Book vs Movie — Annihilation

March 8, 2018 ~ Paulina ~ Leave a comment

Hi all!

In this episode of Book vs Movie I’ll be talking about Annihilation, written by Jeff Vandermeer, and the big screen counterpart. I won’t be giving too many details because both the book and the movie are incredibly hard to explain. But, you’ll get it if you’ve read the book and/or seen the film.

Jeff Vandermeer is called the “King of Weird Fiction” since his works lie something between speculative fiction, fantasy, and horror. His most famous works are the Southern Reach Trilogy, and Annihilation is the first installment of this trilogy. This trilogy focuses on an expedition to a place called Area X, a place in the United States, where nature has taken over. Scientists are sending people into this area to investigate, but either they don’t come back or if they come back they die of cancer not many weeks later.

Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer

The book is definitely very strange. It evokes a mood reminiscent of gothic literature at times, at others it’s more like a stream of consciousness that leaves you at best dizzy or at worst sleepy. It’s a book that reminded me of the frog in the pot of water, one that doesn’t realize it’s in trouble until it’s actually almost dead and there’s no way out. This book creeps up on you just like that, eventually you realize that there’s no turning back and you just have to keep on reading, even if no clear answers are offered in the end.

“Some questions will ruin you if you are denied the answer long enough”

So the book might not be the most enjoyable but it was definitely thought provoking. We follow four scientists who are never given names besides their specialties: Anthropologist, Surveyor, Psychologist, and Biologist. There’s a theme of the beauty and the power of nature, which rebels agains the humans after enduring the pollution, deforestation, and other abuses that it has endured for so long. The book doesn’t give a reason for Area X really, there’s no explanation of the origin, but there are some clues when the Biologist has flashbacks to her childhood, as she studies a microenvironment that thrives in the midst of the urban city. Also as she goes out of her way to find these small patches of nature in other parts of the city. The vision that the Biologist brings to the world is very important in the book and is the anchor that kept me reading.

The movie adaptation of Annihilation was directed by Alex Garland, who has been mostly recognized for his achievements in screenplay writing and his film Ex Machina.

Unlike the book, the film starts out by explaining the origin of Area X: a meteor. This immediately takes out the possibility of the changes in Area X being caused by nature reacting to human acts. Additionally, the characters are given names and our Biologist isn’t an expert in the transition of one microenvironment to another, she’s a cell biologist, specialized in cancer. The film focuses on an alien world that’s come and started interacting with ours in ways we can’t quite understand. There film is not only creepy, it’s outright gory, with bodies opened up and things crawling inside them. The film achieves the wonder of this alien world though, the beauty and the power in ways that the book lacked. The film is well paced even if it felt like they forced the expected Hollywood-esque plot as an attempt to make it less psychological and more explicit. There’s a heavy reliance on the Biologist’s, I mean Lena’s, life before the expedition, her life with her husband, even an affair! What does that have to do with Area X?

But honestly? I did enjoy both the book and the movie for different reasons. I loved the psychological thriller part of the book and I loved the visuals of the film. You could say that I loved the depth of the book while the film simply reflected the beautiful cover that made me buy the book. The plots of the book and the film are not very compatible so they can’t be compared. But they do complement each other.

Final verdict: It’s a tie! They even out because a bit more than half of the book was just boring, and only until the end did I get hit with all the complex themes and social commentary that Vandermeer was going for. Then the film was great visually but completely lacked depth of characters and plot that the book provided. The film had beautiful moments (and beautiful deaths!) all the way through which the book lacked.

What do you think? Which version of Annihilation did you like best?

PS. The next Book vs Movie that I’ll review is a movie that comes out at the end of this month, can you guess which one it is?

February Book Bites

March 3, 2018March 3, 2018 ~ Paulina ~ 3 Comments

February was a slow reading month, but I did enjoy the three books I got to read! There were some pretty memorable bites as well. Lets take a look:

First I read An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. This book is a science fiction novel that I acquired through the Page Habit subscription box for the month of October of last year. Solomon takes us on a trip on the HSS Matilda, a spaceship that has been traveling towards the Promised Land. People have left their world to go on this ship because their planet was dying. Now, they are separated by class and gender and are trying to survive the trip to this Promised Land when things start to go wrong. You can read a full review here.

Favorite Bite:

“Chemicals plus chemicals makes magic” — Aster

Perspective Rating: 9/10 I loved that we got a very original point of view, even if at times I didn’t fully connect with it I believe that it’s very valuable.
Emotional Rating: 5/10 I really wish I could have connected with the main character more. But every time that there was an emotional scene, she would change the topic. Even though I understand that it’s her own personality, for me it was very frustrating.
Bites Rating: 7/10 It had some great and poetic parts, but it wasn’t as much as it could have been.
Overall Rating: 7/10 I really enjoyed this book, but it left me wanting more from the other character’s points of view. I will look for more books from Rivers Solomon for sure.

I stayed on the science fiction track and read Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. When I bought this book it was purely because of the cover but when I learned that it involved women scientists going into a strange place called Area X, I was even more intrigued. The story is actually slower than I expected, told from the point of view of the Biologist, who is also an unreliable narrator. It’s very slow for the first 100 pages or so and then it picks up near the end. I’m working on a post where I compare the novel to the movie adaptation so that should be posted in the next few days.

Favorite Bite:

“We were neither what we had been nor what we would become once we reached our destination” — The Biologist
Perspective Rating: 7/10 It’s hard with this one because even though it is an interesting perspective, of a scientist who looks at things very pragmatically, there was little depth. I wanted to be able to go deeper into some of her insights but that was masked by the way that the story was told.
Emotional Rating: 6/10 It was very hard to empathize with the main character when she was so dull and unreliable most of the time. Near the end things got better in this sense but it was still lacking for me.
Bites Rating: 4/10 There were some pretty passages but not very often.
Overall Rating: 5.66/10 Yikes! I’m telling you that it was slow! That was my main issue, even though the psychological thriller is there, it got boring so that wasn’t good. I am still curious about the next installment of the trilogy so I’ll probably read that if I come across it.

Finally I read Wyrd Sisters by Terry Pratchett, another installment of the Discworld series. This was such a great book! It’s a take on Macbeth from the point of view of the witches, and it references quite a few other Shakespeare plays. This one is a tad more bloody than others, as well as more cheeky at times. The characters we follow are Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat. Pratchett manages a very clever novel full of interesting characters, from a violent cat to Death itself, and Hwel, a dwarf with all the inspiration to write plays like no one has seen before. Simply fantastic.

Favorite Bite:

“It is true that words have power, and one of the things they are able to do is get out of someone’s mouth before the speaker has the chance to stop them” –Wyrd Sisters
Perspective Rating: 8/10 Pratchett has the ability to place you in someone else’s shoes without you really realizing that it’s happening. Here we get a few different perspectives on the aspect of destiny and fate. It’s inspiring and eye opening while making you laugh at life for a bit
Emotional Rating: 7/10 I didn’t connect too much to the characters but when Death showed up I was just over the moon! I also love Greebo, the cat, and Hwel, a writer who really is a slave to the words.
Bites Rating: 8/10 It had many great quotations, but not all over the book.
Overall Rating: 7.66 Another great Discworld installment, I can’t wait for the next one! 😀

One thing that these three books had in common was the nature of, well, nature. Nature as a sentient being that can revolt on the humans when they decide to ignore it completely. Nature as a group of beings that evolve so that they can survive the harm being done to them by humans. Or lack of Nature and the effect that it has on humans. Each of these books teaches us to appreciate and take care of all living beings, be they animal, plant, or human. I loved these books for this message and for how they all seemed to group together to make that message seem even louder.

And so, even though this month was a tad slow, it was still a good month of reading. I am still reading Equiano: The African but I am taking my time because it deserves to be read a bit more closely. I am learning so many things about slavery and the world in the 1700s! Hopefully by next month I’ll be able to include it in the wrap up. I’m also still reading The Goldfinch with the book club and that will also be done by next month’s wrap up.

I read 3 books, didn’t buy any books, so I’m down to 100 books left in my TBR! XD

How did your reading go in February? What was your favorite book of the month?

February TBR

February 4, 2018February 4, 2018 ~ Paulina ~ 2 Comments

Hi everyone!

February is here, I’ve drawn two new books from my TBR jar and I’ve picked two other books from my bookshelves for this month. There are some new subjects for me as well as some old favorites.

Let’s start with the TBR jar, I drew two and I think my TBR jar knows that it’s supposed to be Black History month!

The first book to come out was Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man by Vincent Carreta. This is a nonfiction book that looks at Olaudah Equiano’s journey as he buys his freedom from slavery and ends up becoming a writer and one of the most influential African man in in the 1700s. I’m looking forward to learning about slavery in a context that isn’t US-centric.

The next book that I picked from the jar was An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon. This book is very exciting for me because it is a science fiction novel written by a person of color! I really enjoy science fiction but usually I find that I can’t connect with the characters because I don’t identify with them in their culture or ways of thinking. In this case this novel promises to be a new perspective in the science fiction genre that will hopefully allow more people to connect with this genre.

The next book is another science fiction book that I’ve been wanting to read because it features four women scientists who go on an expedition to figure out if the world is finally safe for the human population after Nature basically took over. The book is called Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer and it is the first installment of The Southern Reach trilogy. The exciting news is that there’s a movie adaptation coming out on the 23rd of February of this year. So I’ll be able to do a Book vs Movie post on it! The book promises to be scary and beautiful and simply exciting! Watch the trailer here.

The final book I’ll be reading this month is actually a re-read! I loved this book when I read it a few years ago and I’m looking forward to reading it again. I’ll be reading and watching Ready Player One by Ernest Cline as part of the Book vs Movie series. This book has been making the rounds for a while and it’s a favorite for many since it’s full of 80s pop culture, video games, virtual reality, and really unique characters. What I fear is that the movie has not taken care of these characters and has pursued a plot full of the usual characters and expected storyline. I really hope I’m wrong, but the trailers haven’t given me much to hope for… You can see for yourself here.

So that’s the plan for February! What are you reading this month? Do you like to read or reread books before their movie (or TV) adaptations come out?