Those of you who’ve been with my blog from the beginning and no doubt a few who’ve joined recently no doubt no I’m a big reader. But I don’t think any of you know how much I truly love reading.
Ever since I was in grade school, reading has been my greatest passion. Throughout grade school, junior high school and almost all of high school I spent all my free time – and a large part of my time in class – with my nose in a book. There is an excellent chance I failed several classes and maybe even a semester or two, because I couldn’t get my head out of my book. My parents objected maybe when I was reading at dinner and probably when they were talking to me more out of frustration with my personal attitude towards people then to what I was doing.
This love of reading has diminished slightly as I ventured into adulthood, but it has never really slowed down: I’ve just become more efficient at it. It is not uncommon for me to be reading as many as four books at a time on any given day and to have a book on my nightstand before I go to bed. Even considering my job as a television critic, which I love without a second thought, there’s no question that my devotion to the printed word has always been my primary focus.
And to be clear the emphasis is on printed. I will read articles on line and I’ve read a lot of fanfiction over the years, but I have always held – perhaps too obstinately – that it doesn’t count as a book unless you hold it in your hands and turn the pages. I never owned a Kindle and actually think the idea of it sacrilege. I did have a thing for hear books on audio when I was younger (I will date myself and say that I listened to many of them on LP) but if I’m being honest I kind of feel that’s cheating too. A book needs to be held in your hands. You need to feel the pages and have it take up space. Perhaps this goes back to my school days when, while a teacher was making his or her rounds of the classroom, I would learn to tuck my book inside the desk that I looking at it under. It’s a variation of a certain saying: “It’s only reading if you get caught.’ (To be clear I was caught many, many times. I didn’t stop.)
Somewhere I read a Jefferson quote from a letter to John Adams: “I can not live without books.” That is, in essence, my greatest truth. I might possibly be able to exist without television if it were disappear – I’m not sure how at this point – but a world without books? Let me put it this way. My room at home would almost invariably have books everywhere. Almost every patch of carpet would be covered by them. This often spread to other rooms in the house – living room, family room, and probably most objectionable to my mother, the kitchen. Periodically, my mother would demand I clean up, which usually meant throw stuff away, i.e. my books. I often would facetiously comment that getting rid of one was like cutting off a limb. I wasn’t entirely joking. I was, as Stephen King puts in so many of his introductions and epilogues, a Constant Reader. More than that, I am a Constant Re-Reader. There are books on my shelves I have read eight, nine times at least and some that I have read only once. I will get rid of neither book voluntarily. The argument is basically: “I might read it again someday.”
This can’t come as a huge shock to those of you who have read my column. I am a huge fan of the literary adaptation and particularly during the era of Peak TV, I have come to the conclusion that the limited series is almost invariably the best form of adaptation for any book. The British, like everything else, came to that realization quite some time before we did- almost everything of Dickens comes out better in a mini-series and I, Claudius probably put PBS and Masterpiece Theater especially on the map. (I’ve sometimes wonder at the breadth of detail – I’ve never understood how the barely 280 page Brideshead Revisited could have merited a nine part miniseries – but I’m told they make it work.) America, of course, has bungled about it for awhile. Some of the first truly great miniseries for broadcast television were adaptations of books – not just Roots, but Rich Man, Poor Man and North and South. Because we believe in excess, we eventually screwed it up – ABC’s adaptations of War and Remembrance probably put the nail in the coffin of the big time broadcast network mini-series – and though there have been some occasional flashes of brilliance – most of them involving Stephen King adaptations – network TV basically surrendered the title.
Once HBO, basic cable and eventually streaming came about, it became crystal clear that the literary adaptation in the limited series had found its perfect form. One need only look at the nominees and winners of Best Limited Series the past decade and find a literary adaptation or two, often evolved to a form far more palatable to the modern audience. Some of my favorite moments in TV from the past decade have been from this form – I speak not just of Big Little Lies or Little Fires Everywhere, but lesser triumphs such as Showtime’s Patrick Melrose or AMC’s The Night Manager. Almost invariably with every new adaptation, I go out of my way not to have read the book first – much like Roger Ebert did every time he saw a movie based on a book, he didn’t want to be prejudiced. Later on, I do read the book and invariably this will introduce me to great authors in their own right – I would never have gotten involved in the work of Lianne Moriarty without Big Little Lies.
But after several years, I have actually considered a different approach, which is the point of this column. What of the book will most likely never be adapted into a TV series or movie? Either because it’s too bound to the page or more likely, because it’s not commercial enough. The unfilmable book is becoming less common – Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series has finally been adapted for TV by Apple after decades of unsuccessful attempts to get it off the ground – but there are some books that are actually more interesting, more deserving of being turned into film or TV, but most likely never will because they’re too complex. For years, I have admired the work of Marsha Pessl, who has three novels that are among the most brilliant that I’ve ever read, but none of which have seen even an offer for filming. I know why: the first was basically framed as more of a quiz book than an actual story (though it have a very easy plot to follow), the third, designed towards young adults, involves a very dark subject and a major novel is critical to it, and the second is about a cult filmmaker and is involved as much as journalism and films than it is the plot. Not even the lead character seems to realize that until it’s over. All of them are readable, but I don’t even think a visionary director like Wes Anderson or Denis Villeneuve could make movies from them, and I can’t see Amazon or Netflix even trying to make a limited series.
I should also mention that I spent a lot of time, when I visit the library or a bookstore, I find myself drawn to the YA section. Not the paranormal section or the dystopian section (and they’re there believe me) but more than often then not certain writers who have visions that overtime have impressed me and a style that I like. When I was young, two of the authors I worshipped the most were Robert Cormier and Gordon Korman. The former is dead; the latter had his first published book when he was fifteen. Both wrote completely different kinds of books – Cormier’s had a dark, nihilistic view of youth and adulthood (I am the Cheese remains one of the most unsettling books I’ve ever read even after thirty years); Korman’s characters are more eccentric and lighthearted. The only thing they have in common is their utter genius and, honestly, the fact that too many of their novels were way too short. (I reread The Chocolate War and Son of Interflux half a dozen times each in eighth grade alone.) So I spend a lot of time looking for the next Cormier and Korman. (The latter published at least three novels a year, but sadly most are aimed an audience that I can no longer relate too – junior high.)
I’ve found more than my share of great authors and some genuinely great novels within them. The kind that you would think would be worthy of, at the very least, a small independent film or maybe a Netflix adaptation of the same. (And to be fair, there have been quite a few good ones of novels of that sort on the latter. UnPregnant is definitely pertinent.) But far too many of these novels don’t get noticed because, honestly, they’re often very bleak or sometimes, a little too complicated. I’ve also found more than my share of series of novels that are far more deserving of a big screen franchise that Stephanie Meyer’s books ever were but as of yet, no one has jumped on them. Also unfair.
So I’ve decided to what everyone else does and have my own Book of the Month Club. Each month, I will write an article about a book – probably not a recent one – that, because of my connections to certain TV, movies or maybe just human nature – has resonated with me. I don’t know if they’ll be your cup of tea in particular, but hell Oprah didn’t exactly make the best choices either over time and she had a far bigger audience then I ever will.
I need to make this clear. This club is not here to sell books. It is for you to read books. Go to the library, track it down on Amazon, go to a Barnes and Noble – find it yourself. However, I should make this clear. I strongly urge to go the library and find it first. Because once you’ve read these books, there is a good chance you may not want to keep them on your shelves. Not because they’re bad, but because they’re memorable. And while some of them are the kind of books that are cheerful and make you feel good, quite a few of them are books that you will be unable to forget. Because the picture they paint is too real, too painful, and to be clear, too human. Some people might want me to give warnings about them. I feel the opposite. They need to be to read because we need to know these parts of ourselves and if you know why, you’ll avoid them because you don’t want to feel that way. Great art needs to make us uncomfortable. Of course, because I’m equally fond of books that make me feel cheerful, there will be some of them too.
So next week I will have the first ever entry in the Constant Reader Book of the Month Club. I intend to approach it the same way I have approached every television series I’ve reviewed: tell you what’s about, what it makes me feel like, the work of art it reminds me of, and tell you why you should read it without giving anything anyway. I don’t deny this will be a challenge for me, but it is one I look forward too. And I have a feeling that there are some of you – you know who you are – who will feel the same way.
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