On Beauty

I realise I am very late to the party in discovering Zadie Smith - but wow!

On Beauty tells the story of the Belsey family and their various relationships, in and around a small Boston university.

The writing is exquisite, everything is beautifully observed, and the characters are all so layered and fascinating. And I really wasn't expecting it to be funny - though this lessens as the book goes on.

I felt it got a bit preachy in the last third, and the ending seemed a bit nebulous. But this is the kind of writing that makes me think I should just give up in despair - or perhaps work a bit harder to improve my own.

I'll definitely be reading more!

Killing Floor vs Reacher TV show

After watching the recent Reacher TV show, I decided to listen to the first Reacher book again, as I remembered it being quite different - but it's really not!

In terms of the plot, the TV show is pretty much beat for beat exactly the same for the first two thirds, only diverging in minor details towards the end. I had thought Reacher was less violent in the book, but the body count attributed to him across both versions is about the same.

Reacher himself is snarkier, more irritable and more overtly flirtatious in the book, but he's also not a particularly nice person, which took me by surprise. Maybe he mellows a bit over the course of 26 or so books, I don't know.

The main difference is the presentation and involvement of the two female characters. In the book, Charlie and Roscoe both scream and cry a lot more than they do in the TV show, and Roscoe doesn't get to be involved in the showdown with the bad guys at all, other than needing to be rescued. So, in that aspect, the TV show is definitely better.

The TV show also brought in Francis Neagly as a helper, presumably because the producers know she's a very popular character in the books, and perhaps also to have another repeat character they can bring back in future seasons. The whole subplot of Reacher rescuing a dog from an abusive owner is entirely absent from the book as well - perhaps included to show Reacher's softer side.

So, it was an interesting exercise! I always enjoy spending time listening to Jeff Harding narrate things, but I didn't enjoy the book as much as I remember doing last time, and the differences from the TV show were not really as I expected.