“Yes, I’m meeting Cormac at eight, and we’re —”
There was a noise like a plunger being withdrawn from a blocked sink and Ron surfaced. Hermione acted as though she had not seen or heard anything.
“— we’re going up to the party together.”
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling
Adapting a beloved novel for the big screen is often an enormous challenge, even with books written with cinema in mind. Most stories don’t automatically come with a two hour screenplay attached, and the process of fitting that story into a film can be troublesome for the filmmakers and heartbreaking for fans. Some things will naturally have to be cut in order to fit into the running time, while others will have to be changed or rewritten in order to work on the screen (and heaven forbid the filmmakers add something that was never in the book). Then there’s the struggle to find the right tone and perspective, where humor and pathos have to be transitioned to the screen but also balanced in the right mix to feel true to the author’s intent. If you’re too faithful to the novel you might alienate viewers who are unfamiliar with the source, but if you go too broad then you might risk diluting what made the story so special in the first place. So it’s a pleasant surprise that the film version of The Fault in Our Stars is such a success.
Giles: Um, this computer invasion that Willow’s performing on the coroner’s office, one, one assumes it is entirely legal?
Willow: Entirely!
Buffy: Of course!
Giles: Right. Wasn’t here, didn’t see it, couldn’t have stopped you.
Buffy: Good idea.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 1: Episode 4 – “Teacher’s Pet”
Waiting rooms, as I’m sure you know, are small rooms with plenty of chairs for waiting, as well as piles of old, dull magazines to read and some vapid paintings—the word “vapid” here means “usually containing horses in a field or puppies in a basket”—while you endure the boredom that doctors and dentists inflict on their patients before bringing them in to poke them and prod them and do all the miserable things that such people are paid to do.
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Ersatz Elevator – Lemony Snicket
Miles O’Brien: Four weeks? Are you telling me I’ve been hanging around a Changeling for over a month?
Julian Bashir: And you never even suspected it wasn’t me?
Miles O’Brien: No. And the worst part is, the clues were right in front of me.
Julian Bashir: What clues?
Miles O’Brien: Well, for one thing, he… was a lot easier to get along with.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 5: Episode 15 – “By Inferno’s Light”
It would be next to impossible for me to write a review of The Fault in Our Stars at this point. The book has become a part of the pop culture landscape, an iconic work that will forever be a part of a generation’s vocabulary. It’s also been out for two years and has surpassed the point where any review that I could write would mean anything to anyone. So instead, I decided to do one of my “not quite a review” posts, with some general thoughts about the book and my experiences with it, because the last thing it needs at this point is one more review.
The Love Pirate 