Stories From the Shelves

May 8, 2026

Writer: Riley Lenson

Editor: Aidan Lane

Characters conjured up in your head. Fantasy worlds made from your own imagination. Storylines building and bustling as you flip through the pages.

A book has the special ability to inspire your creativity and make you think. You’re invited to create relationships with characters that exist uniquely for you, and every reader experiences their individual journeys within that imagined world. However, more and more, stories are being taken off shelves and made into cinema. While there are many things to enjoy about a book-to-film adaptation, I find that something is almost always missing. 
Last fall, Regretting You, a book by Colleen Hoover I read a few years ago, was released as a film, and my friends flooded into theaters to see it. Adjourned with buttery popcorn and a variety of candy, everyone was excited to embark on the emotional journey set on the screen as the lights dimmed. Throughout the film, my friends oohed and ahhed, laughed and cried, and walked out of the theatre absolutely in love. But for me, the only one who had read the book, I couldn't help feeling like things were left incomplete.

I’ve found myself in this pattern more times than I care to admit: The Summer I Turned Pretty, The Housemaid, People We Meet on Vacation, and so many other popular book adaptations have faced my scrutiny. Don’t get me wrong, these adaptations have been entertaining and offer me something to obsess over with my friends, but experiencing an in-depth version of the story in its original form has made the adaptations lose some of their spark for me.

Maybe it was because the story-building provided by words on the page feels more thorough, or that the personal experience of reading a book can’t be replicated, or that I’m simply a harsh critic, but I feel like adaptations commonly miss several key elements. Characters in books have a certain authenticity to them, with their flaws written out and impacting the reader as they follow along their journeys. This makes them relatable and personal, not Hollywood perfection. Movies often struggle to capture these flaws: the lighting is chosen, the faces are fixed, the emotions are guided. You’re shown exactly what to feel, exactly when to feel it. 

There’s something to be appreciated in that movies create an immediate, shared experience. My friends were able to experience the movie together, creating memories and enjoying each other’s company. However, the story we experienced had a limited scope. There are only so many perspectives that people can take on in an artfully curated, director-led story. The accessibility and universality of movie adaptations are a result of sacrificing individual experience.

I challenge everyone to get lost in a story and let themselves experience their own versions of written worlds. Reading shuts you off to the outside world and forces you to focus on only the written work before you; you create intimate relationships with characters, become invested in the plot, and make personal connections that are often lost when books are screen-adapted. It's so easy to take the easy way out and watch something rather than take the time to read, but when you begin living stories instead of merely observing them, you realize how much has been missing.

Stories are meant to be lived, loved, and experienced rather than just observed. A uniquely personal journey is so rarely replicated on screen.