Last month, we witnessed something special. Millions of people worldwide gathered around their televisions to enjoy the long-awaited event. We whipped up tasty snacks and shared our favorite beverages. Some of us cheered while others sneered. But we all beheld it together.
Of course, I’m talking about the teaser for The Rings of Power. Sure, there was the Super Bowl and all, but that was just the appetizer for the main course.
In September, we’re headed back to Middle Earth, and based on my social timelines, just about everyone has something to say about it. I’ve been cautiously optimistic about the project since Amazon purchased the rights in to certain portions of Tolkien’s estate in 2017. The production value will no doubt stun (it better, considering it’s already the most expensive series ever made), but I have my concerns about the money-flush behemoth’s storytelling abilities.
Any bibliophile knows the phrase that ties us all together: The book was better. More often than not, it’s true. But all the chatter about this show has had me wondering why book-to-film adaptations maintain such a losing streak?
No doubt part of it is the medium. When reading a book, we absorb a character’s interior life in ways that film cannot convey, glimpsing their inner thoughts and emotions apart from visual cues. There’s an intimacy in the form that doesn’t always translate to the screen, and vice versa.
But books possess more than simply technique or genre. Zadie Smith describes them as having beliefs, and if you fail to recognize a book’s beliefs, you miss the heart of the story, even if you reproduce its plot to a tee.
Peter Jackson’s Middle Earth trilogies are good examples of this. His adaptation of The Lord of the Rings is one of the most lauded series of all time, with the final installment, The Return of the King, tying Titanic and Ben-Hur for most Oscars won by a single film.
And here’s the kicker: he completely changed the ending, cutting out close to a quarter of the final book’s plot. Still, he managed to translate the story to the screen because he understood what it believed. The power of friendship, the need for virtue, facing darkness at any cost, clinging to hope when all seems lost—these beliefs take center stage, not at the expense of the story, but as its life source.
The Hobbit trilogy came nowhere close to the same result. Pressured by studio demands, a book a fourth the size of The Lord of the Rings was split into three bloated films that indulged in far too much CG, pandering to the market at the expense of the story and what it believes. Even with Jackson at the helm, they remain average films, at best, because they failed to capture the story’s beliefs.
I’m prepared to be disappointed by The Rings of Power, but I remain hopeful for the time being. Still, whether or not you care about the show or Middle Earth, it’s a timely reminder that books, like any other story medium, do more than entertain. They instruct us in becoming human. They educate us in beauty. The more challenging the read, the more the opportunity we have as readers to grapple with a formative experience.
So, the next time you settle in with a new book, ask yourself: What does it believe?
February Reads
Recitatif by Toni Morrison—This slim narrative is Morrison’s one-and-only short story, first published in a 1983 anthology, and now reissued on its own. Morrison described the story as “an experiment in the removal of all racial codes from a narrative about two characters of different races for whom racial identity is crucial.” And as an added bonus, Zadie Smith contributed an introductory essay to this new publication, analyzing the genius of what Morrison accomplished through her brief tale, one Smith likens to “a high-wire act in an eagle-eyed country, ever alert to racial codes.”
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss—After finishing The Name of the Wind last month, I immediately dove into the second installment of Rothfuss’s yet-to-be-completed trilogy. Though at times the plot seems to meander, indulging in too much detail and exposition, it’s an immersive read that has kindled high expectations for the final act of the mysterious story of Kvothe. And if you find the physical book’s 1,000+ pages too intimidating, give it a listen on audiobook, as the narration is fantastic.
Greenwich Park by Katherine Faulkner—Entering her third trimester, Helen attends a prenatal class where she meets Rachel, a mother-to-be who lives outside the rules. She swears, drinks, and curses, and against her better judgment, Helen finds herself drawn to Rachel, whose lifestyle runs counter to Helen’s picture-perfect one. Before long, however, Helen begins to grow suspicious of Rachel’s intentions, as she demands more of Helen’s time and appears to know far too much about her past.
March’s Most Anticipated
The Fell by Sarah Moss—I first stumbled on Moss’s writing with her slim novel Ghost Wall, which turned out to be one of my favorite reads of 2019. With her latest release, she plunges into lockdown life, following Kate, who, while observing a mandatory two-week quarantine, takes a quick nighttime stroll and ends up injured, alone, and unable to move. The Fell is sure to be both an elegant and weighty consideration of our responsibility to care for one another—even in times of isolation.
The World Cannot Give by Tara Isabella Burton—I’m not sure where Burton finds the time to churn out so many writing projects, but I’m glad she does. Following up her debut novel, Social Creature, and her non-fiction release Strange Rites, her new novel blends the two in a plot about charismatic religion as it devolves into cultic control and the victims left in its wake.
The Scandal of Holiness by Jessica Hooten Wilson—One of my favorite pieces we’ve ever published at Fathom was written by Wilson, and her writing has only grown stronger since. In The Scandal of Holiness, she argues for the necessity of imagination on the path toward holiness and demonstrates how literature strengthens us as we strive to become better people.
The Bald Eagle by Jack E. Davis—I’m a sucker for books focused on niche topics. Some of my favorites have covered salt, salmon fly-tying, Yemeni coffee, the truffle trade, and the semicolon. So when you combine a Pulitzer-winning historian with a survey of the bald eagle, you have my attention.
The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd—What is the purpose of a map? Nell Young finds herself chasing the answer to that question following the death of her father, an acclaimed scholar in cartography. Nell hasn’t spoken to him in seven years after he ruined her own aspirations, firing her without explanation. But when she rediscovers the map that led to her firing, one she previously thought worthless, she is drawn into a dangerous journey of discovering the secret behind the map and outrunning the collector willing to kill to possess it.
Reading Roundup
A syllabus for a new world—In her book Station Eleven, Emily St. John Mandel popularized the phrase, “Survival is insufficient.” Alissa Wilkinson teases out that idea further by reflecting on the recent pandemic years through the lens of a number of apocalyptic works to show how humans need more than the bare necessities to truly survive.
What Min Jin Lee Wants Us to See—The beloved author of Pachinko discusses everything from her approach to research to her habit of reading the Bible before she writes in this insightful interview.
Who Needs Reading?—Get a taste of Jessica Hooten Wilson’s wise words with this short essay asking and answering the question, “Who needs reading?” The short answer: you.
How a Book Is Made—Ever wondered how a book goes from an overstuffed file on a computer to printed and bound pages in your hand? Wonder no more. This piece walks through the process Moon Witch, Spider King (featured in last month’s newsletter) went through before it hit shelves.
Tournament of Books—March is for filling out brackets. So once you’ve crowned the Kansas Jayhawks as this season’s basketball champs (Rock Chalk!), be sure to keep up with the Tournament of Books. If nothing else, you’re sure to discover a new read somewhere on the list.
Afterword
Launched as an alternative to Amazon’s Goodreads, The Storygraph is an app for readers to keep track of their reading habits and build community with others. While Goodreads still has a more intuitive interface overall, The Storygraph has some features that really set it apart, like charts and graphs with data on everything from your preferred genre to the mood you crave in your reading.
Best of all, it resolves one of my biggest pet peeves about Goodreads by allowing you to rank books in quarter increments (4.25, 4.5, 4.75, etc.) as opposed to simply 1–5. Overall, it’s a more nuanced platform that I’ve been enjoying. Plus, you can export your entire Goodreads library so that you never lose a read, ranking, or review. If you make the switch, be sure to add me to your friend list!
I'm looking forward to Tara Isabella Burton & Jessica Hooten Wilson's books! Everything they write (books, essays) is so worthwhile, so I'm eager to delve into those new releases..... eventually!