With tomorrow’s airing of the Diana Gabaldon series Outlander, I started thinking about what I consider good vs. bad movie adaptations of books. If I love a book, sometimes I dread watching the movie because it might not live up to my expectations. I, of course, was not disappointed by The Godfather or Gone With the Wind, two great adaptations that come to mind. I rarely watch the movie version before reading the book; I don’t want to ruin the reading experience, which is more important to me. However, last year I read The Perks of Being a Wallflower after watching and loving the movie. I have to say, the book didn’t pack the strong emotional impact of the movie.

Some of the worst adaptations are old movies. Both The Foxes of Harrow and Valley of Decision (I watch a lot of Turner Classic Movies) are poor adaptations of the books, though not bad movies on their own. (Though I still prefer the 1945 version of Mildred Pierce over the more recent televised version, even though it wasn’t faithful to the book.) Perhaps in present day, movie producers tend to be more faithful to the source work so as not to disappoint the expectations of the book’s fans.

Some of my favorite movie adaptations are: Shutter Island, The Silence of the Lambs, the Harry Potter series, The Exorcist. (I do hope that Outlander will join that list because it’s based on one of my all-time favorite novels.)

Worst adaptation: I choose The Shining; again, not a bad movie on its own, but not nearly as good as the book. It really lost me at the Heeeeere’s Johnny scene. I just cracked up.

As a young reader of the classics of English literature, I often came across phrases in French, which I could not understand. It irritated me because I couldn’t look up the words in a French-English dictionary–I didn’t have one, and this was long before the Internet existed.Given that we live in a monolingual society here in the US, of course I didn’t know French. I am bilingual but my other language is Spanish, which I learned in the home and later improved by studying in college. In my home we spoke in Spanglish:

Me: Mom, what’s for dinner?

Mom: No estoy preparando dinner. Vamos a un restaurant tonight.

Recently I read the Pulitzer Prize winning The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Junot Diaz. I consider it to be one of the best and most unique novels I’ve read. Some of the reviews that I came across on the Goodreads site complained that the author used too much Spanish when he wrote the book. Yes, there is some Spanish, but it doesn’t take away from the story–it enhances it. Considering that it is a story partially set in the Dominican Republic, it makes sense that at least some Spanish is in the book, as I’m sure that it makes sense that there is some French in the literary classics that I read. It is a shame that in the US we traditionally have failed to promote the learning of a second language. I think being bilingual or, even better, multilingual, is a gift. It makes us more well-rounded, we can converse with a greater number of people, and . . .  when we read a book that throws in the occasional foreign language phrase, we might be able to understand it.

Sometimes it’s still hard for me to believe that I’m a novelist. Some might say that I took the easy path by self-publishing, and to be honest, there have been times when I’ve thought that myself. But, why not self-publish? I’m not looking for prestige, fame, or tons of money (though all of that would be nice). I’m looking to express myself through my writing and to share my stories with readers. Self-publishing allows me to do that.

I took an early retirement from a successful career as a librarian and, I’m sure like many others before me, found myself with a lot of spare time. It wasn’t until the end of my fifth year of retirement, after working part-time for a while and unsuccessfully trying to develop serious hobbies, that I began to write. Five months later, the first draft of a novel was completed. Then it took another two years to rewrite and edit it, during which time I also made unsuccessful efforts to find a publisher and an agent. Ultimately, I self-published because it was the quickest way to get my work out to readers. At my age, I didn’t want to take a chance that my novel might not get published until I was eighty years old (if I’m lucky enough to live that long).

The novel is titled My Doormat Days, and it is the coming-of-age story of a young Latina. I was inspired to write the book partly because of my own experiences dealing with issues of self-confidence and self-esteem, which are topics to which many readers can relate. I also was inspired to write it because I wanted to tell a story of an average, non-stereotypical Latina, a character that is not often depicted in mainstream fiction. I’m proud of the book, but now I’m dealing with the unpleasant side of writing, marketing one’s work. If you’ve ever written a book, you know what I’m talking about. One cannot write a novel, or any book, make it available on Amazon, and then expect it to sell itself. That just isn’t going to happen. In future posts, I’ll write more about marketing.