** spoiler alert ** 
 Just finished this, book #8 in my Goodreads yearly challenge and #3 rounding out my Stanley Kubrick book-to-film marathon. I heard in the introduction by A. Clarke that he wrote the novel simultaneously as Kubrick was working on the film and that it was a collaboration. Thus, the book is very similar to the movie. My favorite parts were the confrontations with HAL when he began to break down and the atmosphere aboard Discovery grew sinister and disturbing. Overall though especially at the end, coming to the book having seen the Kubrick film, the "beyond the Infinite" sequences are really best experienced visually rather than to read descriptions about it. Though the text "explains" more clearly what is going on at the end where the Kubrick film leaves the viewer to figure it out on their own and make their own interpretations. Clarke, especially in the last couple of paragraphs really leaves no doubt as to what exactly was happening with the "baby" where that wasn't, if I recall, so clearly laid out in the film. Though I am very familiar with the movie I do plan to revisit it on Blu Ray this weekend.