Books (and/to) TV

 I've been catching up on books and TV shows these past few weeks. Normally I am nervous about TV adaptations of books that I've enjoyed but maybe it is the GoT effect, these days TV adaptations of books are turning out to be very good. So here are some of my reviews on things I've been watching and reading.

 The one that has topped my list is AMC+'s The North Water. I had picked up Ian McGuire's book back in 2016 when it came out on the basis of a blurb from Hilary Mantel and loved it! Slow burn, dark and moody, arctic atmosphere and great prose. It is a great story about the ending days of whaling, the misdeeds of the Raj in colonial India, fraud and murder, adventure and survival and a meditation on (toxic) masculinity.  So I was thrilled to find out that it was made into a TV series starring Collin Ferrel and Jack O'Connell (who was terrific in Godless which incidentally is one of my all time favorite series on Netflix). The show didn't disappoint. The acting was impeccable and the visuals were spectacular. The show is not a popular one as it is not available on the Big 3 streaming platforms and you need a subscription to AMC+ but it was totally worth it. If you don't believe me, here is a link to the BBC's review of the show.

This Christmas being stuck inside with Covid I spent it with Deborah Harkness' All Souls Trilogy. I am normally not a fan of vampire stories, but I came to her books through an interview she did for the Folger's Shakespeare Unlimited podcast. I loved the premise about a lost manuscript and different creatures hunting for a book that held the key to their origins. I had also recently finished Janet Brown's two part biography of Darwin and this series, about the origin of species albeit of a different kind, came to me at the right time and I finished the first one during the two week Christmas quarantine and decided to complete the trilogy. I had no intention of watching the TV show but since i had gotten a month of AMC+ for the sake of North Water, and this one was also available I decided to give it a try and this too was a very successful adaptation. The books are definitely more satisfying but the show is still terrific for someone who doesn't have the patience to go through three door-stoppers.

Next one on my list is The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry. It was first published in 2016 and I remember buying the book in an international airport (not sure if it was Changi or Chennai or Heathrow) because at that time the book wasn't available in the US yet. Perry specializes in gothic fiction and Victorian literature and that genre appeals to me. This is a very slow read and at times it feels like nothing really happens, so I was not sure how the TV show would be. So far three episodes have come out on Apple TV and with a stellar cast and outstanding production values I am going to finish this one. Of all the Book-to-TV recos I have, this one was my least favorite book and by extension could become my least favorite show, but will reserve judgement until the series wraps up.

Pachinko is my last of the Book-to-TV recommendations. Loved the book when it came out a few years back and the TV adaptation on Apple TV is wonderful too. Korean cinema and TV is garnering worldwide audience these days thanks to Parasite and Squid Game. Pachinko is very different as it tells the fate of a family matriarch tracing her background from the colonial times when Korea was under Japanese rule through modern times. The book was a big hit when it came out and the tv show is amazing too with some terrific acting. However, only season 1 has been completed so the story leaves you hanging in the TV adaptation. Not sure when season 2 will arrive. But the book is already here and can satiate your curiosity.

That ends my Book-to-TV reviews. I will now switch gears to books I've been reading this month and here is a brief summary of those that have left an impression.

Klara and the Sun is by Kazugo Ishiguro who needs no introduction. Winner of the Nobel prize for literature Ishiguro is someone not bound by genre and his books bridge genre and literary fiction. This book is getting rave reviews for its portrayal of a dystopian world where AI has advanced to the level where a child can have an AF (artificial friend) and gene editing (with some risks) is available to elites who want to assure a great future for their kids. He raises a number of questions on the ethics not just of technologies like gene editing, surveillance, AI but also the disparity in the access to these tech and how humans treat their AF companions. The book was a quick read but at times it seemed too simplistic to me. Maybe that was intentional as he wants us to think about what is real and what is a simulacra and does it matter. However, I was waiting for something to happen and it was a bit disappointing. I've concluded that it is a matter of personal taste -  I just prefer his books like Remains of the Day, Artist of the Floating World to his dystopian fiction.

In Search of a Kingdom by Laurence Bergreen was a book that has been on my radar for a long time and i finally read it this past week. It tells the history of how Francis Drake transformed from a lowly pirate to a Knight  and helped transform the lowly island to an Empire and secured Elizabeth's position on the English throne. An ex-slaver who turned away from slavery seeing the cruelty of the Spanish, Drake was driven by just one thing - exacting revenge on the Spanish - which coincidentally suited his monarch who didn't want to wage an all out war on the Spanish. Instead Drake's targeted piracy weakened the Spanish so significantly that its effects were seen during the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Incidentally Drake also circumnavigated the globe and didn't meet with the same fate as Magellan. Drake's piracy was also relatively more humane than that of other conquistadors and explorers. He treated the indigenous people he encountered (like the Cimmarons of Panama or the Miwoks of the Pacific Northwest in America) with respect and reserved all his disdain and cruelty for the Spanish. Keynes (yes the famous economist) estimates that Drake's piracy helped Elizabeth pay off all of England's foreign debt and left her with 40,000 pounds in hand which she invested in the Levant company whose profits led to the East India company which in turn led to the looting of India's wealth and the establishment of the British empire. The book is fast-paced, easy read, full of interesting facts like how 007 came to be a thing based on a cryptic cipher by John Dee, Elizabeth's historian. 

Speaking of fast-reads, action adventures The Lost City of the Monkey God by Douglas Preston was another nonfiction that reads like a fictional tale. The book follows a group of US & Honduran archaeologists and documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins' attempt to discover the archaeological site referred to with numerous names - the White city, the City of the Jaguar, the City of the Monkey God- from the time of the early conquistadors in the Mosquitia region of Honduras. While numerous explorers from the 1930s at various times have claimed to have discovered the city, Preston debunks many myths and this team with the help of Lidar technology did the first proper aerial survey of the site. While there was a fair share of criticism about the effort from other experts who were not part of the exploration, the discovery of the site has been hailed as a source of national pride by the Honduran government and to the team's credit they did not stop with the Lidar survey but risked their lives in ground truthing the data with actual field work in the jungles with many of them contracting leishmaniasis due to their exposure to parasites in the jungle (Dr.Fauci plays a minor role in this regard). I haven't watched the documentary but I hope to at some point as both the story of the civilization and the story of the discovery are equally intriguing. It was also good to hear about something positive coming out of a US-Honduran relationship.

I am glad I read all these books and am double glad that I finally took the time to write about them. Sometimes when I read one book after an other they all get muddled in my brain and taking the time to even write a few sentences helps fixing some of these books in my memory for longer term. As summer is around the corner i am building up my reading pile in anticipation. I was reading a review of Emma Smith's upcoming book Portable Magic and the guardian review states "Her title, borrowed from an essay by Stephen King, emphasises the mobility of these apparently inert items and their occult powers. Like motorcars or metaphors, books transport us to destinations unknown, and that propulsion has something uncanny about it." Needless to say that book is on my reading pile as it echoes my sentiments completely.