I like to write and read.  I grew up reading Anne McCaffrey and Tolkein and Lewis and Feist and their stories are what originally inspired me to write my own (nothing's original anymore anyway).  So when I see an author pop up saying "My inspiration comes directly from Anne McCaffrey and Tolkein" I just had to read the book.  Enter Christopher Paolini.

So I grabbed me up a copy of Eragon and read it and came to three conclusions:

1st, yeah...nothing's original anymore.

2nd, only James Cooper has ever been able to write, and get published, a book that more poorly written...but:

3rd, tremendous, wonderful story.

I enjoyed the book but I couldn't understand how it got published in it's format, though, until I learned that he didn't go through ballantine or anything (like other authors of the genre have to do)...Paolini had mommy and daddy publish it.  No big deal, though, because mainstream publishers would have insisted on the book being cut down and that might have been devestating to the story.

That's not what I'm really been struggling with, though.  What I've been having a hard time figuring out is why, when a book is made into a movie, the produces of the movie insist on slaughtering the book?  Well, now I think it's because they try and keep the book and movie distinctly seperate...so people are interested in investing in both.  But I do think they got a little carried away with Eragon.  They cut so much out of the book that the movie was actually confusing.  Some parts I can see leaving out of a film...I'm sure that parents in the theatres would be appreciative had they shown the dead and mangled baby, being picked at by a crow, impaled by a wicked spear and left suspended above a giant pile of bodies like a flag.  But there was some stuff that needed to be in there...for the simple puspose of explanation.  Like the fact that only Eragon and those fluent in Elf can speak to Saphira.  Stuff like that would have been beneficial to everyone watching.

Of course there were a lot of things about the movie that I feel they changed too much but nothing irritated me so much as them giving Saphira feathers.  What the f%$k kind of dragon has feathers?!

The baby Saphira, though...absolutely adorable.  I want one.

Haha! You're a dork! A big dork who reads fantasy novels! j/k... 

When I was like 13 my parents found the books I had by Feist... they confiscated and read through them. When they came to the part where the demon was squatting on the wall of the ICU stroking his enormous boner, they decided I shouldnt be allowed to read that sort of stuff anymore.

prior to that I liked the shannara series someone turned me on to, piers anthony, other stuffs. Dont read any of that stuff anymore. Life is too short... I could be surfing GStwins or playing counterstrike.

I must not have read that particular work of Feist's...and here I was thinking I had every book he had published....

I have heard the same thing about the movie from people that have read the book.  But from people that havent say it is a great movie...what I am thinking is that it is only confusing to those who have read the book  just a thought

Actually no...I've ended up explaining several things from the movie to people who haven't read the book, and at the theatre there were people there who had read the book explaining stuff to people sitting around them almost the entire time.

The movie is only "not confusing" to people who lack to abillity to look past the pretty colors.  They wouldn't know what was going on regardless.

ok......nobody went as far to tell me that they, if they did, had to explain it to several people.  Just saying what I have heard, debating on if I want to see the movie or not.

well it's worth seeing...mostly for the superbly animated dragon...but don't expect too much from the dialogue.  The majoraty of the stuff they neglected to explain is easy to pick up on if you've read anything by McCaffrey or Tolkein or Feist.