Throwback Thursday and Booking Through Thursday

Throwback Thursday is hosted by The Housework Can Wait and Never Too Fond of Books.

It’s the nature of book blogging to focus mainly on new releases, but there are thousands of great books out there that haven’t seen the “New Releases” shelf in years. We hope to be able to bring attention to some older titles that may not be at the top of the current bestseller list, but still deserve a spot in your To-Be-Read pile.

I decided to showcase an old book that I have started and not yet finished due to Kindle issues. I think I've mentioned this one before, but as far as I was able to read, I really love it.

'If On a Winter's Night A Traveller' by Italo Calvino

This exhilarating interactive novel--in which the reader, lured into the text by the enticements of Italo Calvino's splendid intelligence, turns into the book's central character--was its author's triumphant response to the question of whether the art of fiction could survive the vast changes taking place in the communications technology of our world.

I absolutely love the interactive writing. Part of the book is a description of how the main character rezds, how he prepares to sit down and how he feels while reading. The other part of the book is the actual book the character is reading. It's really refreshing and 'new', even though the book was published in 1982.

Booking Through Thursday is hosted by BTT.


Do you find yourself thinking that the books you read would be good on film? Do you wish the things you watched on TV or in the movies were available as book?
Some really can’t be converted, of course, but some definitely can (and it’s not always the ones you think will work). There’s something to be said for different forms of media, but a good story is universal … or is it??

I do think that a good story is universal and should, in theory, work on film. Yet the big issue with films is that
they are often how the director or scriptwriter interprets the story. If they feel strongly about a certain storyline or character, they might bring that to the foreground, whereas many readers might love the general storyline or a different character.I therefore think every book could be turned into a movie if you look at it from that perspective. But this is also where there is a difference between books and movies. While reading a book, you can enjoy your own imagination, you can make it your own. A movie is very much someone else's vision that you watch. Although your imagination is still part of it, it is not as free as when reading.


Personally, I love imagining how I would set a scene, what kind of dialogue I'd use from the book and which I'd add. It's simply a great way of entertaining myself while and after reading. I think I'm a very visual reader, all of my creative writing inspiration also comes from images I have in my head.

Also, there are scriptwriters which simply mess up the story. One of my all time favourite books, which had a great story, was completely and utterly botched up by a writer and director who had no love for the story. And that does make me hesitant at times when I hear of movie adaptations. And on a side note, some stories are actually improved when they are made into movies because a scriptwriter cuts out all of the unnecessary writing and can give a pointless story vision.

So, what do you think?