I Read It First

December is here, it’s almost the end of 2014, and 2015 is bearing down fast, and here I sit, staring at my blog, thinking, “How could I make this thing into EVEN MORE of a time suck?” At least, that’s what I was apparently thinking two months ago, when almost entirely on a whim I decided to start a new reading/writing project called I Read It First, wherein for the year of 2015 I plan to read every book getting adapted into a movie before that movie comes out. Yeah. That’s not overly ambitious or anything. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG???

Origins

Credit where credit is due: Read It First is not my own idea. It was originally the brainchild of John and Hank Green of the vlogbrothers; they made a website for it and everything. I even applied to be one of their writers back when they were still pushing this idea. But the site never went anywhere, and here I am still thinking it’s a fantastic idea, so I made a list of all the book-based movies coming out in 2015 (including, ironically, John Green’s Paper Towns), and discovered that almost all of them were available at the library, meaning my total financial investment in this project would be $7.54–the cost of buying the one book that wasn’t. And nobody else is doing it, so here’s little me, attempting to read and review all 23 of these books single-handedly. I have great ideas.

How It Works

I am going to read each of these books (have already read a few of them, in fact), and post a review of each at least one month before its release date, so you have time to get your hands on it if it sounds interesting. That means the first review (The World Made Straight), will go up tomorrow–Tuesday, December 9th, exactly one month before its January 9th release date. Some movies are coming out the same weekend, so those book reviews will be posted one week apart, but still both at least a month beforehand. For the sake of clarity, I’ve created a movie/post schedule for y’all’s perusal here.

Fair Warnings

It’s important to note before I start this project that I don’t hold with the (old?) saying that the book is always better than the movie. In fact I think that’s complete crap, because lots of movies are better than their source material. Thus, while ReadIt1st champions always reading the book first, I might tell you to bin the book entirely. I wish I could watch all the movies and compare them before they hit theaters, but as that is far beyond my pay grade, you’ll have to be satisfied with my own assessments of whether reading the book was worth my time–and whether I think it’ll adapt well. I am trained as a screenwriter and I was briefly a professional movie reviewer, so I have some experience in this area, but my opinions are utterly subjective. You are welcome to take them with however many grains of salt you see fit.

This whole project is a work in progress, so it’s entirely possible the format will change throughout the year. In fact, I expect it to. There are five whole movies based on book-like things that I haven’t even decided if I’m going to review or not, so obviously this is all pretty up in the air. Please bear with me on that.

And don’t worry. This isn’t going to supplant regular posts. There may be fewer of them, depending on how much time I have left over after all these posts go up, but Drunk Movie Monday and my other random rants and ramblings will still pop up with regularity. After all, it’s not like I’ve ever been one to keep my mouth shut.

Ambitiously yours,
M.M. Jordahl

“I’ve never watched any of the adaptations of my books. I’ve never wanted to, and there’s absolutely no chance of me doing so in the future.” -Alan Moore

P.S. Yes, this means I am going to read 50 Shades of Grey. Lord help me.