Text and images by Nora Vasconcelos
It’s funny how many books I’ve read after I’ve seen a movie I’ve totally loved based on those works, but how few movies I’ve seen after reading a book.
The reason for that is that when I read a book I create all sort of images in my mind about the characters, their image, their behaivor, their feeling and even the way they dress every day. I also picture all their world around, their houses, workplaces, cities and even their friends.
So it’s really hard for me to watch a movie based on book I loved because in the movie everything is different. Stating from the appereance of the characters and contunuing with all the rest. Everything is different from the vivid images I have in my head, and it’s a difficult thing to face, specially because characters from books have the amazing capacity to make reader feel close to them, even attached to them.
Many times, after I finish reading a book, I keep on wondering what else could’ve happened to this or that particular character, and I even dare to imagine new adventures for those lovely characters.
There’s also the factor of feeling that a particular scene, or several, have been omitted, and most of the time, the dissapoinment shows up after seen the movie.
Although, I have to say that there are some books I really wish they were made into a movie such as Final Theory by Mark Alpert or The Last Dickens by Matthew Pearl, and The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomanson
On the other hand, when I see a movie at the cinema and I like it a lot, if it was based on a book I usually enjoy reading the book, with this nice sensation that something new might appear at any given time. One of my favorite books that I read after seen the movie, is P.S I love you by Cecilia Ahern.
And one movie I absolutely loved, that I wish it was based on a book is The red violin, but it’s not, it only seems so because of the magnificent way it was developed and presented.
A couple of TV Series besed on a book that I really liked were Noble House and Shogun, both by James Clavell.
