I’ve become a prolific Goodreads user over the last several years. Reading a book is a commitment, and I like to record the completion of that commitment. Goodreads does that for me.

Goodreads also lets you rate books, on a ☆☆☆☆☆ → ★★★★★ scale. My personal rating system seems to be… stingier… than most:

• ★☆☆☆☆ A truly terrible book that I regret reading.
• ★★☆☆☆ A book that was not good, but was worth finishing.
• ★★★☆☆ The default rating. Enjoyable.
• ★★★★☆ Above average. More than just enjoyable; worth recommending.
• ★★★★★ Truly excellent. One that made me think about things differently, and/or I would recommend to others without being solicited for a recommendation.

Of the 216 books I’ve read and logged on Goodreads, only five have earned ★★★★★. Of those, two were books about Apple, one was the absolute classic The Power Broker^[1]. The other two were Upgrade and Project Hail Mary.

When I watched the film, I expected it to be a standard film treatment of a novel: the main points would be hit, but so much would be skipped. As it turns out, I don’t think that’s true at all. The film was astonishingly true to the novel, though particularly the last act got fast-forwarded quite a bit.

Last week, I was lucky enough to join Aleen Simms, Quinn Rose, Brian Warren and, of course, Jason Snell, to discuss the film on The Incomparable.

During the discussion, we discuss how the film stands as a film, how it compares and contrasts with the book, and how much we fell in love with Rocky. Forgive the spoiler, but we were all pretty effusive, and I think that comes through in the episode.

I had a blast recording this one, and if you’re a fan of the book or the film, I think you’ll have a blast listening.