Series vs. Book: Lessons in Chemistry

For a while, Lessons in Chemistry was one of the biggest literary hits. Every woman I knew seemed to be reading it. So when I finally got around to it, it was just in time for the new adapted limited series version of the book to debut on Apple TV+, starring Brie Larson. I’ve found the book to be slightly controversial. The controversy being over how much people actually liked it. Half of my friends absolutely loved it, and the other had no care for it. Some couldn’t even get through it. Personally, I thought it lacked some subtlety, but I really enjoyed the book and enjoyed the streaming series equally, despite the many changes it made. Here’s a look at some of those changes.

**Warning: SPOILERS BELOW

1. The TV series added a “Ms. Hastings” pageant

In the first episode, the series includes a Ms. Hastings pageant within Elizabeth’s office. Elizabeth, the staunch feminist that she is, doesn’t want to participate, but is forced into it and ultimately walks out early, much to the dismay of the other women participating. This addition stands to further show what an outcast Elizabeth is and how feminist and beyond her time she is. But as viewers and readers, I felt we were beaten over the head with this theme so many times that the addition of a pageant wasn’t necessary.

2. Harriet’s home life and connection to Elizabeth and Calvin

The series GREATLY revamped the Harriet character. In the book, Harriet is one of Elizabeth’s neighbors who comes to help her after Elizabeth gives birth to Mad. Harriet essentially becomes a nanny-like figure in the Zott family, and later befriends Elizabeth. She never had a relationship with Calvin and spends more and more time with the Zott family in part because her husband is abusive. But in the series, she is in a loving relationship with her successful husband doctor. Harriet is a lawyer, herself, and is involved in advocacy efforts in town.

3. Six-Thirty is a goldendoodle

In the book, the dog, Six-Thirty, is a former military bomb-sniffing canine, which would typically be portrayed with a German Shepard. Designer dogs like goldendoodles didn’t even exist in the time frame in which the series is set. But I understand this change as an effort to parallel Elizabeth being ahead of her time. She would have a dog that would wind up becoming trendy 40-50 years later.

4. Calvin is less of a loner

In the book, Calvin is a loner. He’s described as kind of funny looking, and no woman at his office has any romantic interest in him. In the series, Lewis Pullman portrays a much better looking Calvin than I had in mind. He’s friends with Harriet and her husband, and several of his female coworkers have crushes on him (though, they do still think he’s a bit of an oddball).

5. Mad goes to private school

In the series, Elizabeth’s daughter, Mad, goes to private school. The choice was to showcase how smart she is and that she was well beyond the level of her public school classmates. It was also a means to explain why Elizabeth would be seeking out a higher-paying job. But in the book, Mad doesn’t go to private school, and Elizabeth needs the money simply because they’re cash-strapped after the death of Calvin.

6. The protest

Going along with Harriet’s altered role as an advocate, her focus throughout the series is on protesting a highway that’s planned to be built in her predominantly black neighborhood. Her advocacy work culminates in a protest on the highway that leads to police violence on black people and political ramifications for Elizabeth, who also attends the protest. None of this is in the book, but I imagine it was added because the showrunners/writers felt there needed to be a Civil Rights component to the story because of the time period in which it takes place. This also serves as a way to make Harriet a black mirror for Elizabeth as another strong woman who’s ahead of her time in the way she sees the world.

7. Elizabeth hires Fran Frask

In the book, Fran Frask – we later learn – is hired by Reverand Wakely as a typist/assistant. In the series, Elizabeth hires her to work as her assistant. This allows Fran to have a larger role in the story, and for Elizabeth and Fran to connect and create a stronger friendship. It also leads to…

8. Walter has a new love interest

In the series, Fran is a love interest for Walter, Elizabeth’s boss. In the novel, the love interest for Walter is Harriet, who has finally left her abusive husband. Obviously that would not have made sense for Harriet in the TV series because in this version, Harriet is happily married. But I did love the idea of an interracial romantic relationship in the novel and the fact that Harriet found the strength to leave her husband. All of that is lost in the series.

9. No encounter between Elizabeth and Phil

In the novel, Elizabeth has a second sexual assault encounter. The first is in flashback from when she was younger. The second happens when she’s hosting Supper at Six and her boss’s boss, Phil, attempts to sexually assault her. She pulls out a knife, he passes out, and ultimately never returns to the show. In the series, none of this happens. And I wished it did! Mostly because Phil is a monster. But more importantly, it touches on Elizabeth’s PTSD and shows her continued bravery and strength.

10. Elizabeth’s ending

In the book, Elizabeth ultimately takes over Hastings Research, which allows her to complete her research and continue with even more. In the book, she leaves her show and becomes a chemistry teacher. It’s a nice – yet quite literal – homage to the title of novel, but it makes it so she never returns to her true passion of being a scientist.

Review: Naturally Tan

In my ongoing theme of reading Queer Eye stars’ memoirs before watching the latest season of the show (no, I still haven’t gotten around to it; there are a lot of shows to watch!), I read Tan France’s memoir in quick succession after reading JVN’s. Anticipating it to be not-so-great after reading and not loving JVN’s, Naturally Tan turned out to be a pleasant and vast improvement in the way of QE books. Naturally Tan is as fabulous as the author himself. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so surprised after all. Tan France, as we know from the show, is fashionable, prim, proper, soft-spoken and kind. From his memoir, we also learn he’s an intellect who is extremely in touch with his feelings, self-aware, and lives with intent and love. His showcases all this through his book, which is much more than just a memoir.

It’s part memoir, part self-help, part fashion how-to with chapters about him and his life growing up gay and brown in England interspersed with “PSAs” about little black somethings, T-shirts and accessories as well as life advice asides about not gossiping in the workplace and dating dos-and-don’ts. If it seems like that might be a lot to mix into one book or if it seems like that might become a jumbled mess, it actually isn’t and doesn’t. With the bullying and rebellion Tan went through growing up as a brown outsider, the love he found in his partner and the the no-bullshit approach he’s taken to become an extremely successful business owner and TV personality, the reader quickly trusts him with every piece of advice he offers. After reading about his businesses and the hard work he put into building them, including hiring associates, his chapter on not gossiping with or about coworkers affected me and made me want to be a kinder, more generous employee. His chapters about clothes made me re-think my closet. Even his dos and don’ts of dating forced me to consider the way I treat my partner and myself.

When a person you respect offers advice, you’re more inclined to listen. Naturally Tan enforces – or if you’ve watched Queer Eye, reinforces – that Tan is a person to not only be respected, but admired. He may only be 40 years old, but he’s lived quite some life, one worth writing a memoir about and one worth reading about.

Get Naturally Tan in hardcover for $18.20.

Or on your Kindle for $11.99.

Review: Natural Disaster: I Cover Them. I Am One.

Recap: Ginger Zee is one of the most recognizable faces in TV news. As the chief meteorologist for ABC News, she appears daily on Good Morning America, travels the country to storm chase and deliver vitally important news about the weather and shares the details of her personal life on Instagram – complete with very adorable photos and videos of her two young sons.

But as she describes in her memoir, it took a while and a windy road for her to get this point. She worked in small markets, wore flip flops her first time on-air and wasn’t entirely sure how to write a script. She dated men who were horrible for her, broke off an engagement and suffered from verbal and emotional abuse. She tried to commit suicide and ultimately checked herself into a facility to get help. All of this was going on “behind the scenes” as she climbs the professional ladder, eventually making it to New York.

She is so delightfully adorable on-air and on social media that it’s hard for viewers to consider the many layers of anxiety and depression that she has managed over the years. And that is exactly why she wrote the book – to show the way things appear on the outside aren’t always the way they appear inside. This book is a thorough study on that, and an encouraging look at what can happen when you recognize the problems in your life and finally decide to get help.

Analysis: Ginger Zee’s story is powerful and necessary to be heard. Especially by young women – in any industry. But as a TV news person myself, I was also enraptured with her tales of job interviews, TV mishaps and ABC Network travels and assignments.

As much as I love her as a person and her anecdotes and found her story to be captivating, the writing itself could have used some work. The Natural Disaster title works perfectly as a representation of what she does for a living and how she describes herself, but the metaphor is used repeatedly throughout the book, to the point where I felt like I was being beat over the head with it. At times, I also found the book confusing in terms of time jumps. There were a few chapters that would go in chronological order and then she would write something like “But wait, let’s go back because this was also happening that entire time.” Maybe she was going for a little whiplash action in her writing just as she felt she was experiencing in her life, and just as one would experience in a real natural disaster. Either way, I sometimes got a little lost keeping track of what happened when because of those time jumps.

All that said, Ginger Zee has a voice and she’s using it to talk about big topics that MATTER. And there’s nothing more that I can do except respect and thank her for that.

Get Natural Disaster in paperback for $16.99.

Or on your Kindle for $14.99.

Review: Unqualified

Recap: Actress Anna Faris is unqualified to write this book about relationships and relationship advice. There’s no denying that. She’ll tell you that right off the top. Hell, it’s in the title. But she doesn’t care what you think. So she’s doing it anyway. Why? Well, in all honestly it’s at least in some part because her very successful podcast of the same name has garnered such a massive following that she knows she now has the ability to write a book that will sell. But on a less meta and more compassion wavelength, Faris is the kind of woman who battles insecurity like the rest of us and yet overcomes it – at least on the surface level – with a strong sense of “I-don’t-give-a-s***.” It’s taken her until her 30s and 40s – and admittedly so – to care less about what other people think and more about what’s best for her and her family.

That’s what Unqualified is really all about – a mix of stories and anecdotes from her life and the lessons they have taught her. She details the ways her relationships have changed her as a person and the ways fame has tried to do the same. Seventy-percent memoir and 30-percent self-help, Unqualified is a very honest glance into the world of a famous – but not super, uber iconic status famous – person who truly strives to be a better person everyday for her family, her fans and herself.

Analysis: Is Unqualified the best written memoir I’ve ever read? Absolutely not. Faris is not a writer. She is an actress and podcaster. She writes like she talks. As a broadcast journalist, I do the same, but in the beginning of her book I had a hard time taking her seriously because of the lackadaisical manner in which she writes. Here’s the thing: stick it out. It’s worth it.

If you’ve ever listened to Faris’s podcast, some of the anecdotes and things about her will be a little redundant. (We know this, Anna. We’ve heard it before.) But when it comes to her relationships with her exes and even friendships, she gets more honest and real than I ever expect out of a memoir, particularly a celebrity memoir. Was Chris Pratt okay with this? Was her first ex-husband? I’m sure she had clearance, but I was so flabbergasted with her realness, I couldn’t help but wonder.

That honesty is what works here. Faris does not pretend to be a perfect person. (Unqualified, remember?) But she writes what she knows, what she’s learned and hopes that for someone out there who may or may not even realize they need it, her book offers help. For me, it did; by showing me that we are always evolving and there is always room for acceptance and kindness.

Get Unqualified in paperback for $7.99.

Or on your Kindle for $4.99.

Review: Not That Kind of Girl

Recap: Lena Dunham is a woman who has something to say. Like her or not, she uses her platform to proudly proclaim her thoughts and opinions and is willing to use any medium available to do it. Her book of essays is no exception. After years of fictionalizing semi-autobiographical vignettes of women in their twenties on her TV show Girls, she put her pen to the page in this more honestly revealing look at her life to date. She acknowledges that she is young and has so much more to go, and reading her book five years after publication proves as much. In some ways, it’s dated already. Since publication, Dunham and her long-term boyfriend, who is openly written about in several essays, broke up. She also had several major medical emergencies and surgeries and became clean and sober. Her life proves that much of what you think you know in your twenties gets flipped on its head by the time you turn 30.

But as “dated” as the book is in terms of the plot twists of her personal life is how timeless the book is at the same time. She writes openly about losing her virginity, sexual assault, falling in love, falling out of love, breakup with guys, breakups with friends, the power of female friendship, the seemingly always difficult relationship women have with food and their bodies and her experiences with drugs, alcohol, family and the professional working world. Hers is a book and a story and a life that’s relatable for any woman. They’re experiences that, good or bad, that little girls and young women will continue to have for years to come, no matter what generation they fall into.

That may be what makes her book so powerful. This is not some celebrity memoir, dripping with scandal and salacious details of behind-the-scenes hookups and drug problems. Nor is it an opportunity to use her name to announce a political or social do-gooder platform. It’s also not a self-help book, pronouncing herself the knower of all things. It’s simply her story, her life as a person, a woman and nothing else.

Analysis: It’s her honesty that makes the book work, but also her writing. Her simultaneously self-deprecating and ostentatiously prideful humor seeps into every chapter in a way that made me laugh and sometimes shout “Yes! Exactly!” But in darker moments and depictions of assault and disordered eating, my heart hurt. She writes in a matter-of-fact way, not meant to incur sympathy. I respect that.

The book was divided by large sections: Love & Sex, Body, Friendship, Work and Big Picture. Each essay is placed in whatever chapter it fits best thematically. There’s no timeline. Everything’s out of order. Some stories are from college, some as young as when she was two years old. I found myself wondering if she wrote the book all at once or if she pulled from journal entries and essays she wrote in real-time throughout her life. They were just so detailed, it was impressive to me that she would still recall certain nuggets of information and deep emotions from 10, 15, even 20 years earlier.

Some essays were so brief, I was left to wonder what their significance was. But all together, it was a well-structured mess of stories paralleling the well-structured mess she tends to portray on TV, in movies, on red carpets and Instagram: the honest, well-structured mess so many of us are and try to hide, but Lena Dunham does not.

Get Not That Kind of Girl in paperback now for $9.89.

Or on your Kindle for $6.99.

Review: Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography

Recap: You may recognize him as Doogie Howser. Or that other weird doctor, Dr. Horrible. To you, he may be Barney Stinson. Or a very angry Hedwig. Or he may just be the high guy from Harold and Kumar. Either way, Neil Patrick Harris has made quite the imprint on Hollywood in the past 25 years he’s been in the business. Like many other stars, he uses his celebrity here to write his own memoir, but NPH is far too cool to just run your everyday, run-of-the-mill celebrity memoir. After all, he loves magic. So he makes his memoir a little more magical by writing it in the form of the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books of yesteryear. Finish a chapter, and choose between options like this: “If you need a drink to calm down, turn to page 45. If you need to wake your brain back up, turn to page 150. To continue your stage career, willkommen/bienvenue/welcomeim/au/to page 130. To attempt to relaunch your movie career, turn to page 124.”

Some chapters are silly absurdist fake short stories he’s written about his life. Some are recipes for his favorites food and cocktails. Some are magic tricks. But most are real stories from his life, including his time as a child star, the years when he was “washed up” in his twenties, his various stints in theater, his comeback into movies and television, his coming out of the closet both personally and publicly and the process he and his husband went through to have their children.

NPH has led every kind of life you can feature in an autobiography, so he gives us, the reader, the choice to read whichever one we like.

Analysis: The truth is I didn’t follow the choose your own adventure format and just read straight through the book. I think most people do — considering NPH wrote in an extra page in the book that no chapter urges you to turn to; clearly he knew people would find it because they’re lazy like me and just reading straight through. That said, the book is enjoyable either way. It zigs and zags through his life — some of it in order, some out of order. Some of the absurdist fake story chapters had me rolling my eyes thinking ‘why did I even bother to read these two pages?’ But the rest of the book more than makes up for it.

The struggles he’s faced in his career, in figuring out his sexuality and in having a family are as real as they get. NPH may appear to have it all, but it took him a long time and a lot of strife to get there. The sections about his children moved me to tears. He keeps his sense of humor throughout every page of the book, even if it’s in just the directions at the end of a chapter. His Barney Stinson silliness wreaks havoc on the book in the best way possible. This was by far the most creatively written memoir I’ve ever read and easily one of the most enjoyable, fun, and deeply moving.

Get Neil Patrick Harris: Choose Your Own Autobiography in hardcover for just $4.29.

Or on your Kindle for $12.99.

Review: One More Time

Recap: Carol Burnett is one of the truly great comedic icons and badass females of her generation and of our time. I was first introduced to her as Miss Hannigan from the original movie version of “Annie,” one of my favorite movies to watch growing up. She was perfect as Miss Hannigan — a villain who was more pathetic than evil, who was hilarious in her awkward gawkiness and who I was glad to see have a happy ending because you knew she wasn’t really a bad person at heart, just a desperate one. Having finally gotten around to reading her memoir from the 1980’s, I’ve come to learn that Carol Burnett was really not that different from the character she played in “Annie.”

She grew up under pretty horrible circumstances, though she didn’t realize as much until she was older. Her parents divorced at a young age and she lived with her grandma since her mother couldn’t properly take care of herself, let alone another person. When her grandmother and she finally moved to Hollywood from Texas, where her parents were already living separately, Carol started to standout as the tall, funny girl with the imaginative mind. When her illegitimate half-sister was born, she took her under her wing as though she were her own. She cared for her while focusing on her schoolwork and a potential career in journalism.

But as we all well know, things changed, and one taste on the stage had her itching to act forever. Her drive, devotion and ambition led her to UCLA and acting troups across California. A performance, a nice man and a lot of luck helped her earn enough money to go to New York and embark on the career she always wanted. But even that wasn’t as easy as she dreamed.

Analysis: Carol Burnett is a living, breathing rags-to-riches story. Yes, some of her story involved some extremely generous business men who were able to help her financially or give her references. But Burnett defined making her own luck. If not for her whipping personality, spunk and obvious natural talent and work ethic, she wouldn’t have had guts to ask for help or to keep in touch with the right people who would help her along the way.

It was amazing to read about her childhood and realize the hardship she had to overcome. Lots of “mommy issues” and lots of “daddy issues” could have been enough to break anyone. Not Carol. The entertainment industry itself is enough to break people. Not Carol. Her positivity and determination are to be admired, let alone her comedic chops. While she often talks about her many fears, it’s obvious that she’s also fearless.

Her story is more unbelievable than I could have imagined, and her writing exquisite. That’s not always the case with “celebrity” memoirs. But the truth is she was always a storyteller of some kind — acting out scenes, telling stories. Writing is another way to do that, and she’s obviously very good at it. (It’s no surprise she initially wanted to be a journalist — she has the chops.)

The updated version of her memoir, which I eventually read after accidentally leaving my first copy on a plane (whoops!) was even better because of the epilogue it includes at the end. The epilogue was added years later and tells the story of some of the additional tragedy she dealt with in her adult life. While sad, it’s an important section of the book that makes a point of showing no matter how successful you are, no matter how hard you’ve worked or where you’ve come from, we’re all people and we’re all going to have hard time to work through. Like Carol, we’ve got no choice but to keep going. One more time.

Get One More Time in paperback now for $14.53.

Reese Witherspoon, Kerry Washington Adapting Bestseller for Limited Series

Could this be the next Big Little Lies?

According to Variety, Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington are teaming up to adapt Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestseller Little Fires Everywhere for the small screen.

Both Witherspoon and Washington will executive produce and star in the series, which tells the story of a suburban single mother and the custody battle over a Chinese-American baby. No word yet when or where it will air, but the news is hot; apparently the project is sparking a bidding war between players in premium cable and streaming.

Reese Witherspoon, man. She just slays.

‘Big Little Lies’ Author Adapting More Books to Film

If you loved the HBO adaptation of Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty, you’re in luck; more are coming.

Moriarty has had a string of bestsellers over the years, and according to Entertainment Weekly, four of them are on their way to some sort of adaptation. 

Here’s the breakdown:

*Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon, who produced Big Little Lies for HBO, have the rights to turn Truly Madly Guilty into a movie.

*Jennifer Aniston is supposedly in talks to start in a (I assume?) movie adaptation of What Alice Forgot.

*CBS Films optioned The Husband’s Secret five years ago, but not many details have been released.

*The film rights to Three Wishes were also sold years ago, but not much has come of it since.

Show vs. Book: The Handmaid’s Tale

Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale has gone down in history as one of the most feminist novels of all time, earning the author several literary awards in the 1980’s when it was first published. But its debut this summer as a streaming series on Hulu has made the story shockingly relative in Trump’s America. Its themes about a male-dominated misogynist society are eye-opening as every other week it seems more Harvey Weinstein’s and Kevin Spacey’s are coming out of the woodwork.

The book tells the story of Offred, a handmaid who, in a dystopian future, has been forced to serve a family as little more than a mechanism for reproduction after widespread sterility has caused the world population to drop. Essentially raped monthly in the hopes of becoming pregnant, Offred does all she can to not only stay alive but stay sane as she wonders whatever happened to her husband and daughter. The story takes us through flashbacks of her former life as she works to find a way out of this chilling world.

Haunting is the best way to describe Offred’s tale, and that is upheld in the television series. Everything from its cold lighting and cinematography to the many close-ups of Offred’s (Elizabeth Moss’s) face as she is raped, locked in her room, or given opportunities to leave her Commander’s home exemplify the bitterness of this lonely, foreign world.

Turning the 300+ page novel into ten episodes of television allows for more detail and more story, and that’s exactly what the series offers. We learn Offred’s name “from before,” which is a detail never revealed in the novel. We learn exactly what happens to some of Offred’s other handmaid friends, including Ofglen, which — because the book is written strictly from Offred’s perspective is — is also not part of the book. The series also added meetings the Offred’s Commander has with Mexican government officials about adopting the same policies to boost reproduction. There is also an entire episode that shows us where Offred’s husband from her “former life” is now and how he got there.

Where I’m normally upset with how much liberty a show or film takes with a novel, it feels okay here. Maybe it’s because the detail given in the novel is so sparse, it’s simply a given that story would have to be added. Maybe it’s because the show matches the book so well in tone that all feels right with this adaptation. Or maybe it’s because the show is just so well executed with its writing, directing and acting. Whatever the case, the show does an excellent job of using the book as a jumping off point, season one ending exactly where the novel does. The rest of the series moving forward will now be entirely new, unread story and I’m okay with that, as I’m sure Margaret Atwood would be as well.

Get The Handmaid’s Tale in paperback now for $9.99.