I Can Read

I finally read a book, Solaris by Stanislav Lem. The American version of this movie is really one of my all-time favorites. The Russian version, not so much (although apparently Tarkovsky himself admitted it was his least-successful film).

The book is pretty good, although it took me a month to read in spite of being only 200 pages long. It’s difficult to critique books that are translated from another language, and this one certainly had some extensive passages that were overly dry. It also had some beautifully poetic passages, and I was glad to finally read the source material for these movies. Both movies take quite a few liberties with the book, but I can understand that, since large parts of the book are really unfilmable (or simply not filmic). Instead of sticking slavishly to the book, they use it as a jumping-off point.

I seriously doubt I’ll hit 25 books this year.