Stone Soup by Jan Eliot for November 07, 2008

Holly 1, Val 0.

margueritem (referring to yesterday’s comment): Mabinogion is a collection of stories that forms the national mythic epic of Wales. Some of the stories overlap with Arthurian legends. They predate the books you mentioned by a few centuries.

Actually, margueritem:

Val had a 1 yesterday when Holly talked about “time-honoured tradition” (in tennis equivalent, Holly had hit the ball back to Val after it bounced twice)–so score is tied.

I can however remember reading (for essay-technique analysis) in grade-12 English a paper on reading comic-book versions of classics (these exist for such titles as “Ivanhoe”, “Silas Marner”, “Moby Dick”,…) which pointed out the defects of this approach; Val should google to see if she can find that paper–and point that whatever the paper says about comic-book versions also applies to movie versions.

As runar also states, there are probably some things which would be extremely difficult to cast as movies–good example of this would be many Hindu myths. Even an Indian director/producer, late BR Chopra, found that the Hindu epic Mahabharata took 94 episodes (of 1 hour each) to cast–VERY noncoducive to casting as a movie.

I read a book to my kids, then we watched the movie. Talk about being upset when the villian in the movie was NOT the same as in the book. (Plus noticing all the parts they left out.) I homeschool them, so wanted them to learn why watching the movie isn’t the same as reading the book.

Thank you, Runar. I always look forward to learning something from your comments. I’m guessing you went to a prep school, with your mention of the satchel, and reading books that most of us would not be introduced to. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Wel… Val wasn’t entirely wrong. Some books are more entertaining than others. Books you have to read for school are for the most part boring, not like a book you might choose to read. Just knowing you “have to” read it for school takes all the fun out of it.

But in my English class one time we were assigned The Hunger Games. It’s a good series.

Movies are more pre-packaged entertainment, which means the packaging has to target you well or it misses you. Books are more audience-engaging, often rise above the society for which they were written, and engage the imagination more.