As readers of this blog will know, while everyone around me was watching shows like Benjamin Button and Slumdog Millionaire, I was watching Inkheart, a “children’s show”, mostly to do with how I felt instinctively that I would like the show (based on trailers and reviews and who was acting in it). I did find it charming enough to seek out the book (or perhaps I just wanted to know more about Dustfinger’s backstory), discovered it was a trilogy (listed under “children’s books” in the public libraries), and after exams borrowed all 3 books (from 3 different libraries).
Anyway, I’ve finished Inkheart, and am now starting on Inkspell.
I must say, Inkheart is one of the most slow-moving books I’ve ever read! Perhaps because of all the hype about it being popular and critically-acclaimed I thought it would be a rather different kind of book. Could it be that after reading many adult adventure stories, I now find children’s adventure stories a bit too slow-moving? ; P but that can’t be it either, because Joan Aiken and CS Lewis and many of my other childhood favourites never seemed this slow moving to me even when I reread them as a grown up. Maybe it’s simply that the Inkheart series is not just a children’s book, but a children’s book for junior readers with a target audience younger than that of Narnia, Harry Potter, and many other children’s series which have achieved the same level of fame. But on the other hand, each of the books is pretty long – one wouldn’t normally expect junior-level books to be able to hold a child’s attention for such a great many pages 
So I don’t really know what the target audience is, actually.
Whatever it is, I kept reading because watching the movie helped me to take a greater interest in the characters than I think the book would have achieved on its own for me (though whether that means I’m growing out of my imagination, or whether it really is that the book is too bland for my adult tastebuds, is unclear) Anyway, after reading the book I got the impression that the movie was a very good adaptation – it accelerated all the action without taking away any characterisation. Except for those of Fenoglio and Capricorn, whose roles were watered down in the movie – that could have been left intact without making it a bad movie, really. Otherwise, I guess the movie was pretty good at telling the story!
Hahaha… When a child reads a children’s book, everything is fresh and unmuddied; but when one comes back to a children’s book as an adult after having read many many other books, the carryover effect from other books can be rather surreal. Dustfinger, for example, the unpredictable but sympathetic neither-good-nor-bad protagonist played by Paul Bettany in the film, seemed to me strangely familiar. Where had I met this character before, though? Then I hit it.
He reminds me of those Irish characters (who may or may not be IRA agents) in some of the adventure stories/films who drift in and out of the main plot in pursuit of their own agenda – often skilled and cunning and yet sad and vulnerable. The only specific example I can think of is Liam Devlin from The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins haha. And yeah. In an older generation before Paul Bettany was available, he would have had to be played by Donald Sutherland. Or by a red-haired Eric Stoltz (he was the Irishman in Memphis Belle). In fact, the only thing that keeps Dustfinger from having an Irish accent in my mind is that I can still remember the movie version of the character speaking in Paul Bettany’s voice. Then again, the Paul Bettany connection – plus Dustfinger’s liking for small animals – brings another Irishman, Stephen Maturin, into the picture as well, and I half expect Dustfinger to preface his sentences with “Sure”… “Sure, I’m far away from home… Home’s as unreachable as the Tir nan Og”… (“the best part of my country,” says Maturin.)
I think Dustfinger excites a sympathy in all his readers mainly because he’s trying to GO HOME. And everyone has defintiely had that feeling, whether they know it or not. Everyone is trying to Go Home. And Dustfinger tries, at any cost.
The other person that Dustfinger is is Hobbie Klivian. Haha. Irrationally, I feel they are quite similar, based on personality. I believe they could go on the Character Exchange Programme if they wanted. 
Speaking of the Character Exchange Programme, I believe I like the Inkheart series because it complements Jasper Fforde. It’s a different approach to moving in and out of books, but like Fforde it cross-references multiple books (though the references are a lot less subtle of course). I like the way it throws one slightly off-balance and causes a flood of associations.
And when I’m half asleep, then Dustfinger becomes Bettany’s Geoffrey Chaucer, and then Chauntecleer.. the Chauntecleer both of the real Chaucer and also the rooster in the Book of Sorrows. Why the Book of Sorrows? Because the names Capricorn (whose emblem is a rooster) and Cockerell remind me of Cockatrice… and both universes are boldly painted and full of colour. A succession of images flashes by, layers within layers, and a product of free association. It’s like a drug, I guess. Books are almost a drug to me; and despite its slow-moving tendencies, Inkheart is a fine vehicle (because of its bold strokes and its profusion of semi-literary proper nouns) for this kind of free association.
I’ve gotta go sleep it off now.
