Summary
- The rise in streaming content means more adaptations from books, allowing readers to stay ahead of the story.
- Watching book-based shows helps discover new literature, encouraging a balance between TV viewing and reading.
- The gap between TV show seasons can be long, making reading the source material the best way to get the full story sooner.
With every streaming company desperate for original content, they’ve turned to adapting books more than ever before, but that means you can jump ahead of the adaptation and get the whole story early. Sounds like a bad idea, right? But I love “spoiling” a TV or movie by reading the books, and here’s why.
I Always Read the Book Before the Movie Comes Out
When Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies were first announced, I was in the 6th grade (more or less) and at that point I had not yet read the books. Since the first movie was a year or two away, I decided to ask my parents for the books, and read them ahead of time so I would know the source material.
Needless to say, when the movies finally came out, having read the books made a huge difference to my enjoyment level. With LOTR in particular, I find it hard to imagine someone who hasn’t read the book making sense of the movies at all, but apparently they still like it without the blanks being filled out.
Ever since then, I’ve made a point of reading the books for upcoming series and movies based on books I have not yet read. Sometimes, I discover that a new show I like is based on a book, and then I read that book (or books) while I wait for the next season to drop.
Lots of Streaming Shows Are Based on Books Now
There are so many shows on streaming platforms that are based on books. Some I’ve obviously read, like the Foundation books by Isaac Asimov, but for other shows like Silo I had no idea the book existed in the first place.
So, somewhat ironically, streaming shows have helped me find interesting books to read. So much for my mom worrying that watching too much TV would mean I wouldn’t read as much.
It Can Take Years To Get a Whole TV Series
For most streaming shows, you’ll be getting one season of TV every year or so, and that’s a best case scenario in most cases. It can be two or more years, depending on the budget and complexity of the production. So if you really want to know how the story progresses or ends, you can usually read all the source material in the gaps between one season and the next.
Not everyone is so anxious to get a whole story, but I can’t resist when I know the rest of the narrative exists in some form. So I end up adding yet more books to my shelf.
I Love Comparing Adaptations to Original Material
Adapting a comic or book to film is anything but straightforward. These are entirely different media, and making a good film or TV version of a book needs to make significant changes to the story, and harsh decisions about what to keep and what to cut. Books have the time to go into lavish details about the world and the inner thoughts of the characters.
This is why I don’t see reading the books ahead of the film or TV show’s conclusion as really “spoiling” my experience. Instead, the source material almost always complements the adaptation. It gives you a better understanding of the story, and fills in gaps that would leave someone who hasn’t read the books somewhat perplexed.
Even if the producers of the adaptions make significant changes to the visual version of a book, those changes are themselves interesting. So I think I will keep reading the books before watching movies or TV series, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me. Just don’t spoil it for people who prefer to just stick to the screen version.