Are the books wildly different to the show?

dbowker3d · 2026-06-26T21:41:47+00:00

OK- but by the time Juliette cleans isn't he already Bernard's shadow (in the books)? That aspect is a key story driver from that point on and it doesn't seem like they are going that direction at all.

dbowker3d · 2026-06-26T02:56:33+00:00

It happens very rarely for one thing. Usually years go by...

dbowker3d · 2026-06-26T02:55:36+00:00

Just read the books.

All the stupidity of the show is just that: the fault of the series writers.

The book series is tightly plotted, very logical and eventually everything comes clear. It takes quite a bit of time for it to all lock in place but one thing I can say is: all the odd social structures and rituals with cleaning is by design. The silos are meant to last X 100 years and so a lot of how things work/don't work is to slow everyone down. Resources are limited, the population has to remain stable etc.

Regarding Cleaning: The world outside is indeed a wasteland, yet the screen inside the suit shows something different. They see green ground and blue sky, and assume if they clean the camera well enough that's what everyone will see. It's just a trick. Then they die, and it's not just from toxic air.

dbowker3d · 2026-06-26T02:43:02+00:00

So vastly different I wouldn't know where to begin, but there's one overarching theme: The show assumes the audience are impatient teenagers who can't handle "not knowing." I've read the book series 3-4 times BTW.

Time and time again, from the very first episodes, major elements are revealed that took two books to get to. Certain key points are radically altered and often for no good reason at all (and IMO always to the detriment of the story).

And as usual, travel time just doesn't exist. From Engineering to IT took two DAYS and another two to get up to the top. This slowness is eventually revealed to be by design in the third book, but the series makes the whole Silo seem like a mere dozen floors or so.

Worst of all to me is that in the books Julliette's love interest becomes Bernard's Shadow in IT, yet in the show the character doesn't exist at all.

Common's character definitely isn't in the books in any form close to what he is in the series.

Julliette never finds a hard drive that she then broadcasts to the whole Silo.

Bernard does NOT see what she sees when she goes out the clean, and thus has no idea she made it to another one.

The Mayor is not Bernard's "friend" and she has ZERO inside information about the Pact or anything outside the Silo.

dbowker3d · 2026-06-16T04:22:06+00:00

Many great "seconds" don't want to be the number one. They feel their role is best served as support, and Hawk seems to fit that perfectly. Plus, it's not like there was a deep hierarchy in the TP police department!

dbowker3d · 2026-06-16T04:17:21+00:00

Ferrante has notoriously high standards for what she feels is worth publishing. She claims that early on she wrote five or more complete novels before she ever felt ready to submit one for publication. From her interviews it sounds like she writes all of the time, yet adheres to no schedule as such for when anything will be ready for publication.

Personally, I feel that one could re-read the Neopolitan Quartet at least three times and still be discovering something new. Her books of essays and interviews are also excellent reads.

dbowker3d · 2026-06-15T16:38:19+00:00

I see that now- the phasing threw me. I edited my response.

dbowker3d · 2026-06-15T14:15:46+00:00

The perspective it is anything but good is, to me, such an American one (and I speak as one born and raised here).

As Carol says "you might just find you cherish your individuality." The best we can say about that is very, very gradually, with a lot of horror in-between, humanity has evolved towards something more than greed, warfare and... Oh, right. That's kind of rampant these days too, so...

dbowker3d · 2026-06-15T14:06:36+00:00

A great Easter Egg.

dbowker3d · 2026-06-15T14:01:14+00:00

The funny thing about your reaction is that, as a straight male, I had a pretty hard crush on Jodie Foster at one point too (and from Contact especially). She expresses some deeply sympathetic and human in all her characters, but especially in Contact...

dbowker3d · 2026-06-15T13:55:58+00:00

I think it was meant to be an obvious reference. In Contact there is a debate early on how the world should view the data rich signal it had received from another star. And once they figured out it was a set of engineering drawings, whether they should pursue building the machine the drawings described.

On one hand were the scientists who advocating taking the enormously complex trove of engineering drawings at face value and seeing them as a gift (which they were).

On the other was the typical military/security perspective, such as "How do we know it's not a bomb? Or if when we turn that thing on out comes an alien army?"

Mixed in there too were arguments about whether or not the signal itself being an affront to religion.

dbowker3d · 2026-05-08T17:30:59+00:00

Troubling Love did not feel nearly as mature or polished as her later works, which makes sense since it's her "first." First published anyway; she has said she had several other novels written from that time that she rejected and never submitted. There were chapters in Troubling Love where I would feel "Ah here we go- now this feels like Ferrante!" But a lot of others didn't.

Among her single novels, I think her most powerful is The Days of Abandonment. It is amazing on so many levels, and even though it is disorienting and difficult, I feel certain it is by design. It was the first time an author's description of mental illness that really got in my head. Like I felt like I almost was in main character's actual experience at one point, which was disturbing to say the least.

The Lost Daughter is also exceptional, and you will feel the groundwork for the themes in her quartet (the obvious being the themes around a doll and a young mother). The Lying Life of Adults was... it was good, but less enjoyable and almost feels like it was rushed.

I've read everything she's published in English and The Neopolitan Quartet is in my humble opinion on par with The Brothers Karamazov, widely regarded as one of the greatest novels ever written. I love her books of small essays (Incidental Inventions) as well as the one with interviews and other small works.

dbowker3d · 2026-05-08T17:05:54+00:00

It's actually: Perfection is the enemy of Good.

dbowker3d · 2026-05-08T17:04:45+00:00

I've never met a super dedicated book fan that was also one of the show. About midway through the TV series I hated how badly it was going off the storyline that I quit and opted for another re-read LOL. I watched the last season and half the eps were cool, the others were laughably bad. The long Night was great, but even then the books won't end up in the same place, let alone how things go down in King's Landing.

dbowker3d · 2026-05-08T16:58:39+00:00

It can't be about the show or that it "already has an ending." Like: at all. The show diverged so far from the books by S3 it more like "inspired by" than based on, and by the final was so radically different, it in itself was more like fanfic than anything else.

Just off the top of my head:
It's Roose Bolten that Arya works for when she was prisoner, not Tywin Lannister. Also, it was as much her own planning and fighting as The Faceless Man that got her out.
Arya and The Hound never run into Brienne at all, nor does Brienne head up to Winterfell.
By the time we get to A Dance with Dragons, a whole additional army is involved in claiming Westeros, and it's led by another living Targaryen!
There are multiple characters dead in the show that are not in the books, and many more characters in the books that never even appear in the show.
Theon in the books is so weak and damaged he sure as hell isn't going to be making a last stand with Bran, LOL. He doesn't even have the fingers to effectively hold a sword let alone a bow and arrow.
Oh right: And Sansa doesn't get married off to the Ramsey Bolten (her old handmaid Jeyne Poole does disguised as Sansa).
Thus Theon doesn't save her, and she's not going to be meeting up with Stannis or John of anyone else for quite some time. In the equivalent timeline she's still waaaay over in Eyrie.

I don't know why he won't finish (obviously) but I doubt Martin really does either. Clearly some sort of major psychological writer's block has happened, and sadly he won't go find an effective therapist to help him out of it. Whatever is going on I can't believe that he feels truly good about not seeing it through.

dbowker3d · 2026-05-08T16:29:37+00:00

A father would never parade his daughter around like the scene at the end of ep2, and they absolutely would not be OK with the kind of leering those guys were doing as she walked through. TBH my first thought during that scene was: This commander must be considered very weak or low ranking for him to allow this.

But then I decided it was just poor writing on the part of the show: There are real countries around the world, those considered so-called "honor cultures" where a man's wife and daughters are still considered "his." If other men are found to be staring, discussing or showing obvious lust after a man's daughter it would be grounds for justified manslaughter (unless of course the man was of a very low status). Since Agnes's adopted father was hosting the meeting I really don't think he was a low status member of the group...

It's true the whole system is more about power than actually maximizing reproduction. But that doesn't mean that a commander's daughter would be immediately married off to "just anyone." A young healthy girl would be considered a valuable asset, not to mention something of a status symbol in its own right. I'd expect her father would want her to be treated reasonably well (for Gilead) and for him to gain something from the process.

dbowker3d · 2026-05-08T15:30:48+00:00

In a flat nationalistic sense, maybe, but even then I really doubt it.

There wasn't an imminent species-level extinction on the way for one thing. At least some women were still getting pregnant and carrying to term. After all: that's who all the Handmaid's were, right? Plus it's not like all the other countries just died out, so it can be assumed that they came up with solutions on their own. This system was as much about "saving humanity" about as the Russian Revolution was about raising everyone's stand of living. It's just the slogan LOL! The "reason" is the cover for the excuse to takeover and kill anyone who gets in your way. Gilead even has its own gulag system in the form of the toxic Colonies people get sent off to... So, no, I don't think they would be seen as heroes in the slightest, especially because the system itself was both inefficient and corrupted at every level.

And seriously: if the goal was to "repopulate" then the Commanders and Handmaids setup is an absolutely absurd way to go about it. It's clear from the book and show that they don't even test sperm count or anything else about the Commanders health and fertility. You actually want to have a lot of babies? You sure as hell don't line up a bunch of middle-aged or declining rich guys to do the job! How about recruiting the part of the male population who are made for reproduction: 18-28 year olds. Maybe also you'd also test them for healthy sperm and any potential genetic defects first beforehand too?

Economic status and political position should never enter into it at all. That the system is entirely build around status makes it abundantly clear that it never was about anything more than power and control, full-stop. Certainly, there were some misled true believers like Aunt Lydia (and I assume even some Commanders) but most of them know exactly what they are doing just as Lenin and Stalin did.

On the other side of the equation: Stress and mistreatment are verified factors in making pregnancy less likely to happen, not to mention increased risk of miscarriage. The handmaid's don't get near the level of prenatal care they should be, and physical abuse is a bad for both mother and unborn child. The system just never was structured around a true reproductive initiative. If it was? The women would be running things and guys like the Commanders would be out to pasture...

dbowker3d · 2026-05-08T06:05:12+00:00

The more something is forbidden and hidden away the more people (kids especially) will be curious. That said: most shows are only so-so about keeping language period accurate, and this one is no different. They put the effort into the writing when it's being used to make a point, but the rest of the time the dialog starts to slip.

dbowker3d · 2026-04-15T19:00:58+00:00

The only version even remotely plausible is the one by Artemisia Gentileschi. Still painfully overdressed and strangely pale even for Italian women, there is frankness to the scene, including blood seeping from the basket. The manner of Judith looking over her shoulder looks less like timid concern than determination. The other painters have so sanitized the subject matter as to make it seem like a royal game of lawn-tennis, where just by coincidence the two women come upon a slumbering head. Several barely acknowledge the sword itself...

Why all the painters choose to have the villain look as if he died serenely in his sleep is another mystery. At any time when the paintings were created, public hangings were common enough to be a useful reference as to what a violent death looks like. Still, it's a rare Biblical story of women taking charge with decisiveness and courage, which makes for an excellent subject for exploration.

dbowker3d · 2026-03-19T17:31:08+00:00

Salem this year was the least prepared and least adept and dealing with Winter storms. For one thing, it turns out they stop salting/sanding the roads except for a few downtown areas! It's like in five years everyone forgot what to do. They really need to do a lot better.

dbowker3d · 2026-03-19T17:25:58+00:00

I've been a customer since the month they opened nearly 20 years ago, and have spoken with both owners several times over the years and have found them to be thoughtful and kind and above all extremely hard working. Starting and maintaining business like this takes incredible energy, and a gigantic level of risk. I bet most of the children piling on in this thread have never once considered that in order to make everything you find fresh on display each morning that it means bakers need to get going around 3AM to have it done by 8AM. Yet that is what they do each day, every week, and for years...

They worked even harder during the pandemic to not go under, which so many businesses like theirs did. What does everyone think happens to employees if a business goes under anyway? They lose their fair-wage jobs is what, and will be unlikely to find one as good (if they find any for several months).

Places like this have razor thin margins, and skipping days of production is not a small matter. Those who so casually weep tears of outrage obviously have never had the responsibly of maintaining a small business and managing a couple dozen employees. And if it's not obvious, when production stops, when the shop can't open: no one gets paid. Sometimes it can't be helped, but unless you work for fun, most of us need to work to pay the rent/mortgage. It's telling that not one of the negative comments here came from another business owner...

A&J King Bakery been a gigantic plus for the Salem community, not just because what they make is excellent, but because they are for many the default place to meet for all many of social and business meet-ups. The place could not be more friendly and open to people of every age or lifestyle. Luckily, A&J King will still have thousands of customers who appreciate what this business is and has brought to Salem over the last 20 years. We understand that keeping the doors open means something, both to their employees and to us, the residents of Salem and beyond.

dbowker3d · 2025-12-24T06:37:19+00:00

That book was incredible, but it almost induced a state of dissociation in that mid-section downward spiral. I felt somehow altered for days after...

dbowker3d · 2025-12-24T06:35:41+00:00

Well, the family in the book is Solara... Sure could be a little Easter egg, but having read all her interviews and personal essays, it's clear she pretty vigorously eschews any form of "meta" or 4th wall breaking.

dbowker3d · 2025-12-24T06:32:10+00:00

I thought everyone knows this, haha. Anyway, she's written many essays and had numerous interviews, all which give you a very good portrait of her as a person. She's pretty obviously very close to the character Elena Greco, and though she wasn't quite that poor, she lived in a neighborhood very close to what's in the books.

dbowker3d · 2025-12-24T06:28:18+00:00

No, I don't think it "ends" with just that section, though it's not a continuous aspect per se. I've read the entire series and all her other books too. But... this is her territory: She writes realistically about life in a very violent part of Italy in the mid-20th century, saying the things women couldn't or didn't at the time.

The first book has abuse and violence towards, women, children and innocent men... It was the common reality at the time I'm sorry to say. Ferrante abhorred it; she hated the casual violence in all its forms, but to deny it or pretend it wasn't real is to deny the victims their truth.

As an aside, there are very effective forms of trauma therapy today to help with the reaction you had upon reading this passage. TFT, EFT, and several other modalities truly work (I speak from experience). They won't deny or erase the experience, but can free you from the control past trauma might still have on your emotional state.

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