Friday, April 13, 2012

Blog Hopping 4/13/2012


Welcome, fellow bloghoppers! You're looking at the personal blog of S.J. Bell, independent author. My first book, Bonds of Fenris, is coming out May 7th, and reviews are starting to show up around the blogosphere.  Yesterday, I linked a number of early reviews. I saw The Hunger Games film a few days ago, and I'll post some thoughts on it sometime next week. And just to remind you, there are still ARCs of Bonds of Fenris available for book bloggers. So, if you're interested, my e-mail's right there on the sidebar!

I also have a review blog, Lupines and Lunatics. Latest review is Promise of the Wolves.



This week's ice-breaker for Feature & Follow:

"What is one book that you would be nervous to see a movie adaption of because you think the movie could never live up to the book?"

Kitty Norville, because it wouldn't work as a movie. The structure of the storytelling makes it much better suited to a TV series. But really, I think it's a mistake to think of a movie as an extension of the book. Thinking like that gives us adaptations like The Golden Compass, so obsessed with putting the big scenes and moments on screen they forget about the story thread that connects them. A proper adaptation is more of a retelling, like how Mallory's Morte d'Arthur took the old french Arthurian romances and repurposed them for contemporary British sensibilities. An adaptation, in other words, does not have to live up to the book. It has to live up to the story.




This week's ice-breaker for TGIF @ GReads:

"If you could read a book about any song, which song would you love to see written down in story form?"

When you think about it, isn't this the same question as above? A song, after all, is a story in itself. Some are more overtly narrative than others, but all of them tell a story. And you can adapt a story from one medium to another, but to do so you have to not be bound by the original text. I can't come up with an answer to this, but I'd be interested in how three to five minutes of music translates into 200+ pages. You need to expand a lot.

Of course, on the other hand, many of our earliest stories were also songs. Iliad and Odyssey, for example, are in verse because they're meant to be sung.

8 comments:

  1. New follower stopping by - couldn't agree more. Hollywood is too much about the spectacle, and not nearly enough about the storyline or the theme. Too much is lost in the translation from the page.

    Bob @ Beauty in Ruins

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  2. New follower :)
    I think it'd be interesting to see a lot of songs translate to a book but I'm not sure how the end result would be. Would it still have the same emotion and feeling? I don't think so. :3
    I'm not a fan of what they did to The Golden Compass either. It could have been so much better.
    ~Jaye

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  3. I like your point about living up to the story. New follower :)

    My FF Post

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  4. Haven't heard of that! For me, it's the Chaos Walking trilogy that makes me nervous.

    My follow friday. Please stop by.

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  5. I did not know Iliad and the Odyssey was originally a song?!
    Very cool to learn that..
    New follower to your blog..
    My TGIF

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  6. Hopping through. I'm not familiar with Kitty Norville. What's it about?
    My Hop

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  7. I thought those questions were very alike, too. Songs, books, movies.. I think it's hard to translate either one into another medium. Buffy or Gilmore Girls wouldn't work for me as a book-series. Most songs are as great because they are short and impressively relatable. It's just impossible, imo, to keep those traits when you translate them to another medium..

    Patricia // My FF

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