Summer Reading Part 2: I Only Read This Book Because It’s Being Made Into a Movie

Second in a series of remarks to prove I did something intellectual this summer. Starred titles indicate books I particularly enjoyed.

The Prestige
Christopher Priest

Following movies as obsessively as I do, I’ve noticed an uptick in magic-themed movies of late, including The Illusionist, Scoop, War Magician, and some movies about a certain bespectacled teen with the initials of HP. The Prestige, is yet another entry. Because Christopher Nolan (given my eternal admiration for Memento) is directing and Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman are taking up the leads (can you say yummy), I decided to check out this book.

The cover of The Prestige looked like the schlock sci-fi fantasy stuff dominating YA shelves—not a good sign. The paperback cover, shown here, is a huge improvement. Cover art judging aside (of course it’s a reasonable criterion, you absolutely must judge books by their cover), The Prestige is a decent book. The author cleverly makes use of shifting POVs to conceal his plot twist, but his framing device dragged the story before it even started. The Prestige is not driven by good writing or even good plotting, but by the one quality that makes stage magic so interesting: the “How the hell did he do that?” reaction. I sped through the pages trying to figure out how the tricks were performed, and I must say the results are a bit disappointing. It looks to be an entertaining movie, but the best I can do is damning it with some faint praise as a book.

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* Stardust *

Neil Gaiman

I’ve heard the name Neil Gaiman being tossed around forever, but I’ve never read anything by him until now. Turns out, I’ve been missing A LOT. Stardust is an enchanting and adventurous tale that seems at once familiar and utterly new. The story is cut in the classical medieval mold—indeed, it revels in archetypes and clichés—but it is also infused with a wondrous innocence. It’s told with an almost childish marvel; in Faerieland, nursery rhymes reign and childhood fantasies become real. But all this innocence, and our hero Tristran’s naïveté, only cloak the darker themes at play because in the idyllic land of Faerie, murder and death is the still of the currency of villains—and there sure are a lot of them. It saddens me to hear that Gaiman’s other writings are radically different from Stardust, but count my butt in for this movie.