How can you tell if someone read the book before seeing the movie?
Don’t worry.
They’ll tell you.
As a general rule, you can always assume I read the book before seeing the movie. I like to come to a story unmarred by casting and directorial choices. I like to create the world myself first, to see it and feel it and let it live inside of me before anyone else’s vision of it has a chance to take root. Otherwise, I feel cheated out of some of the joy of reading the story. I don’t even like to listen to an audiobook before reading it myself. That is how strongly I feel about it. Which is why it has always been a source of great pain to me that I was not quite old enough to read Lord of the Rings before the movies came out. Peter Jackson’s vision of Lord of the Rings is always going to be tangled in my head with my own. I will never get to experience Lord of the Rings for the first time as the book that is JRR Tolkien’s masterwork. I still love Lord of the Rings, both book and films, I just wish from time to time that I could experience them for the first time again, this time in the right order.
That is something that I am more keenly aware of with books than I am with anything else in my life. This is something that I will never get to experience for the first time again. All of my favorite books, I already know what to expect when I reread them. They do not hit with that same deep resonance on a second and third reading. You don’t stay up late into the night rereading because you already know what comes next. When I pick up a new book, I know that whether I love it or hate it, I will never get to experience reading it for the first time again.
That is part of why I always read the book before seeing the movie. I will never get to experience this for the first time again, so I am going to experience it fully.
I don’t approach much else in my life that way.
I do not consciously think before going to an event that I will never experience this one moment again in this way. Even if it was a perfect moment, when I remember it the act of remembering will change the way I experience it.
I will never get to live this moment again, so I need to remember to experience it fully this time and let it live inside of me from my own perspective and not the one that someone chooses for me.
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