Happy Friday! 

This has been a great week so far and we are heading into a long weekend here in Australia! Monday is a holiday for the Queen's Birthday. The Queen's actual birthday is April 21, but she celebrates her official birthday (usually) on the second Saturday in June. So, just a reminder there won't be a blog post on Monday.

Tj and I don't have much planned for the long weekend. We aren't going out of town or renting a car, but we definitely want to get out and about more in Melbourne. I think we are going to find a café where we can go and do some work (or reading) for a bit and explore a new part of the city. I also really want to see the new Ocean's 8 movie that just came out.

 It's not very often that there's a movie out that I'm excited about. I'm kind of a drag to go to movies with to be honest because there's an 80% chance I'm going to fall asleep haha. If we are seeing a movie past 8:00 pm I'd say that jumps to 97% likeliness I'll doze off. 

But recently I was excited to watch a movie at home. I had just finished the book The Snowman by Norwegian author Jo Nesbo, and it was probably my favourite books (so far) in his Harry Hole series. Harry Hole is an alcoholic detective solving murders in Norway, but strangely the first book in the series, The Bat is set in Australia, and the second book, Cockroaches, is set in Thailand. I've mentioned before that I like to read books set in places that I'm travelling, and I read the first one just before we moved to Australia and the second book when I was on my honeymoon in Thailand, so it was perfect.

The Snowman movie came out in 2017 and stars Michael Fassbender but you'll definitely recognize other faces in the movie. When I finished this really great book I was so excited to see the movie. I watched the trailer and thought it might be too scary for me, but I decided to watch anyway. 

And of course, the movie did not live up to the book. Don't get me wrong, the movie was pretty good, but not nearly as good as the book. 

Why is it always like this? 

I think it's because you are so much more invested in the characters and the details when you read a book. You understand them better and why they do the things they do. Their actions make more sense because you know what's going on behind it. I get so excited to see characters I love come to life! But in a movie, you don't get all that background information. What you see is what you get.

So I get that they can't always stay 100% true to the book. Maybe they need to change the story for it to make sense on the big screen. But it's still disappointing when it doesn't live up to expectations. 

It's equally disappointing to read a book where it's written like a movie and everything happens to quick or too dramatically. It's hard to describe but you'll know it when you read it. 

See the movie, skip the book: The Notebook

Read the book AND see the movie: Gone Girl (read the book first), The Duff,  World War Z

Books coming to movies that I can't wait to see: To All the Boys I've Loved Before, Crazy Rich Asians, and Where'd You Go Bernadette

Have a great weekend and happy reading :)