Book # 41 A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

Lucinda and I occasionally discuss whether or not it is better to see the movie version of something before or after reading the book. She seems to always prefer seeing the film first. I however am the opposite. My thinking is that reading the book is more time consuming than watching a film version (except for maybe The Hobbit), so I want to keep the excitement of having the plot unfold for the reading experience. Also, seeing a film version first makes you imagine certain actors while reading the book and takes away some of the imagination one uses while reading. So, I bring all this up because a month before reading A Passage to India we watched the David Lean film version. And I really enjoyed the movie because I really knew nothing at all about the story.

The story is set in British ruled India where Miss Quested is visiting Ronny Heaslop to determine if she should marry him. While there Miss Quested,  Ronny's mother Mrs. Moore and a British headmaster Mr. Fielding befriend an Indian doctor named Aziz. He invites them to visit some caves and *SPOILER* while alone in a cave Miss Quested mistakenly believes that Aziz tried to assault her. Then there's a big trial and everyone gets upset and stuff happens.

So having just seen the movie I couldn't help but imagine the actors while reading the book and knew exactly what was coming in the plot (and the film is fairly faithful to the book except for maybe placing a bit more emphasis on Miss Quested by showing her actually travelling to India and a pretty quick resolution to the misunderstanding between Aziz and Mr. Fielding that ends the story). All that being said I still enjoyed the book and liked the way Forster writes. The only drawbacks to me were that I wasn't familiar with all the Indian terms used throughout the book (and I'll admit laziness to not looking them up) and Forster would frequently make sweeping stereotypical statements about the differences between Indians and the British such as "Suspicion in the Oriental is a sort of malignant tumour, a mental malady, that makes him self-conscious and unfriendly suddenly; he trusts and mistrusts at the same time in a way the Westerner cannot comprehend."

I'd recommend the book and give it an A-. I'm curious though if my opinion would be any different if I hadn't seen the film first.

Mystery Book # 16 and Horror Book # 26 - The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris

While I was reading The Silence of the Lambs I realized that I really don't remember all that much from the movie. I'll have to watch it again to see how close it is to the book. But what I remembered as the basic story outline from the movie is the same as in the book: FBI agent in training, Clarice Starling, tries to get information out of captured serial killer Hannibal Lecter that could help in the search for another serial killer, Buffalo Bill.

Just like the book that precedes it, Red Dragon, I really enjoyed it and felt that Harris moved the story along at a nice quick pace and gave us enough of a peek into the minds of the characters to know all of their motivations and feelings. Unlike in Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs gives us more time with Hannibal and not the actual serial killer that is being chased. I guess I'll eventually have to read the next book in the series even though I've heard it isn't that great.

I can see how the book ranked so high on both the Mystery and Horror lists. It is very readable and every once in a while Harris throws in a nice little poetic sentence to describe a characters feelings or past history. It is also thrilling and scary. I'll have to give it an A.

Book # 62 The Golden Compass (His Dark Materials Book 1 of 3) by Phillip Pullman

The first time I read The Golden Compass was around the time when the movie came out seven or so years ago. I ended up reading the whole series and for the most part enjoyed it even though I had some problems with the final book. Sadly the movie wasn't that great and the whole series never got filmed.

The first book in the His Dark Materials series, The Golden Compass, focuses on a young girl, Lyra. She lives in a sort of alternate fantasy universe which is slightly similar to our world except that there are flying witches, talking armored bears, and everyone has a daemon which is a part of them. A daemon is a sort of spirit that is partnered with each human and takes the form of an animal. As a child a person's daemon can change shape to a variety of animals, but as that person matures the daemon takes a static animal form. Lyra is being raised at Oxford College which is run by the alternate universe's equivalent of the Catholic Church. Her "uncle" Lord Asriel is investigating a mysterious phenomenon called Dust while the church is trying to stop him. There is also Mrs. Coulter who is running experiments that involves kidnapping poor children and then trying to separate their daemons from them. So of course Lyra gets involved in both Lord Asriel's and Mrs. Coulter's plottings and also ends up becoming friends with a talking bear and a cowboy from Texas.

There is a lot of stuff going on and Pullman does a great job of building up this world and the politics of how it works. The only problem is that the first book doesn't tell a self contained story at all and, as I recall, by the third book too much stuff is going on and everything gets jumbled up. But I should wait for my report on the final book to go into that. The first book gets an A-.