not a book nor a show/movie; but have you heard of ‘Epic the musical’?
https://www.epicthemusical.com/
Someone is making the odyssey into a musical and releasing the music to it; I love it.
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The sequel to that just came out recently too.
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We finished the first season of “The Swarm” yesterday, it’s based on the same named book by Frank Schätzling.
The book is readable, the tv show is awful 
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Sadly that happens all too often.
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Been listening to a podcast breaking down house of the dragon (the book)
And its fascinating but makes me dislike the show a bit. The book is this really in depth look at how we read history. Because its all about the sources of things and whats actually known and why certain things are included and biases etc. There is alot between the lines that you only get if you disect it a bit.
But the show by nature of being a show and being set at the time of the events rather than a historical retelling makes things alot more definitive. It takes out alot of the puzzle out what really happened nuance and its replaced with very apparent here is what happened.
Either way shows still good just a different experience once you deep dive into the source material
Edited: deleted some because I cant seem to get spoiler tags to work
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I just finished the Screaming Staircase and rather enjoyed it. So far the TV show seems to be quite a close adaptation.
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Just got done rereading a biography of Charlotte of Belgium/Empress Carlotta of Mexico.
One of these days I need to start watching Outlander again. I have the first 5 seasons on DVD. I’m just upset that the writers took/take liberties and make stuff up, thinking they can improve on the source material (spoiler alert: they generally can’t).
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I’m not reading anything in particular currently, but I did fairly recently read The Willows by Algernon Blackwood for the first time.
Any fan of weird, inexplicable and overall creepy stuff should look it up. It’s from 1907, so it’s in the public domain nearly everywhere (except a handful of countries with a 120 year copyright length). Audiobook versions can be found on Project Gutenberg, an online version is on Wikisource and there’s a free audiobook version on LibriVox.
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Regarding Outlander, I read the books when they came out, but stopped when they moved to America. Given that it’s been 30 years since the first book came out and the series has exceeded what i read, it’s all new to me. That’s a benefit!
It would bother me also if i recalled discrepancies from the original books; they were well-written.
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That’s a good point to stop, the pre-American era is much better!
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There’s one of the books in the Georgie (Her Royal Spyniess series)-when I first saw the cover-it gave me the feeling of like a Alfred Hithcock movie. But I couldn’t put my finger on what it was reminding me of… but once I opened up the book there was a foreword note saying the book was heavily inspired by the Rebbca story and I was clued in to what was making me think that
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For the last season of Star Trek: Picard they are going all out. Fourth episode last night and it had me on the edge of my seat. NGL I cried at parts. They are truely going all out for the fans.
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That is good to hear! I still need to watch season 2 of Picard first. I usually watch this with my brother when he visits, so that is why I’m so behind. I may not wait until Thanksgiving (in November) to finish.
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Captain Shaw is a great lawful evil character, I’m really enjoying loathing him.
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I’ve just finished watching the final episode of series 3 of His Dark Materials. It was quite good, but i did have some criticism.
I have no idea if this is down to the adaptation, or if the original trilogy was like that. But here we go.
Firstly, the sub plot where the priest has been tracking Lyra down to kill her. Just as he is about to shoot her with a sniper rifle, an angel turns up and kill him. My criticism here is two-fold. Firstly, this sub plot might just as well never happened as it had no impact on Will and Lyra. Secondly, the resolution of this sub plot was not driven by Will and Lyra; they didn’t even know it happened.
The plot of the dust disappearing was resolved by Will and Lyra kissing. The big plot had ended the previous episode with Lyra’s parents sacrificing themselves by pushing Metatron into the abyss. Will and Lyra spent much of that episode as what TV Tropes would describe as Pinball Protagonists; they are the main heroes, yet had nothing really to do other than follow everyone elses directions. So i had hoped they would be a bit more active in resolving at least one plot thread in the climax, but nope.
But at least the groundwork for that plot thread had been set up, some of it way back in series 2. My final gripe was about why Lyra and Will could not live together. It really wasn’t set up at all that being in other worlds could be harmful. People throughout all three series were regularly going between worlds, some of them living there for many years with no apparent harm.
Oh, and no creating portals, because we are now told that creates spectres, apparently. Classic example of Tell, dont Show, as I never saw that happen. Unless it was discussed in a previous series? It’s been over a year since I saw series two.
It all gave me a feeling of constraints being added at the last minute, just so the final scenes could have a big impact.
But despite these gripes, the whole three series were pretty good, with excellent performances and more than a few gripping moments.
And as for the theme tune? Amazing!
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Does anyone think bookstores’ mystery shelves should have a tag line of “They don’t go looking for trouble, trouble usually finds them” because that’s what mystery books characters seem to happen to them they don’t go looking for trouble but trouble usually found them. Wether its teenager (Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, or Tom/Liz Austen) to elderly amatuear dectivies like Agatha Christie’s characters.
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Stephen - good to know! I keep meaning to read the books, but didn’t know there was a series as well.
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I know I mentioned before I’m reading a historical fictional novel and wondering what Edward VIII saw in Wallis Simpison. Wallis is what you might want to call one of the orginal “Karens” - Wallis’ interactions with the “OC” (Original Character who I’m going to just call Georgie from here on ) protangist in various books…have been unpleasant… so unpleasant that Gerogie’s also fictional Sister-in-law (Fig) and Wallis could have something to bond over in their hatred for Georgie
Anyway-at the end of the last book- Edward VIII’s father (George V) died, and Edward VIII (who is Georgie’s cousin) is currently on the throne. Basically a lot of people are in Paris, France for a Channel show (Georgie’s second) that Georgie knows- her Mummy who is one of those types of woman who just leaves one man when the former one got tiring and her latest fiance is German, Georgie 's best friend from private school who was one of those naughty girls but been wanting to do fashion for years, of course Channel is there (Georgie meet her last time in Nice, France), an adventrous polish Princess (who i think is fictional like Gerogie) and of course Wallis herself.
Now like sometimes in the past books Georgie been accused of doing (crime)…but this time Wallis instead of being unplesant to/about Georgie she’s actually comes to her defense even to the point of bringing the British Ambassador down to the Paris, France police station after Georgie was taken there.
The first time Wallis acted this way in the book I was like wondering “did an alien take over Wallis?” and I was laughing so hard, I could barley continue reading the book.
I did read all three books years ago. Don’t remember a lot, but I do remember the ending. Which felt really rushed to me. Haven’t seen the show.
But what you’re describing sounds exactly like what I remember from the books. The priest spends a lot of time stalking them and then gets ganked to no consequence. The plot is solved by a kiss. Portals = evil. That last one was foreshadowed if not stated outright - it’s why the world that invented the Knife was the one overrun with specters. And I think one guy - Will’s father? - was shown to be really in bad health after living in another world for a decade or so. Still, the thing about One Portal Only did feel like it was pulled out of nowhere. I think there was speculation that the character who stated it was actually a mole for the Authority and it was foreshadowing more books when they realized this.
Though to elaborate on the kiss, IIRC it’s implied that they actually mostly solved the problem when they freed the dead, but as they were still kids, they couldn’t affect the Dust themselves. Once they became adults, Dust-wise, it responded to them and because they helped the dead who turned back into Dust, the pair became the force that most strongly affected it.
I have been thinking about rereading the series. Might be better to watch the show instead, if I can get my hands on it.
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It’s on the BBC iPlayer, and has had a DVD release too.
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