Book 17 of 2012

17) A Princess of Mars (John Carter of Mars #1) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
My wife and I are both huge fans of the TV show Friday Night Lights and generally give anything the creators or actors from that show do a shot. Sometimes they hit (like the movie Super 8 or NBC's Parenthood), but more often than not, they miss, proving that Friday Night Lights is more of an exception than a rule. Taylor Kitsch, Riggins from Friday Night Lights, played John Carter in the movie of the same name, and, despite the punchline it became in the press, we really enjoyed the movie, flawed as it might have been. There was plenty of action, lots of colorful characters, and Kitsch, given the right material, plays a pretty decent southern dude. Plus, Woolah, the giant Martian dog, is adorable.

John Carter, the enigmatic main character from 1860's Virginia, finds himself mysteriously transported to Mars, known as Barsoom to the native population. Inexplicably, Carter also explains that he's kind of immortal, as he has always been a man who appears to be in his 30's yet he doesn't remember his childhood. Fear not, though, as his immortality is never really a plot point that is ever addressed again over the course of the entire story. The weaker gravity on Mars gives Carter tremendous strength, speed, and agility, which he uses to lead the various forces on the red planet against one another and win the heart of Dejah Thoris, the titular princess.

The great thing about e-readers like the Kindle, Nook, or iPad is the tremendous reserve of the public domain, and the copyright for first five novels of the Baroom series expired a while back. Since I enjoyed the film so much, I figured that I couldn't turn down a free book, let alone the first half of a series of them.

Unfortunately, being previously unfamiliar with pulp novels, I found I wasn't a fan of Burroughs' writing style. Since each chapter was originally published by itself in a serialized format, the idea is that every section ends on a cliffhanger to entice the reader for the inevitable next installment. For a story that's set on a fantastical world with several different alien species and technology that was years ahead of its time starring a character that has legitimate super powers who's also immortal, Burroughs sure does give John Carter a Sahara dry personality. The exciting aspects of what he experiences are glossed over for the sake of one boring expositional speech after another.

Plus, and this may just be my anachronistic view of looking at a story that's almost a century old, but it's totally racist, right? The valiant white hero saves the natives from themselves and proves to be better than they are at their own customs, eventually becoming ruler of the entire planet. And let's not forget that the character fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War. What's the rule on something like that, by the way? Am I supposed to ignore it or over look it because of the time period or does it skew my interpretation? I'm leaning towards the latter.

Book 16 of 2012

16) A Storm of Swords (A Song of Ice and Fire #3) by George R. R. Martin
Having finished this Saturday morning, I have now exhausted my George R. R. Martin reserves, as I bought the first three books of the series when I saw the initial commercial for the HBO show's first season. The knowledge that too few of the characters I really like appear in volume four probably means that me and A Song of Ice and Fire are on a break until the third season begins next April. But that's okay because these books take a long time to read, and it'll be nice to devote myself to something else besides medieval political intrigue, weird incest, sword-fighting, and fire-breathing dragons.

The third book of the series focuses on four concurrent stories, beginning by overlapping with the ending of the second book so the reader can experience what happened in the various areas of Westeros while the Battle of Blackwater took place. Martin really delivers on a number of levels, the least of which are the character perspectives he chooses to utilize this time around: Catelyn, Bran, Arya and Sansa Stark, Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Davos Seaworth and Daenerys Targaryen all return while Jaime Lannister and Samwell Tarly also get near-narrator duties, which makes all the difference. Martin's clever use of perspective illustrates how well he knows the characters and how important it is to keep track of who knows what about everyone else. Plus, Martin devotes more time to the characters I enjoy and less to the ones I'm not nearly as into while managing to push the latter into the former camp by the time this edition ends.

By far, this is my favorite of the series to date. The first book involved a great deal of table-setting and benefitted from reading along as the first season progressed. The second book, in hindsight, is solid, but ultimately just that, because it serves as a long-winded continuation of the first by establishing even more characters and fewer things happening than befits the length of the story. The third book really hits a sweet spot. Each character is endearing and each of them has fascinating, often times devastating, things happen to them that serves to shape, mold and change them.

The first book deals with the compromises power necessitates, while the second is about keeping the perception of power despite the difficulty in doing so. Book three continually asks question, "How does one survive when said power is stripped away?" Several characters find themselves forced to deal with a new playing field when they no longer hold the power they once did, and the ramifications are very enticing.

Most rumors I've read say that this book will be divided into two seasons of the show, and anything less would really do a disservice to the story. So much happens along the way, and there's a huge moment just past the halfway point that would serve as the ultimate season finale cliffhanger that I'll be utterly gobsmacked if it doesn't happen that way. And the ending of the book would also be another awesome reveal for season four. The possibilities for how great this show can be are endless, and I suspect that's when I'll start the series again because the visual stimulation the show provides adds to the desire to experience the world Martin offers.

Book 15 of 2010

15) Star Trek: Destiny #1 - Gods of Night by David Mack
There are four concurrent stories going on during the first part of this trilogy. First, the USS Columbia must deal with the consequences of a surprise Romulan attack in 2168. Second, third, and fourthly, the Borg are going nuts in 2381: Captain Picard and the Enterprise crew are on the front lines, Captain Riker and the Titan crew are on an exploration mission far from the battle, and Captain Dax (...WHAT?) and the Aventine crew have been tasked with investigating how the Columbia  crashed in the Gamma Quadrant two hundred years ago as a means of trying to discover a new tactic to combat the Borg.

My Star Trek mania in my high school years ran deep. And, trust me, I did myself no favors socially by loving Star Trek as much as I did. One time, I wore a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 t-shirt and two of my friends shunned me for the entire lunch period. Granted, those two weren't really great friends and that incident was indicative of larger problems at the foundation of the friendship (which didn't last much longer after that school year), but even that event didn't stop me from still loving Star Trek. A big part of my mania for the franchise involved reading the books.

Since I grew up on The Next Generation series and Deep Space 9, for my money, is the best Trek series ever produced, I found myself really intrigued when I saw a new novel pop up in the iBooks bookstore. It was based in the years following Star Trek: Insurrection, a movie that wasn't really good, but focused on characters beyond the Enterprise crew and involving the DS9 cast. However, that book's plot followed up on the events from this series, which brings together a host of characters across the four modern Trek series: TNG, DS9, Enterprise and...ugh...Voyager. But it's not all bad! Janeway is dead! Any series where Janeway is dead and Dax is captain instead can't be terrible! Plus, what better way to not feel woefully inadequate at meeting my 2012 reading goal than with a couple of popcorn Star Trek books?

It feels like there should be a huge quality line dividing a licensed novel from run-of-the-mill fan fiction that's available anywhere on the Internet. Often that line exists in the execution of the writing: a story idea might sound great but the author gets so bogged down in the minutiae of reference and flowery language that the writing suffers. Elmore Leonard once wrote a series of tips for writers, the most important being "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it" Holy crap, does David Mack's writing sound like WRITING. From over-the-top and unnecessary vocabulary to self-impressed descriptions of majestic scenery, there are many times when Mack could really benefit from getting to the point. However, when he does get to the point, the writing is banal and mundane with a ton of fan service wanking references.

The end streamlines the stories down from four plotlines to three, which should help things. There does seem to be an intriguing story here underneath all of the writing, enough so that I'd like to continue the series. Were it not for the fact that I dig the characters and the universe so much, though, dealing with the quality of writing would not be an option.

Book 10 of 2012

Book 9 is on the way. It's just a better book, so it's more difficult to discuss.

10) The Postmortal by Drew Magary
The cure for aging turned out to be surprisingly simple. The implications of the cure are far more complicated. The premise of a world where people don't age but can still very much die sounds like one that's rife with all sorts of social and philosophical commentary; the potential is definitely there. Unfortunately, Magary's first novel feels like a wasted opportunity.

Framed as a blog written with an awfully convenient transcription device (which makes the naval gazing protagonist, John Farrell, all the more unlikeable after the fact) which researchers discover long after "the cure" has been outlawed, the book is divided into four parts, each one separated by a seemingly arbitrary period of twenty years. Most of the entries are from Farrell's point of view, but there are sporadic occasions where Magary plays with voice: article collections or letters from acquaintances. The biggest problem of the book is that the further it strays from the present, the worse the quality of the plot becomes. Arbitrary is the best possible word to describe the series of events beginning with the conclusion of part two and ending with the deus ex blonde chick of part four, along with a myriad of things in between.

There appears to be this habit of newly published novelists to write their stories with the movie option in mind instead of just writing a book that functions as a decent book. While this could all be trumped up to my personal bias having read this book between A Visit from the Goon Squad and 2030. All three of the books show a near-future with enough similarities to the present that it never feels too alien. Egan and Brooks' novels, though, make a more successful effort of creating nuanced characters as opposed to Magary's series of events that might happen in the future to people. There's a big difference between things that happen to folks and characters having experiences.

Book 8 of 2012

My sixth period students watched Othello, and I managed to finish this book.

8) Undisputed: How to Become the World Champion in 1,372 Easy Steps by Chris Jericho
Top five wrestlers, go! My top five always has at least ten guys in it, like any good top five should. Number one is The Rock. A rotating cast takes up numbers two through four; currently that cast consists of Macho Man, Ric Flair and CM Punk. Other folks that could fill out those three slots include Edge, D'Lo Brown, Steve Austin, Owen Hart, Brock Lesnar, Bryan Danielson (a.k.a. Daniel Bryan), AJ Styles, Darren Drozdov, and Kurt Angle. Number five is always Chris Jericho. I guess that kind of makes Chris Jericho number two of my top five, but I like the idea of a pair of bookends for the list. He stood out enough in WCW, to the point that I would track down tapes (VHS tapes!) of him in ECW and Japan. I vividly remember the day he arrived in WWF after the Countdown to the New Millenium clock finally reached zero, and his involvement in a show is always something to watch closely because even when his storyline sucks, he's still the best aspect of it. The point is that I like Chris Jericho more than the average wrestler.

This is Jericho's second memoir; the first dealt with everything in his career through his run in WCW.  During the Monday Night Wars between WCW and WWF, his decision to leave Atlanta for the greener pastures of McMahon's organization was huge news, and the first book culminates with his debut in the WWF, ending just before he took the stage to interrupt The Rock's promo. This one picks up with that promo and details his first WWF run, but it also splits time between the ups and downs of learning how to function in the new company with him starting his band Fozzy. It's not really a spoiler to say that this book ends with a sequel in mind, as the last page leads up to his return, which was his most successful run to date, both financially and creatively. Jericho has a deal in place for book three, but I imagine we won't see that until after he retires.

Jericho often writes in a juvenile fashion, thinking it funny to add "-ski" (loadski, dumpski, etc.) to words and make pop culture references that just a year after release already feel dated. His first book came across as a series of Livejournal posts that were collected and bound for publication, but that tone and style fit a guy telling the story of growing up in Canada, learning the pro wrestling trade, and finding success all over the world at a young age. Of course cracking wise in a similar vein as his character at the time makes sense because Jericho's character was a bombastic nerd who engaged in malapropisms to get under the skin of his enemies.

But this is the story of a guy realizing both of his dreams (working for the WWF/E and becoming a huge rock star) and reconciling those dreams with the realities of having to treat them as grown-up jobs with the political potholes and mistakes that accompany any place of employment. It's a story that requires a tone slightly more mature than the one he utilizes. There are definitely times when he drops the Jericho character and writes earnestly and times when said crude tone doesn't detract from what he's relating; however, the book could have used some more consistency and sophistication.

It is a book about guys dressing up in tights and acting like they're fighting each other or playing instruments on stage, though. There's plenty of amusing stories and Jericho's journey through the minefield that is the inner-workings of World Wrestling Entertainment is an enlightening one. He's both honest and guarded at the same time, offering insight into how he viewed certain situations but never saying too much that it might come back to bite him. The chapters dealing with Fozzy also shed some light on how a low-level band has to operate in order to get a modicum of success, and that's with the added bonus of having a group of individuals who were already semi-famous.

The book culminates with two milestones: his mother's death and the Benoit family tragedy. Jericho finds closure in the former, going so far as to contact the man he's always held responsible for her becoming a quadriplegic and suffering for the last decade and a half of her life. The chapters dealing with Chris Benoit offer insight into a man wound up tightly, who was able to compartmentalize so many aspects of his personality that his actions both continue to baffle his closest friends and family and yet also make a sort of morbid sense. Jericho presents the man he knew and relates his reaction to the murderous events of that weekend in June of 2007, but, deep down, his confusion surrounding what happened still haunts him. In effect, his efforts to make sense of what Benoit did leads into his comeback to WWE. Jericho gives the impression that he gained his motivation back for the wrestling industry in spite of one of his best friends almost destroying it in an attempt to help it recover.

Overall, Jericho offers a great sequel, but it's definitely dependent on having read the initial volume.

Book 7 of 2012

Shortly after returning from a trip to Portland, I completed this on our designated rest day.

7) The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell
The Puritans! No, wait! Don't go anywhere yet because Sarah Vowell does a really great job of not only making the 17th century Puritans interesting (despite the fact that they kind of aren't), but she relates and connects their trials and tribulations to our modern world. Just what do a collection of ragtag religious zealots have in common with today's society? Why, religious zealotry, of course!

Vowell brings her usual quirky take and nerdy sensibilities to the subject matter, romanticizing the idea that these principled folks moved from England to the harsh unknown of Northern America out of a sense of duty to their religion more so than in an effort to stick it to the monarchy, as most narratives usually frame it. Her enthusiasm is evident from the beginning and makes what would otherwise boring material come to life. The Puritan folk are interesting to her because of their opinionated and writerly ways, something I can totally respect.

BUT...

Geez, guys, they're still Puritans and it's still a lot of really snooze-worthy stuff dressed up in a really nice Sarah Vowell way. Sarah Vowell is awesome, but the subject matter is weak. I definitely didn't hate it, but it was definitely more medicine than sugar, you know? The book really comes alive towards the last 60 to 70 pages when Vowell starts to discuss Sarah Hutchinson and how she struggled (and ultimately failed) to overcome the prescribed gender roles of the period. Despite only being portrayed in negative and harsh light by her detractors who kept the records, Hutchinson still comes across as the winner in a debate with the accusers of her trial, winning her arguments with logic and being told she loses just because.

The section on Hutchinson is Vowell at her finest. She's still really good during the rest of the book, but it''s a bit more of a chore to get through than I expected.

Book 6 of 2012

Some close friends got me an iBooks gift card for my birthday, so I went on a Raylan Givens spending spree.

6) Pronto by Elmore Leonard
The first Raylan Givens story showcases a guy named Harry more than it does the hero of the tale. Harry is a bookkeeper for the mob who's been falsely accused of skimming more than the acceptable amount off the top, and it's up to Raylan Givens to save him from a Sicilian hitman. Characters shift between Miami and Italy as Harry fails to retire on his own terms. Meanwhile, Raylan makes the effort to keep Harry alive. While Harry is an interesting guy with an interesting background that includes his involvement in World War II and Ezra Pound poetry, Raylan is the most complex character in the book. He's a guy born in the wrong time who enjoys his cowboy hat and what it allows people to think of him.

Elmore Leonard's books specifically and detective-style novels in general have been a category which I've always had a keen interest but never took the time to read. Serialized books that follow a single character through his or her many adventures feels right up my alley considering my interest in comic books. Plus, of the Elmore Leonard based movies I've seen, it would take less than one hand to name the few that have disappointed. That dialogue and characterization really won me over before I picked up the book, but it's presence here is unavoidable and welcome.

Having been a fan of FX's Justified for it's now two and a half seasons, I entered into the series with a preconceived idea of Timothy Olyphant's single minded portrayal of the US Marshall who tends to have an Old West attitude. The focus on Harry, his girlfriend Joyce, and the various mobsters involved took away from what I thought would be an all Raylan, all the time story. Judging the book based off my expectations isn't fair, either, and I admit that, but it didn't kill my enjoyment completely. Raylan is still wry and stoic...and also a complete badass. It's too bad there are only two other books and another short story devoted to the character.  At least there's still Justified.

Book 5 of 2012

5) I'm Dying Up Here: Heartbreak and high times in stand up comedy's golden era by William Knoedelseder
Dealing with the standup comedy scene in Los Angeles during the 1970's, I'm Dying Up Here focuses on Mitzi Shore's The Comedy Store and the efforts of the comedians to make it big and attempt to get paid until they did. The book focuses on several different comedians, but the main character is the venue, with Pauly Shore's mom serving as the villain of the piece. Shore's argument was that the comics used the store as a showcase to hone their craft while the comedian's argued that the renovations, cocktails, meals, cover and assortment of different rooms provided Shore with enough money to pay the folks that everyone else paid to watch.

The problem with nonfiction audiobooks with a large cast of characters is that it's impossible to keep everything straight. There are at least four Steves and three Toms named over the course of the book, and keeping their stories straight considering that some play ancillary roles and others are vital to the narrative without the visual aspect of seeing how their last names are spelled creates a disconnect that makes it easy to get lost.

The last quarter of the book consists of the negotiations between Shore and the comedians to get compensated for their time on stage, and the minutiae of what each performer should receive and the accompanying back and forth was a numbers game that made me want to skip to the next chapter every time. The same applies to Steve Lubetkin's list of things he felt he required to continue his comedy career, including boots, money for singing lessons and a host of 18 other things with reasons that served to explain why he experienced the outcome he did. My audiobook experience prior to this consisted of books by comedians and fictional stories focusing on a single character's arc, neither of which asks the listener to keep track of too many things other than the narrative.

While Knoedelseder is exhaustive in his research and clearly put the time in to get the story straight, there's very little insight into why these men and women felt the need to become comedians or how they became inspired to do the jokes they did, something that would be just as important as the history of the comedy club that launched so many careers. In that regard, it falls short. The history is pretty fascinating, but keep in mind that history is pretty much all the reader gets.

Book 4 of 2012

After reading this book off and on for seven months, I finally finished this on President's Day weekend. I originally planned to take an extended break from the series after finishing this volume due to the enormity of each book, but seeing that the first POV chapter is Jaime Lannister actually has me rethinking that idea.

4) A Clash of Kings (A Song of Ice & Fire, #2) by George R. R. Martin

The second part of Martin's immense epic that's served as the source for the hit HBO show continues right where the last one left off. Westeros is in turmoil as the country plunges into civil war over who should be the rightful heir to the Iron Throne. Besides Joffrey, the son (in name only) of the recently deceased king, there's Renly and Stannis, brothers to King Robert, Robb Stark, the proclaimed King of the North, along with Balon Greyjoy and Daenerys Targaryen. Frankly, it's a job that's accompanied by problems that someone wouldn't wish on their worst enemy, so it's difficult to understand why they would want it. The same three basic stories continue from before: the aforementioned war to gain control of the Seven Realms of Westeros, Jon Snow and the Night's Watch folks travelling north of the Wall to investigate zombies and find their missing members, and Dany Targaryen trying to return to home with her dragons.

The big difference in reading this volume compared to the first is the lack of the television show as a supplementary guide. Reading the first book concurrently with watching the show revealed the surprising lengths the latter took to follow the former, and the show also took some of the characters that received short shrift in the book and fleshed them out. Thanks to some of those moments, some of which came to the forefront more in this volume, the motivations and misconceptions I may have had were easier to understand. Without the show this time around, I was left to my own devices. That's not a negative, as it has me pumped for Game of Throne's return on April 1, but it was jarring and revealed just how much the show spoiled me for the rest of the books. Considering fans of the series have had to endure a majority of their time as fans without the series AND with long gulfs of time between volumes, there's never been a better time to jump on this bandwagon.

Where the last book was about the relationship between power and compromise, this one deals more with maintaining the perception of power when one recognizes how much their grasp on it can wane. Each of the characters has a tenuous grip on the power they wield, and the differences between many of them comes down to whether or not they recognize how tenuous that grip can be. 

The scope of the story continues to expand, and the note at the beginning of book three explains that some events occur concurrently with the Battle of Blackwater. Knowing that helps going into the third book since, despite how large and encompassing the story is, it felt like a few of the characters were ignored far too much. Robb Stark appears to be having a ton of success, but the reader only gets to hear about it second hand. Some of the characters that do get their own POV chapters are left out in the figurative cold as well. More Davos and Daenerys would certainly be welcome compared to the amount of Sansa, Catelyn and Bran we receive. The Starks are the center of the story and the family the reader is supposed to be rooting for, but too many of the other characters are far more fascinating. But the series so far is literary pizza in the sense that even the bad or boring stuff (food descriptions, I'm looking at you) is still plenty entertaining.

Book 3 of 2012

My brother and his wife gave me this book for my birthday because I've been a huge Brock Lesnar fan for a long time and almost got them in trouble with their downstairs neighbor once during the Shane Carwin fight by jumping up and down when Brock survived the first round of the fight. There is literally nothing exciting about how I finished this book, though.

3) Death Clutch: My Story of Determination, Domination and Survival by Brock Lesnar with Paul Heyman

For the longest time, I could honestly say that my favorite fighter is Brock Lesnar. I vividly remember hearing the stories of the 300 pound NCAA Division I Heavyweight champion training at OVW who could do a shooting star press. His WWE debut is seared into my brain because poor Maven, Al Snow and Spike Dudley had to take all of those vicious slams the night after Wrestlemania. His time in the WWE was something to behold because he took to pro wrestling so well and so quickly that it was clear he had the potential to be an all-time great. Then he quit. And while I'm still a pro wrestling fan, I started looking at UFC and found myself even more intrigued with a sport that essentially answered the question "What if pro wrestling were real?" And wouldn't you know it? Two years after I became a fan of the sport, rumors started circulating about Brock Lesnar trying his hand at MMA. I've bought every single one of his fights on pay per view, from his debut to his retirement, and even attended his loss to Cain Velasquez live. It was really easy to call the guy my favorite fighter...until I read his book.

All the athletic skill Brock Lesnar possesses makes him fun to watch. All of the bombast and egotism that drives him makes it fun to anticipate when a person can watch him again. But all of those things that make him perfect as a draw are the exact kind of things that make it really hard to like him. Part of Brock's appeal is that he is an intensely private person. He enjoys putting on the show, but he figures that putting on the show is his job. Once he's done with his job, he just wants to go home and be a family man that's left alone. It makes him more intriguing that he wants to play the game on his own terms. I'm not one to spite him that mindset, however he makes a big point on the dust jacket of the book that this is the one time he's letting everyone into his private world. Too bad that it never actually feels that way.

Case in point: during the beginning of his WWE tenure, his daughter Mya was born. The passive voice is key here because he never mentions before that he has a wife or a girlfriend, that he even got someone pregnant. From the book's point of view, Mya was delivered by a stork that decided that Brock Lesnar needed a baby. There's never any insight into what would have probably made a very interesting story. It's all surface level information that could have been gleaned through a quick read of his Wikipedia page. 

His daughter's story is not the only time this occurs. The pattern of the book is as follows: Brock wants to be number one at [insert athletic achievement here]. Brock fails or succeeds. Brock moves on to [insert next athletic achievement here]. People get in Brock's way. Brock SMASH! It's repetitive and, really, kind of boring. He comes across as someone who is hard working, who doesn't buy into any of the hype surrounding the endeavors he engages, but instead wants to make the most amount of money that he can due to his humble beginnings. 

There are two ways to consider Brock Lesnar after reading this biography: either he never lets the reader penetrate the mystique that surrounds him, or the mystique was never really there from the beginning. There's some interesting information from a fan perspective, but, ultimately, it's a disappointing read.

Book 2 of 2012

I finished this book after waking up this morning. By the way, book one of 2012 was Shakespeare's Othello, which I read and annotated because I'm teaching it for the first time this year. In order to avoid getting sick of it before my students even start reading the play, I'm holding off on a proper review of it. It is pretty great, though.

2) Cool Hand Luke by Donn Pearce
For the longest time, I had no idea this book existed because the movie starring Paul Newman has always stood on its own as such a timeless piece of cinema that I never thought to question its origins. A few minor events are switched around from novel to film, but the things that happen are familiar. Lucas Jackson, a war "hero," gets sentenced to two years in a Florida chain gang and is too bullheaded for the guards' liking, so they proceed to try and get his mind right by breaking him down.

While the movie is a character piece, and the book does focus on Luke as the central figure, Pearce spends the majority of the novel detailing the harsh life of the chain gang. It's written in first person from the perspective of another prisoner who admires Luke for the savior-type leader that he is but also recognizes that no good outcome can result from Luke's behavior. Pearce provides insight into Luke's past, explaining how and why Luke's time in World War II led to his disillusionment with religion and disdain for authority.

This is a good book, and I really enjoyed it, but that enjoyment is also somewhat tainted by the film. Paul Newman and George Kennedy so encapsulate those characters and the movie itself is such a classic that it's difficult not to compare the two. Much like Fight Club, this is an occasion where the film trumps the original work. In both cases, the filmmaker decided to focus on the characters and landed actors that could do a great job fleshing them out and making them whole. That streamlined approach helps achieve the status it still holds today. Meanwhile, the book, by discussing the cruelty and despair of the chain gang life, touching on the depravity that men sink to during war, and merely hinting at the savior figure that Luke becomes in the eyes of the camp has a more scattered view. By tackling so many themes, it fails to accomplish getting a point across about a single one of them.

As a companion piece, to the film, this is an interesting read. On its own, it's merely just good but not really great.