Film Adapations

    Everyone knows that the book is almost always better than the movie. I can think of many examples where the book is better, because it's usually the case. Divergent is a very popular example of an adaptation. I've read all of the books and have only seen the first movie. I refuse to watch the other two movies, because the first movie definitely didn't do the book justice. I didn't like who they chose to portray the characters in the movie. The movie almost always ruins how I imagined someone or something looked, and it takes the fun out of the book once you see the movie. The Giver is another popular example of a great book turned into a not so great film. I didn't like the film, because the way I imagined the society to be was completely different. They also changed the ending to speed up the movie which I did not appreciate.
     There's also some examples of books where the movie is better than the book. Some is the key word. The Maze Runner was a pretty great movie, but the book not so much. I never even finished the book because I thought it was so awful, but I did enjoy the movie way better. The Notebook was an alright book, like most of Nicholas Sparks' books, but I enjoyed the movie a little better. I read the book a little while ago and have seen the movie fairly recently, so that could play a factor in my opinion, because I barely remember reading the book.
     Then we have books that should never become a movie, or have already become a movie and shouldn't have. Paper Towns is one example. I've read a lot of John Green books, famously known for The Fault in our Stars. Paper Towns is one of his worst books, especially compare to TFIOS. The movie was pointless because in the book, all that happens is a bunch of teenagers go looking for this missing girl, and they go on a road trip to find her. The book is fun to read because it goes into depth about their journey, but the movie has a hard time showing what the book does. It was pointless to make it into a film, but I at least liked the actors they chose for the movie. That's about it.

   

The Girl on the Train

     Rachel, a divorced alcoholic who recently lost her job, takes the same train at the same time every day to London. She is pretending that she's still going to work, to trick her roommate into thinking she still has her job. On this pointless train ride, Rachel sees this couple she calls "Jason" and "Jess." She adores and envies their relationship, from what she's made up just by watching them from the train window. The couple, whose real names are Megan and Scott, live just a couple houses down from her old house, that she used to live in with her now ex-husband. Suddenly, when Megan goes missing, Rachel's life takes a twist.
     Rachel witnessed Megan kissing another man, right before she went missing. She quickly becomes involved in the investigation, thinking she knows something no one else does about that mysterious kissing man she spotted with Megan from the train window.  Her involvement in this investigation to find Megan gets her in a lot more trouble than she planned. She's dealing with trying to figure out whether Megan ran away, was kidnapped, or possibly even murdered,  all while dealing with her addiction to alcohol, and current memory loss.
     This thriller is a great read, one that is hard to put down with a great twist to the end. It's written from the point of view of three different characters. Mainly Rachel, the drunk obsessing over what happened to Megan, and getting more involved than need be. She constantly is lieing, especially to Megan's husband Scott. She tells Scott she knew Megan from her art gallery, and that they were very close. This makes her feel important, being able to get involved after that. It shows she is untrustworthy though, and later see that almost all the characters in this book are. They're all twisted liars.
     Then we have the point of view of Megan, the missing girl. Hers is written like a journal entry, before she goes missing and tells us events from her past. Then we have Anna, married to tom. Tom is Rachel's ex husband, so you can assume that Rachel and Anna don't like each other. Anna writes about how she just wants to be left alone from Rachel, and be with Tom and her child.
     The different points of view helps better understand who the characters are, and what they're like. I like reading the different points of view because it's nice to know what other characters are thinking, besides just the main protagonist. It's a nice change from other novels. I especially like how the author Paula Hawkins makes you think so many different possible outcomes of what happened to Megan. She throws out all these theories, and it really gets you thinking. It also tricks you a lot into thinking that you know what happened to Megan, but then BOOM another twist occurs. It causes it to become cloudy on what your thoughts even are on what happened, until the very end, which I like.
     The Girl on the Train is an amazing thriller, full of suspense, action, humor, and  melodram with backstabbing characters. It's a fast read that keeps you on your toes without ever wanting to put it down, because you just need to know more.

Paula Hawkins

       Paula Hawkins is a British author, commonly known for writing The Girl on the Train. Paula was born in Africa, then moved to London at the age of seventeen. She started working for The Times, as a journalist for fifteen years, and reported on busines. After that, she started writing novels under the name Amy Silver. She didn't become well known from those books and barely sold anything. She became financially unstable after writing four books, and not making any sales, and decided she needed a change. That's when she wrote The Girl on the Train, and was not going to give up on this novel. It is now a best selling novel across America.
       In her novels, her characters are all based off of people in her life in some way, which is where she got all the personalities for her characters. In her book, Girl on the Train, the main character Rachel is a hard core alcoholic. Paula explains that the reason for this is because in the UK, heavy drinking is very popular, and isn't looked at as a bad thing. She made the main character in her novel have a very tragic life. Paula realized she was much better at writing tragedies than romance novels, and was shocked when her novel started getting attention. Her novel the girl on the train was her very last attempt at writing, and was ready to give up if it didn't sell. Luckily, it started selling rapidly, and is soon to be a movie.
      She says she is very fortunate that her book has made it so big, because if it hadn't, she would've given up as a writer, and found a new career. Now that it is going to become a movie, she doesn't know how she feels about all this money coming in to her life. She grew up poor, living in Africa, and then trying to make it on her own at seventeen. She never had a lot of money in her life, so it's definitely a big change for her. She told an interviewee "I want to thank everyone for buying my book. Finally, after all these years of writing crap, people finally liked something of mine."