About the Books I'm Reading (and Not Reading)

The other day I mentioned on this blog that I hadn't gotten around to reading some of the books of Charles Dickens because I'd seen the stories adapted to movies, such as A Tale of Two Cities, A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield.  I've also experienced the same with a contemporary author, Stephen King: although I've read nearly all of his published works, I didn't see the point of reading Misery, Firestarter, or The Langoliers, though, after having seen their film versions.  Still, I do reread novels I like a lot, so why not read them after first seeing the movie? Besides, I've discovered time and time again that the written story is usually much deeper in scope than the movie, while there is often a substantial divergence between the two forms in terms of the plot, ending, and characters...

I'm currently reading Hyperion by Dan Simmons and The 9th Judgment by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.  Hyperion is a the first book of a post-apocalyptic science fiction series...I'm halfway through it and feel clueless as to where it's going with its characters and plot.  That's doesn't mean it isn't interesting, though.  The 9th Judgment is another Lindsay Boxer crime mystery, as I keep "counting" up to the current end of this series.  And I've lined up The Woman in White, by Wilkie Collins, for my next reading.  Collins was Dan Simmons' narrator in his historical fiction novel Drood, which went into the final years of the life of Dickens, with whom Collins often collaborated.  From Drood, I came away with the notion that Collins wrote in a more sensationalist manner than Dickens...it will be interesting to see if this is reflected in The Woman in White...