I think I can, I think I can

I never thought I’d say this, but turns out sometime the movie/TV IS BETTER than the book.  

I have this longstanding rule that if I know a movie was inspired by a book, I have to read the book first before watching the movie. It’s for this very reason that to this day I’ve never seen the Lord of the Rings movie. 

Now when The Hobbit comes out, I’ll be “allowed” to watch that. 

I just love reading, generally. I love using my imagination to dream up settings, to create character mannerisms — with the guidance of a skilled author, of course.

Besides once you see a director’s vision of a story, or an actor’s interpretation of a character, you can’t erase that. 

So I like the Bones TV series. There’s something quirky and fun about Temperance Brennan. Something fascinating about the science they do, the cases they solve. The chemistry between the characters. 

And I learned a couple years ago that the whole thing was inspired by Kathy Reichs, a real-life anthropologist who has written 15-or-so books which served as inspiration for the TV series. 

One of my best friends, Andrea, has read the books and recommended them. I’ve been known to raid her bookshelf on more the one occasion. We have similar taste.

So when I saw “Break no Bones” at the Kelowna Friends of Library booksale, I thought “why not?” Of the 14 books I bought for $1 each, this was one of the few I’d ever heard of before. The rest I “judged by its cover.”

Newsflash: I can’t STAND the way Kathy Reichs writes. It’s choppy, it’s full of mundane, irrelevant detail. I feel like she was given a 500-page stack of blank paper and felt she simply HAD to fill ALL THE PAGES. 

I mean, I’m all for descriptive writing. I get the point behind Lucy Maud’s never-ending flowery descriptions of PEI scenery (even if I find them a bit dull — though I grew up seeing those things every day so maybe it was like preaching to the choir). Hell, I’m known for my ability to digress and head off on tangents. 

And Temperence? She’s boring. Not even in the “clueless I am a giant squint” kind of way. Just boring. 

“I looked at the dog. He wiggled his eyebrows. The cat ran away. I went for a long walk with the dog.”

I can’t even make her more interesting by pretending it’s Emily Deschanel. 

I’ll be really really really glad when this book is over. I started it in the summer, and am only 80 pages in (only 250 to go!)

*I think I can, I think I can, I think I can*