5 ms·
> a professional book reader who evaluates literature specifically for screen adaptation
by sharkjacobs 4mo ago
> a professional book reader who evaluates literature specifically for screen adaptation
- dylan604 4mo agoFrom studio output, it feels like all they read are graphic novels
- ASalazarMX 4mo agoI was skeptical, but the article starts with Train Dreams, which according to HowLongToRead, would take 2 hours at 300 WPM. https://howlongtoread.com/books/323872/Train-Dreams https://howlongtoread.com/books/323872/Train-Dreams Two days per book full time means one every 16 hours. Enough to read the full Foundation Trilogy with one hour to rest between books. On a side note, I'm ashamed to share that I tested my reading speed, and while it was 264 WPM, my reading comprehension was 50%. That's why I read slower, and frequently re-read. https://swiftread.com/reading-speed-test https://swiftread.com/reading-speed-test Out of spite I tried to measure my Spanish reading, 520 WPM and 100% comprehension. Very unfair since it's my native language and I can glance and skip instead of reading every word. https://speedreadr.com/es/ https://speedreadr.com/es/
- daveshistory 4mo agoI'm curious what these tests are measuring if you say your reading comprehension is only 50%. Your comment here is completely articulate and sensible so you are obviously fluent in English. Edited to add: hm. I just got 67%. I guess my college degree is a waste. Should have gone the humanities route instead.
- ASalazarMX 4mo agoIt hurts, doesn't it? I also thought a few measly questions would be a piece of cake, and mainly focused on speed.
- daveshistory 4mo agoI didn't consciously focus on speed. I just completely overestimated my ability to skim. Interesting. I think I actually would have done better when I was younger and used to doing these things in school. I obviously don't read as carefully as I used to. Makes you wonder what else you're missing.
- dylan604 4mo agoIn high school, there was an academic event for reading comprehension. I tried it one time and was humiliated. They read aloud to you a story, and then they ask you questions about it after. I have no idea where my head was, as I didn't do well at all. I never tried the event again. It wasn't until that experience before I realized that I'm the type that needs to read things multiple times for it to stick.
- daveshistory 4mo agoI feel like in high school I would have scored better on this. I was overconfident. I skimmed it quickly, like anything I would have done at work, and figured I'd sort of internalize the main points. Like I think I do at work. Oops.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- CobaltFire 4mo agoCan't say I ever took a test like that. 644wpm and 100% in English (native language). Hard to judge that based on just five questions though.
- daveshistory 4mo agoYou will feel more judged when you score 67% like me. Edited to add: we must have followed different links though, mine only had three questions obviously.
- CobaltFire 4mo agoI think it gives various passages and questions from a bank. Mine was a paragraph about small loans to poor populations, and had five questions.
- daveshistory 4mo agoYeah, mine was about the social meaning of distances when speaking to people (not exactly my specialty!).
- testaccount28 4mo ago2000 WPM @ 75%
- guardiangod 4mo agoESL and I got 512 WPM and 75%. I don't agree with the 1 wrong answer but I digress. Reading fast means you can take in more info per unit of time. It can be a useful ability, if tedious at times.
- Cthulhu_ 4mo agoI think reading for fun and reading for a job are difficult to compare; I'm sure this fellow has a very high reading speed and / or can skim across parts that aren't important for the task at hand. But that's making assumptions.
- stevenwoo 4mo agoHe says he mainly summarizes plot and that the qualities of the writing are not important. It seems like that would miss opportunities - for instance he didn’t think Vineland was adaptable and didn’t even recognize One Battle After Another as the adaptation when he saw it until the credits rolled. Another example, IMHO Arrival is a beautiful adaptation that improves upon the original short story mostly by addition, or maybe it’s cause Amy Adams is more charismatic than the character in my imagination.
- dylan604 4mo agoStand By Me and Shawshank Redemption are good examples of the adaptation being an improvement. Then again, adaptations are usually a novel being adapted for a shorter telling rather than a short story being elaborated.
- eszed 4mo agoThose are great, but The Godfather is my favorite example. The book is, honestly, terrible. The prose is bad. It focuses almost exclusively on the salacious - does it need to tell us that many times about the size of Sonny's cock? - and enjoys the violence a bit too much. None of the minor characters leave any impression at all. The movie, though, is... The Godfather. It transcends it's source, without transposing or changing anything - in fact, I suspect it's far more faithful to its historical setting than the novel - more fully than any adaptation I'm aware of.
- simiones 4mo agoAnother pretty famous example is Stalker, based on Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers. The novel is an ok sci-fi concept, but the film takes it to a whole other philosophical level.
- atombender 4mo agoStalker has an interesting history, because Tarkovsky did shoot the Strugatskys' own screenplay first. But almost all of the shot film was accidentally damaged beyond repair by the Soviet lab — they were using specially imported Kodak film stock that apparently the lab was unfamiliar with — and Tarkovsky had to go back to the Soviet film board and negotiate more money to reshoot the film. Tarkovsky had been unhappy with the film as he shot it, and during these months of downtime, he repeatedly workshopped the script together with the Strugatskys. Long story short, Arkady Strugatsky proposed that Tarkovsky strip down the story; he wrote a treatment that reduced the entire film to a bare-bones, more philosophical story with nameless characters and very few overt sci-fi elements. Tarkovsky essentially wrote everything around that new core, much of it apparently also written during the second shoot. I recommend the book "The Films of Andrei Tarkovsky: A Visual Fugue", by Johnson and Petrie, which has a whole chapter on Stalker and the difficulties of making that film. In my opinion, Roadside Picnic is a masterpiece, and I would have loved to see a faithful adaptation of it. Stalker, as it ended up, is not really an adaptation of it.