she loved that book of his read it again and again but always the film was in the back of her mind a nervous tickle she could never forget that she had come to the book by way of an adaptation it felt like a failure a slur against her an admission of weakness she let on to her classmates that she had loved the book long before the film existed scoffed along with them at the audacity of movies listened with them as entranced as they to the rapture with which their professor expounded upon the written word the book the novel that sacred thing and she loved it as well as they she was no less devoted .