The Devil Wears Prada (The Devil Wears Prada #1) by Lauren Weisberger

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a chance to add a new book to my “the movie is better” tag, so at the very least, I owe The Devil Wears Prada credit for that.

(seriously, I could talk to the screenwriter of the movie for literally hours about the process of adapting the book and how she arrived at some of the brilliant choices she made – and how she managed to cobble an actual story out of what is essentially a long monologue that your friend delivers over happy hour drinks about how much her job sucks – but that’s a whole other review)

Crazy Rich Asians (Crazy Rich Asians #1) by Kevin Kwan

After being briefly obsessed with the Gossip Girl book series in high school, and then the show a few years later (and then abandoning it once Georgina reappeared with Dan’s baby god that show was trash and I loved it), this seemed like the next logical step. Crazy Rich Asians is Kevin Kwan trying his hand at the ever-popular genre that can best be summed up as “hey look, rich people!” The fact that the rich people featured here are all based in Singapore, rather than America or Europe, gave the book an interesting dimension and gives Kwan a chance to (briefly) touch on deeper issues of prejudice and toxic social norms within the rich Singaporean community.

Cracks by Sheila Kohler

I knew what I was getting into with this one, I really did.

Like most people who have reviewed this book, I decided to seek this out because I had just watched the movie version and wanted to know how the two compared. Going into this book, I knew that the movie had taken several huge steps away from Kohler’s original story, and based on that knowledge I was pretty sure I wouldn’t love the book as much as I loved the movie. And I was positive that the book version of Miss G couldn’t come close to Eva Green’s charismatic, psychotic portrayal. But “Psychotic Schoolgirls Who Maybe Murdered Somebody” is one of my favorite literary genres, so in I plunged.

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

Damn you straight to hell, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, look what you made me do. You made me read a goddamn vampire book. Not only that, you made me read a vampire book with a cover made entirely of shiny ostentatious gold material that shouted to everyone in the library as I checked this out, “Look everyone! Madeline is reading a book about vampires! SHINY SHINY SHINY LOOK AT ME! I CONTAIN SEXY BROODING VAMPIRES AND I AM SO EFFING SHINY.”

(I cannot stress how shiny-gold this cover is. Like, the ancient Egyptians would look at this cover and say, “That’s a bit much.” It was awful.)

Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson

“Squire Trelawney, Dr. Livesey, and the rest of these gentlemen having asked me to write down the whole particulars of Treasure Island, from the beginning to the end, keeping nothing back but the bearings of the island, and that only because there is still treasure not yet lifted, I take up my pen in the year of grace 17- and go back to the time when my father kept the Admiral Benbow inn and the brown old seaman with the sabre cut first took up his lodging under our roof.”

Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, illustrations by Greg Call

*Reviewer’s Note: obviously, there isn’t a movie version of this book (yet, anyway – they’re supposedly working on one, which will probably be terrible but I’ll save that rant for later) so I’m going to tag this book as The Movie Is Better because I can’t be bothered to create a tag just for The Stage Adaptation Is Better.*

First, Some Background: (for review of actual book, please skip ahead to paragraph four) In the spring of 2011, I spent four days in New York with three of my college friends. As we are all giant theater dorks, our sole objective was to see as many shows as we could for as cheaply as possible (a feat we accomplished quite spectacularly, thank you verra much). One of my friends, the the giantest theater dork of us all, had heard fantastic things about an off-Broadway show called Peter and the Starcatcher, and convinced us that we had to venture away from Times Square in order to see it. After a subway adventure and waiting nervously to see if we got stand-by tickets for the sold-out show, we got in.

The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux

*WARNING: THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*

Before we start off, let me clarify something: because I can’t be bothered to create a “the Broadway stage adaptation is better” tag, my “the movie is better” tag will have to suffice here. The Phantom of the Opera, the show, is a giant, absurd, bombastic display of every bad misconception of theater, and is the main reason Andrew Lloyd Weber is able to fall asleep on a bed made of money every night. The most recent movie version is worse, although if you can manage to see the silent film version from 1925, it’s actually pretty cool – last I checked, you can watch it instantly on Netflix. It’s not my favorite show, is what I’m saying – in fact, I don’t even really like the show, come to think of it (which begs the question of why I read this book in the first place, but whatever). So, with all that in mind, Loud Bookish Type Inc now presents:

Why The Phantom of the Opera the Book Is, Somehow, Worse Than The Stage Show And Every Movie Version Released So Far:

The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett

Honestly? I think the awesomeness of Nick and Nora Charles got built up a little too much for me before I read this, because I was expecting two hundred pages of nonstop witty banter, and was mildly disappointed. Sure, Nick is funny in a dry sarcastic way, and Nora is the sassy drunken aunt you never knew you always wanted, but their banter and witticisms only caused the occasional chuckle.

Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

I heard about this book for the first time when I saw a preview for the movie version – it looked cool as hell, and so I immediately put the book on hold at the library. A lot of other people must have had the same idea, because I remember having to wait several weeks to get my hands on a copy, but eventually I did. And then proceeded to devour the damn thing.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

After leaping enthusiastically onto the bandwagon with everyone else back in 2009, I feel a certain amount of pretentious indie pride saying that I wasn’t as awed by this book as everyone else apparently was. Which is not to say that the book wasn’t enjoyable and exciting; it just didn’t knock my socks off whilst simultaneously blowing my mind and rocking my world.