The Art of Fielding (Chris Harbach) – This big (512 pages), rich, beautifully written novel about several characters at a fictional liberal arts college whose lives are deeply affected by a single, unexpected play during a baseball game was as much of a page-turner as any thriller I’ve ever read.

Crime 101 (Amazon) – Chris Hemsworth’s precise, highly skilled robber (a combination of Tom Cruise’s Vincent from Collateral, Rober De Niro’s Neil McCauley from Heat, and his own Nicholas Hathaway from Blackhat) is pursued by both Mark Ruffalo’s obsessive, worn-out detective and Barry Keoghan’s frighteningly amoral rival criminal in this uber-stylish Michael Mann homage.

Project Hail Mary (theatre) – This movie, which is based upon one of my favourite books, got me thinking about cinematic literary adaptations in general. There are basically two kinds: those that try to exactly replicate their source* and those that honour their source while also expanding upon and/or reinterpreting it**. In those cases where I’ve read the book beforehand (if I haven’t read it, then I obviously don’t know how faithful or divergent the movie is), I definitely prefer the latter kind of adaptation.

Project Hail Mary, however, is the former kind, as it, for the most part, strictly adheres to the novel upon which it’s based***. Given how much I’d loved the book, I actually considered skipping the movie altogether, figuring that, having already experienced what I believed to be the best version of the story, there wouldn’t be much more I could get out of seeing the same events dramatized on the big screen. I’m glad I changed my mind, though, because Phil Lord and Chris Miller’s direction of Drew Goddard’s script, Greg Frasier’s cinematography, Ryan Gossling’s amiable acting, and the Rocky puppeteers’ puppeteering all combine for a spectacular crowd-pleaser.

* Some examples of my favourite faithful adaptations would be The Lord of the Rings trilogy and Gone Girl.

** My favourite not-perfectly faithful adaptations are V for Vendetta, Ready Player One, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The English Patient.

*** Notably, where the novel goes into meticulous, procedural detail to explain the reasoning behind all of its science, something I particularly appreciated when I read it, the movie, understandably (and somewhat unfortunately), glosses over a lot of these specifics.