finished reading project hail mary

it took me a month and half to read being wrong, a non-fiction book about error. it was very good but i felt like my brain had to be On in order to read it. 

on the other hand, i started reading project hail mary, a fiction book about a last-ditch outer space mission, four days ago and finished it today. with fiction, i can relax into the story more and use my brain less; though if i really wanted to understand the mechanics of project hail mary, i also would have had to use my brain a ton (it had a lot of math and science central to the story). 

we watched the project hail mary film a few days ago, and it was riveting and hilarious and heartwarming, so i was excited to read the book, too. i enjoyed it more as a movie, though—seeing science is a lot more entertaining for me than reading about the specific procedures. 

i also found that the movie had a lot of changes compared to the book. i'd have to watch it again to know for sure, but it felt like there were a few major changes, but maybe they're more surface-level than it seemed—it does seem like a common book-to-movie strategy to leave out or consolidate a few characters. 

speaking of books-to-movies, others i've seen and read this year are gone girl and pride and prejudice, both the keira knightley version and the bbc series. i found the gone girl movie to be quite faithful to the book. both were good, but i preferred the latter. as for pride and prejudice, i enjoyed the book much more having already seen the keira knightley film version—i think i enjoyed them equally. the bbc series i didn't like as much. 

today as i was reading the last few pages of project hail mary and marveling at how fast i read it, i said to my fiancé, "remember when i couldn't read?" because when i met him, my attention span was not in the condition to be finishing a book at all, let alone in four days. and now i'm reading and writing, nearly every single day! something in me feels repaired, restored, reinvigorated. 

and the more i read, the more i enjoy future books—for example, being wrong had a little section about pride and prejudice, and it felt great to understand the commentary because i was familiar with the source material. i'd like to continue reading classics and other major works, even and especially ones i've read before (like in high school) and didn't really get.