I did this to myself.

I decided to read two books with adaptations coming out before I watched either one. I’m a stickler for reading the book before seeing the movie. This week that decision backfired a little. Both books stalled me out, I barely read anything, and I had to decide whether to wait it out or just push through.

I pushed through. And wished I hadn’t suggested Chapter One Scene One read one of these for an episode.

Biggest Surprise (In the Wrong Direction)

Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann should be exactly my thing. Sheep solve a murder. The Sheep Detectives trailers look adorable, everyone coming out of early screenings seems delighted, and I wanted to read the source material first.

Here’s the thing though. The dead body is on page one. You know immediately that the sheep are going to solve this. But then you spend most of the book watching sheep argue with each other, dealing with a sheep named Melmoth who went missing and then came back, and encountering a truly suspicious number of humans who left their windows open while discussing relevant plot information. There are a lot of sheep. They all have names. There is a lot going on that is not the murder.

The last section of the book is great. If the movie is mostly that part, I get why people love it. But I wasn’t expecting to need so much patience to get there.

Most “This Was Made For Me” (Mostly)

I picked up The Deal by Elle Kennedy because I’d never tried hockey romance and the show hype was impossible to ignore. Seemed like a good time to get ahead of it.

The book is genuinely good. Hannah and Garrett go through some real stuff and it lands. But I felt old reading it, which has literally never happened to me before. I read middle grade. I read YA. I did not expect to hit a wall with a college romance, and yet. New experience unlocked, I guess.

The show is two episodes in and I keep smiling at my phone like an idiot. So that part worked out. Still haven’t decided if I want to keep going with the books or just let the show be the thing.

Most Divisive Opinion (I Have About Myself)

A friend texted asking if I could test the Xteink X4 and report back on whether it’s worth buying. I do not have the X4. I have never touched the X4. This did not stop me from spending an hour researching it.

It’s cute. Palm-sized, magnetic back that snaps to your phone, looks like something a very organized person carries. But it doesn’t have a touchscreen, which was my first problem. Then I found the specs and discovered it only supports EPUB and TXT files. All of my books are in the Amazon ecosystem. The Xteink X4 and I have nothing to offer each other.

I looked at the Kobo Clara Colour for a while. It’s pretty. Switching away from Amazon would mean rebuilding my entire library from scratch, so that’s a no. Google Chrome figured out what I was doing and suggested the Pocketbook Era Lite, which is genuinely the most logical option for someone who wants flexibility across book providers.

I own a lot of ereaders. I put my phone down. I closed the tabs.

Book I Can’t Stop Thinking About

We recorded two Chapter One Scene One episodes this week. The Devil Wears Prada and Remarkably Bright Creatures back to back, which is a lot of feelings to process in one sitting.

Devil Wears Prada is one of those rare cases where I think the movie actually aged better than the book. Maybe when the book first came out I would’ve picked the source material, but almost twenty years later? Movie, easily. I’ll die on that hill.

Remarkably Bright Creatures is the opposite kind of adaptation success. I think it’s genuinely rare for a movie to hold up to the source material emotionally, but this one does. Sally Field is so warm and grounded in it that the whole thing works. She’s a national treasure and I hope we get a few more performances like this from her.

That’s the spiral. Slow reading week, weird rabbit holes, two podcast episodes, and far too much time spent researching ereaders I do not need.

See you next Sunday.