Eat Dessert First

Really smart people eat desert first, smarter still are the ones that watch before they read. Because the book is always better. 

My reading of fiction is new(ish). From early on, I was a history guy and shied away from library books that didn't have numbers on the spine. Partly because it was what I liked, partially for the pictures. In my mind I could see it happening using the pictures as a starting point. In order for me to read fiction, I have to do the same. Seeing the characters engages me in the story, and also tends to leave me reading plot driven books with character driven been more rare. 

No better example of this "seeing is be-reading" is my love of the Walt Longmire franchise. While the show and the books are largely separate, watching first caught my attention enough to pick up the series...all of it... This for a guy who swore against reading anything but William Faulkner, Ernest Hemmingway, and occasionally Thomas Wolfe. Its hard to capture on screen Quinton Compson at Harvard describing Pickett's Charge to his roommate. It's easy get Walt Longmire and Vic Morretti in action on the page because...I have seen in action onscreen. I've even stolen for my imagination characters for a book from another TV show. For example, as I read I see Clayton Burroughs in Brian Panowich's Bull Mountain series as the Doyle Bennett character (played by Joseph Lyle Taylor) from TV's Justified. Sue me if I'm wrong.

And lets face the facts. The book is going to be better. The desert cart at a good steakhouse is going to be respectable. But it's still a steakhouse. Why would you want to leave with the taste of a mediocre dessert when you could a well crafted steak?  Likewise, why would you leave a lukewarm taste in you mouth from a so-so movie based on a fantastic book. Let the show or movie do the easy work of painting a picture using images, and the writer do the hard work of crafting that same picture out of words. By the way, unless you're 10, you can eat dessert twice.