I actually felt that Book-Grace didn't necessarily have a worse sense of self-worth, but I think that the book made him feel more isolated and lonelier than Movie-Grace. The first-person perspective makes it very obvious how frustrated and terrified from the start, and we see him like that for several chapters. It took him DAYS (sleep-cycles or whatever lol) to even remember his name and Weir walked us through ALL OF THAT.
What he remembers of himself through the flashbacks definitely paints a picture of an introvert who would kind of drift off by himself rather than be any center of attention. While he does like being the "smart one in the room," around his peers he struggles to feel that way. He's likely carrying that insecurity from being ostracized in his profession because of The Whole UNESCO Incident™. Stratt points out that he'd rather be with kids than peers becuase he likes being looked up to.
In the book, Grace was definitely still thought of in the scientific community as a powerhouse. Stratt seeks him out becuase others still thought he was still the best in his field. They kind of allude to this in the movie:
Stratt: Back at the school you said there were thousands of other people more qualified than you, so...
Grace: I was being modest.
Stratt: I don't need modest, I need people who think they're right when everyone else thinks they're wrong. I need people who piss other people off.
Grace: That's me.
They didn't mention in the movie, but he was the first person that Stratt recruited to do research on Astrophage. He came up with the name "Astrophage." He headed up the group that did Astrophage research and he's a department head doing his job, and Default Ryland Grace Mode means he's doing it very very very well.
One trait that I think Movie-Grace leaned into a lot more was making him the Fun Middle School Teacher type. I didn't quite interpret him as oblivious or scatterbrained, but saw that his style of teaching students and interacting with them is to entertain and be weird and fun and match their energy. And he uses that to try to disarm people (even adults) he's intimidated by.
In the book, I felt his "teacher" trait was well-covered, though a bit differently, by the style of narration itself. I thought it felt at times like it's a teacher talking and explaining out loud to students (which would be us, the readers).
I love what you say about the image representing a "broken perspective" of Grace. He certainly has an internalized image of himself that doesn't agree with how other people view him. I also thought one of the wonderful things in this story is how we get to know Grace as he gets to know himself again, and also as Rocky gets to know him. Rocky only knows post-coma Grace, and whatever Grace makes himself into from this point forward.
And in the end, he was able to reconcile the fragments of who he was (a really good scientist who was also a coward and a bit of a loner), with the person he knew he was at the moment (a really good scientist sent to do an impossible job), and the person he became through his journey with Rocky (a really good scientist who accomplished the impossible and had someone in his life that he would actually die for).
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