Lights...camera...turn the page!
Watching The Other Boleyn Girl while tying product tags onto Shivanaut scarves. I have the book by Philippa Gregory, but couldn’t get into it. From what I have read of the book, it’s “supposed” to be good (but it rankles me that she rewrites history and takes far too long to say things that could be written much more succinctly when they require it).
Ordinarily, I really enjoy big, meaty historical novels of subjects I like (for example, The Bronze Horseman* trilogy by Paullina Simons). But they watered down The Other Boleyn Girl so much from the book that I can’t keep track of everything in the book.
On the flip side, I’m really enjoying reading Atonement after having watched the film, and I’m not disappointed in the least by comparing McEwan’s book to film. A big part of me thinks that, had it been the case that the movie had come before the book, I could have done a much better job of writing the novel for The Other Boleyn Girl myself, and not just a dime-store movie novelization, either!
*There is currently a movie of The Bronze Horseman in pre-production as of 2012. Given the huge scope of the novel, tither it will be fantastic, or it will be terrible.
