Appearance: The Incomparable 825

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I’ve become a prolific Goodreads user over the last several years. Reading a book is a commitment, and I like to record the completion of that commitment. Goodreads does that for me.

Goodreads also lets you rate books, on a ☆☆☆☆☆ → ★★★★★ scale. My personal rating system seems to be… stingier… than most:

• ★☆☆☆☆ A truly terrible book that I regret reading.
• ★★☆☆☆ A book that was not good, but was worth finishing.
• ★★★☆☆ The default rating. Enjoyable.
• ★★★★☆ Above average. More than just enjoyable; worth recommending.
• ★★★★★ Truly excellent. One that made me think about things differently, and/or I would recommend to others without being solicited for a recommendation.

Of the 216 books I’ve read and logged on Goodreads, only five have earned ★★★★★. Of those, two were books about Apple, one was the absolute classic The Power Broker. The other two were Upgrade and Project Hail Mary.

When I watched the film, I expected it to be a standard film treatment of a novel: the main points would be hit, but so much would be skipped. As it turns out, I don’t think that’s true at all. The film was astonishingly true to the novel, though particularly the last act got fast-forwarded quite a bit.

Last week, I was lucky enough to join Aleen Simms, Quinn Rose, Brian Warren and, of course, Jason Snell, to discuss the film on The Incomparable.

During , we discuss how the film stands as a film, how it compares and contrasts with the book, and how much we fell in love with Rocky. Forgive the spoiler, but we were all pretty effusive, and I think that comes through in the episode.

I had a blast recording this one, and if you’re a fan of the book or the film, I think you’ll have a blast listening.

1. I feel like I rarely read non-fiction, but oddly, three of my five ★★★★★ books are non-fiction books. I stand by that I vastly prefer fiction to non-fiction, but, uh, apparently I pick my non-fiction reads well?

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