phrase.

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                      #11
                      Finished The Big Sleep and, whilst my recollection of the film is a little hazy (soon to be refreshed as I have it on DVD), I'm pretty sure that the ending differs from that of the book in at least two or three very material respects, so it had some surprises.

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