When books are adapted into movies, something is usually lost. Using The Count of Monte Cristo as an example, the reason the movie was not as good as the book is because were it to include all the depth and complexity of the text, it would have to have been about 15 or 20 hours long. Obviously there is something there that is not making it to the screen and that you are missing if you do not read the book.

Second, perhaps the real reason that books which are based on movies are worse than movies made from books is because the writers who are enlisted to write the books are inferior. If one could get Dumas to write the Mission: Impossible novelisation, perhaps one would end up with a better product.

Of course actors are praised for communicating non-verbally. But do you have any suggestions for how writers could emulate that? Of course not. Because writing is a strictly verbal medium. As a result, it is far more challenging medium to master. A better comparison to books would be radio, but even then one still is left with tonal inflections which cannot be as simply communicated on a page.

The Shining was of course a book before it was a movie. Are you saying that the book did not adequately present the ambiguity, or are you arguing that point without having read the book?

And movies are just as limiting, if not more so. When one reads a book, all the inflections and pacing of speech are what one makes of them oneself. Once they are captured on film, we are locked into what the director and actor think they should be. When reading a book, we are free to imagine the details of any scene, any face, any object as we please. But once on film, the face of the actor replaces the face of our imagination. Tragically, Orlando Bloom is now the face of Legolas.

Finally, you are of course free to stop reading books. I do, in fact, look down on that decision. But ultimately, you probably won’t hurt anyone but yourself.

So sure, monologues in a book are better than voice-over narration in a movie, but primarly it’s a waste of screen space.

On the other hand, since we’re citing examples, I’ve found that the most praised acting performances are frequently the ones where actors convey a lot nonverbally. There’s no verbal parallel to the expression on Liam Neeson’s face when he sees the red dress the secodn time in Schindler’s List.

Apocalypse Now couldn’t even be adapted into a book; so much of what makes it great is nonverbal. Stanley Kubrick thrived on ambiguity — is Jack Nicholson possed by ghosts or simply insane in The Shining? Leaving the answer to that question ambiguous is far better done visually than verbally; visually the director and actors can show us somethig without commenting on it — verbally an author has to pick words to describe it, and the words limit what we can think.

As to the length issue, I don’t think a sitcom is analagous to a book. Five years of the Sopranos, on the other hand, constitutes far more time to develop characters and story. If you compare apples and oranges, you at least need ot choose examples of the same size.

Last but not least … well, no, I guess it is easily least as well, I find it very amusing that many people repeat the maxim that books adapted into movies are always a step down. Why? Because when you think about it, movies adapted into books are generally far, far worse.