On the 18th January 2026, Winnie the Pooh turned 100. Quite incredible, really, that a bear of very little brain should have such a long-lasting place in the collective memory of the world. 100 years of honey, of Tigger bouncing off the walls, of the wise owl and the Hundred Acre Wood… Amazing. And to think that this book gave me my first reading-related injury!
Injury #1
Rewind. I’m in junior school. I’m allowed to go to the library and take out books to read by myself! This is incredible. Such freedom! Such power! So off I go. Each time I’m taking a couple of books out and taking a couple of books back. This is a weekly event. Strange the things you remember from so long ago. The steps up to the heavy wooden doors. The red brick building at the bottom of the hill, not far from the cathedral up at the top. The smell of the place. The little cards that lived in the front of each book that would be stamped with the return date and slipped into the little card holder that represented me at the library. The double stamp – once on the card, once on the book. Thump-thump. Now there are quite a lot of Winnie the Pooh books, about 30 of them if you’ve just got one story in a volume. They’re beautifully illustrated – the illustrations that Disney adapted so well into their animations – and every time I got one I could not wait to get started.
Out of the library, along to the crossing, over the road (safely – after all, the Green Cross Code man could be watching), up the hill, left along the street. Now this isn’t the direct way home, this goes past the newsagent with the penny sweets. See? Plan. Book from library, sweeties to eat while I’m reading it. Foam prawns? American cream soda? Aniseed balls? Not sure yet. By this time I’ve got the first book open and I’m deep into page four and I’ve forgotten they’ve installed new traffic lights just before the newsagents and there’s a big control box at my head height…
Yeah, that hurt.
But I’m a kid! At this age I’m basically made out of something nigh-unbreakable and I bounce back fast. Shop. Sweets (American Cream Soda). Home. Chair. Read.
After that, the plan changed. Newsagents, sweets, library, home, read. No stupid light control boxes if you run the route in that order.
Injury #2
My second reading-related injury came years later when I dropped a book on my foot. Ordinarily this would not be a problem. Most books are fairly light things and won’t cause any issues. This was a copy of The Lord of the Rings. Complete, illustrated, hardback. The damn thing weighs about two and a half kilos. In my defence, Aragorn had just sailed the fleet downriver with the army of the dead, unveiled the banner of Gondor and absolutely smashed the bad guys who thought they were getting reinforcements. It’s an incredible scene, gives me goosebumps just thinking about it and if I’m going to cheer in the cinema, it’s at that moment.
Injury #3
Sometimes a book just gets to you and you can feel that stab of emotion every time you think of the book. Guy Gavriel Kay is getting an entire post to himself about The Fionavar Tapestry next month. The Many Worlds of Albie Bright, well there’s a book that was so much fun and so easy to read until the last couple of pages where the world went very, very blurry for some time. But my third reading-related injury is more of a mental one than a physical one. It was the moment when I first saw a film adaptation of a book I loved and thought “Oh, well that was a bit shit.” And this is the wound that never heals. “May the tv adaptation of your favourite book be dreadful” is a wonderful curse to utter at a reader. It’s the psychic damage inflicted by sitting down to watch and realising how badly they’ve got things wrong.
The Good…
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. Bear with me as this one’s a lot weird and, unfortunately, suffered from Netflix’s algorithm cancelling it before the 3rd season could be filmed and tie up all the loose ends. This series is not a direct adaptation of the books in any way, shape, form, or description. Good grief, no. Instead it takes the idea of Dirk Gently and runs with it, giggling madly, into a glorious time-travelling adventure with a weaponised kitten. And then season 2 looks around, shouts “you think that was strange? Hold my beer” and goes even further off the rails. It’s fantastic! Utterly bonkers. If you’re going to adapt from book to TV, this is how you do it. And this came after ITV did their own adaptation a decade or so back with half the cast of Green Wing / Elvenquest that was equally very good, equally not a direct adaptation of the books, but a whole lot less bonkers.
M R James short stories. Hats off to Mark Gatiss, the man can create an excellent ghost story to chill the soul on a winter’s night. And he’s working with some of the best in M R James’ work. 10/10, no notes.
Stardust. Now there’s a movie that takes the core of the story, the very heart, and does it perfectly. Simply perfectly.
Honourable mentions: Peter Jackson’s adaptations of the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, any version of Douglas Adams’ Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and The Expanse – could’ve been perfect if only you’d adapted the last 3 books!
The Bad…
Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. Why have one movie when you can have three? The Hobbit is a fraction of the length of The Lord of the Rings, could’ve been done in one movie without having to manufacture whole extra white Orc sub-plots that didn’t need to be there. And the FX was dreadful by comparison.
Peter Jackson’s Mortal Engines. I so wanted to like this. I wanted to see the other books in the series adapted! The trailer is stunning, London is perfect but the whole thing rushed through the book at lightning speed and we didn’t even get a directors’ cut slowing things down and giving us more time with the story. Disappointing.
Honourable mentions to almost every single adaptation of a Stephen King book, they all seem to follow the same pattern of sticking close to the story until someone gets distracted, the whole thing turns left, and you’re left wondering what just happened?
The Ugly
The Watch. On paper, how could you go wrong with a TV adaptation of Sir Terry Pratchett’s Night Watch? Fantasy city, dragons, trolls, dwarves, comedy… It should’ve been incredible. It was a steaming bin fire. If the bin was full of something that gave off really acrid smoke. And burned for days. No. Not even in a “hey, remember all adaptations are people’s interpretations of the story” benefit-of-the-doubt way. If you’re going to do Pratchett, get it right. At least give the impression you’ve read it once, and not just seen the character names written down on the back of an envelope somewhere.
Go on. Let me know. Which adaptations were the good ones? Which were the bad? And can you find anything uglier?
