My husband often claims that you must remove one star on a movie rating if you watch it on an airplane. I cannot confirm or deny if that is true – it has been so long since I have been on a flight – but I guess the one star deduction is valid. There exists for me a similar analogy for books. Not to offend those who are Kindle fans, but my personal experience has been that I lose enjoyment of a book when I read it on a screen instead of having the physical feedback of turning paper pages. I read News of the World ©2016 by Paulette Jiles several months ago with Kindle app on my Mac and forgotten I had done so.
The book opens in 1870 on the wild border between Texas and Indian Territory, where a 10-year-old girl has been released after four years of captivity. Kiowa raiders had killed her family and taken her hostage, eventually raising her as one of their own with the Kiowa name Cicada. The girl is entrusted to freedman Britt Johnson, who then hands her over to his acquaintance, 71-year-old Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a veteran of the War of 1812 and the Mexican-American War. Kidd agrees to take the girl to Castroville, Texas, where her aunt and uncle live. Captain Kidd makes his living as a news reader, traveling between towns and charging a dime per person to read aloud from newspapers. His profession pays little, and Kidd is also struggling with family problems: his daughters are still living in war-torn Georgia, and he has yet to reclaim land in Texas that once belonged to his late wife, the daughter of Spanish landowners.
Although the book is essentially a western – not my favorite genre – I still had definitely wanted to read the novel before the movie of the same name came out. The book was boring, with long winded segments describing a route followed by the two-war veteran and the girl through the dusty, dry, sun-bleached western countryside and small towns. There is one action-filled, shoot-out scene among rocky, boulder-strewn cliffs and the occasional torrential rain storm to spice up the narrative, but overall I found the book a big snore.
The movie was not much better, with scene after scene of a covered wagon bouncing along the bumpy roads through various similar cliché western landscapes. The readings from the newspaper to the town gatherings broke up the monotony for me. Tom Hanks' playing the lead rescued the movie somewhat, mitigating a total disaster. His acting was top notch even though I felt he was not given much to work with. The ten-year old girl's performance was worthy of praise. Helena Zengel is a German actress and I would not be surprised to see her in future films. The film outcome and some poignant scenes were altered from the book, which annoyed me since I felt it changed the tone and the intended message.
Per Amazon, the novel averaged 4.5 out of 5 by 13,969 readers. Per IMDB the movie was rated or 6.8 out of 10 by 71,951 viewers. Me? I do not follow the crowds. I was disappointed. I was expecting more. I rated both the book and the movie low:
How many stars do you take away for audio books? That's where I draw the line. I [still] just can't get behind audio books. To me, it's not reading, and that's where major star deductions occur!
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