What are some of your favorite books that were made into movies?

The Notebook, I didn’t like the book as much though.

EDIT: I’m with Uberbatman. Fight Club and Choke are fantastic.

Books that were made into movies: I like Lord of the Rings

Books-that-were-made-into-movies: I like There Will Be Blood and No Country for Old Men…also The Godfather

Fight Club and Choke

One of my favourite books of all time is Tuck Everlasting.

Movie was ICK.

In the book, Jesse is 17, and Winnie was 10. There was NO romance. In the movie they bumped her age up several years and made a romance, making it more appealing to tweens! Geez!

I believe it took away from the total message/moral of the story, which was about mortality and life purpose. Shame.

To Kill a Mockingbird is my favorite book and a hell of a good movie.

Awesome answers!
asmonet – LOVED The Notebook!
queenzboulevard – Great choices!
uberbatman – Seconded!
seekingwolf – I enjoyed Tuck Everlasting too!
augustlan – Agreed!

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. The book was better.

RandomMrdan – I agree, the book was definitely better.

The Razor’s Edge
Lolita
The Little Prince

I am generally opposed to the practice after the way they butchered Eragon.

Watchmen. Fox should fuck off.

@mrdh

Speaking of Fox, I’d like to personally slap whoever thought Dragonball and Cowboy Bebop movies would be good ideas!

Joyluck Club

taking Woodstock. The movie is not out yet.

A few good ones:
Everything Jane Austen wrote. The BBC Pride and Prejudice is quite good, as is an old black and white version which I’m too lazy to look up right now.
The Lord of the Rings
Slaughterhouse Five – a good version
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory – I prefer the Gene Wilder version.

Not so good film versions:
Starship Troopers
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

ditto to uber
haven’t seen choke unfortunately, i do hope it’s as good as the book, or at least a decent tribute to it

As far as pairs for which I like both the book and the movie regardless of the differences between them, Jurassic Park is the best example I can think of at the moment.

I hate the way that Peter Jackson totally changed Faramir—my favorite character in the Lord of the Rings books, but a totally different person in the movies.

Johnny Got His Gun is another good one.

@ zaku

“I prefer the Gene Wilder version”
That makes me very happy. Thank you.

I prefer to pretend the Johnny Depp version doesn’t even exist!

@tiffyandthewall it could have been better, but it was good. If you liked the book, youll enjoy this. But it definitely could have been better.

@uber, okay, i’ve been waiting for someone that actually read it to let me know if they liked it. i was almost afraid to see it because i really did like the book. i’ll take a chance on it hah (:

i really wish they made survivor instead…. but they cant because its still too soon after 9/11 >_<

@Zaku: Starship Troopers was a book…?

That movie is craptastic awesome incarnate.

The Da Vinci Code (i like the book version but movie was terrific! )

LOTR obviously. I think it’s amazing how they captured the atmosphere of the book in only a few hours of film. And included most of the plot.

Wish they’d also make a decent version of the Hobbit…

Oh and bad versions: books by Terry Pratchett. I’ve seen the Bromeliad trilogy and the Hogfather and both were so horrible, I would never buy his books if I’d seen the movies first. Luckily I did the reading first, and he’s my favourite writer.

twilight is good
The house of the spirits is great for a sunday afternoon :)(If you have not seen it, go get it!)
Harry Potter is good too
and the lord of the rings

There have been so many…

Typically I never like the movie as much as I do the original book, but I must admit that the Harry Potter movies have done a fairly good job in capturing most of the essence of the books. The books are much better, however.

The movie version of Eragon totally missed what made the book so good, the process of boy and dragon both maturing and the relationships between the villagers. Instead it focused on fights and special effects.

LOTR was pretty good but as with any movie much had to be left out due to time constraints and some characters were definitely Hollywoodized.

Starship Troopers the book is totally different from the movie and much, much better.

The original Roald Dahl book on which the two movies (Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory with Gene Wilder and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with Johnny Depp) are based is in many ways actually simpler than either film. While I like both movies, I did enjoy the expansion of Willie Wonka’s back story in the Johnny Depp version. It also takes some of its details from the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. More importantly, the Johnny Depp film captured a bit more of the original creepiness of the original book. The Gene Wilder film, while a lovely hallucinogenic ride, upset Roald Dahl so much he could never watch it all the way through.

Interestingly enough, the Gene Wilder film was originally a box office flop, barely earning back what it cost to make. The Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version in contrast was your basic blockbuster.

One thing I found interesting was that in reading Dahl’s autobiography “Boy” I found out where he got the idea for it all. His school experiences weren’t particularly pleasant and one nasty memory he had was of a candy store proprietor who was weird and a bit creepy. Dahl and his pals managed somehow to put a dead mouse in among the candies at one point so I suppose that the proprietor had a right to dislike him, but he ended up being beaten rather badly by the school headmaster at the request of the store owner. Many of the nastier teachers he had ended up later on as villains in his books.

One book I found benefited from being turned into a movie was Stephen King’s novel The Shining. The book had more detail (and in some cases too much detail) but the movie crystallized the story. Of course, Jack Nicholson’s performance was classic, but after seeing the movie some aspects of the book became clearer and I could go back to read it later with much more enjoyment.

If you go to http://www.mcpl.lib.mo.us/readers/movies/book.cfm you will find a lovely list of books turned into movies since 1980, some 1250 films. You can go down the listing and see if any other film/book combos stand out.

I enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, because I didn’t like the books, there was too much detail and boring fluff-n-stuff. In the movies, they cut a lot of that out and make it much more interesting.

Carrie by Stephen King

@mangeons – the detail was what I liked about the books. Although the movies were good as far as they went I missed the details and the backstories.

Narnia

Schindler’s List (based on the book Schindler’s Ark.

Narnia was a good adaptation, though I never understood why they always start from the 2nd book. I liked the first one. I would have liked to see someone film it too.

Brillant adaptations where the movie and the books fuse in my imagination:
The Hours
The English Patient

Oh my, this could take a while. I’ll try to exercise a little restraint. To Kill A Mockingbird—great movie, even greater book. Lord of the Rings and Chronicle of Narnia—two of my favorite books, and I loved the on-screen adaptations. Anne of Green Gables (even though the movie was actually a PBS serial). Little Women—loved Winona Ryder as Jo. October Sky. I could go on, but I promised to restrain myself.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

How could I forget The Outsiders.

@asmonet: Yes, as Darwin already confirmed, Starship Troopers was a book (by Heinlein), which the film was extremely unfaithful to. I was a fan of the book after being a fan of the Avalon Hill wargame based on it (which was quite faithful to the book).

@Foolaholic: Welcome. :-)

@Darwin: Great answer, and very interesting about Dahl and the chocolate factory. I knew some of that but had forgotten over the years. Incidentally, I found Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected pretty interesting and amusing (and available on Netflix).

@aidje: I sympathise. There are parts of Jackson’s LOTR films that I wish were closer to the source, or that just made more sense, were more realistically timed or scaled, or were less Hollywoodized. But I’d say it was a very good effort, especially in comparison to other Hollywood travesties (faint praise, I know). Interesting that you have such an interest in Faramir; I’ll remember to give him more attention if and when I re-read ROTK.

@Jack79 – they always start with the second book (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) because it was written and published first (WInter 1949 and 1950 respectively). The Magician’s Nephew is what we currently call a “prequel” and was actually the seventh Narnia book to be written (Winter 1954) but the sixth to be published (1955).

There is quite a bit of debate by fans of the Narnia books as to the order in which they should be read. When first published in the U.S. they were numbered in publication order as book 1, book 2, etc. However, Lewis’ stepson has some letters from the author that indicate that internal chronological order is what Lewis preferred. Here are both orders:

Publication order (and Hollywood film order)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Horse and His Boy
The Magician’s Nephew
The Last Battle

Chronological order

The Magician’s Nephew
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
The Horse and His Boy
Prince Caspian
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
The Silver Chair
The Last Battle

I am a staunch publicationist. Regardless of what C.S. Lewis said in that single letter, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is clearly written as if the reader has never before encountered Narnia. The Magician’s Nephew is clearly written as if the reader has read all of the previous books. I mourn that my boxed set has them numbered chronologically, but that has not stopped me from placing them in what I hold to be the proper order.

I have them in one huge single tome which of course follows the chronological order.

@aidje – Lewis freely admits in that same letter that he wrote each book without believing or expecting he would write another in the same world, so that adds to the problem in that even HE did not know about the other books at the time he wrote each one.

Other “prequelists” and series writers such as George Lucas (Star Wars), Robert Heinlein (who wrote all his books to fit into his “future history,” a term first used by John W. Campbell), Isaac Asimov (with his references to the “Encyclopedia Galactica”) and many others are much more organized about it.

In any case, each reader is free to choose the order in which to read the books. The only thing I suggest is that one read The Last Battle last. For those who have read it I think the reason is obvious. For those who haven’t, it will definitely change how you think of Narnia.

Jaws – Peter Benchley
All the President’s Men – Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
2001 A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Apocalypse Now – loosely based on Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Deliverance – James Dickey
Roots – Alex Haley
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
Silence of the Lambs – Thomas Harris
To Have and Have Not – Earnest Hemingway
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
Shawshank Redemption – Stephen King
The Bourne Identity – Robert Ludlum
The French Connection – Robin Moore
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Presumed Innocent – Scott Turow
Chariots of the Gods – Erich von Daniken
War of the Worlds – H. G. Wells

The Outsiders was really good—We watched it in school. And I don’t know if it was a book, but West Side Story was a great movie. ;)

Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Oh, and the Godfather. But that answer may be obvious.

@mangeons The Harry Potter books are a thousand times better than the movies. The first three movies tried, the others are just on cruise control.
One of my favorite books is Day of The Triffids. A movie and a miniseries came out, and soon another movie! Hope they get it right!

@filmfann- I just couldn’t finish the books, they were too boring, at least in the beginning. I can’t stand that in a book.

My favorite movie has always been the second one, The Chamber of Secrets, but I also like the fourth one, The Goblet of Fire. I thought they were pretty good. But the fifth one I found really boring.

…Mangeons, we can’t be friends anymore until you read HP.

((cries)) Please, ‘Mo? I promise I’ll read them! ;-;

You better. :)

Don’t worry, I will, or you can hit me with a rock. ;)

Promise? ;)

Promise! I have, however, listened to the first one on a CD set. Does that count, or do I have to read it?

You can listen, but I’m gonna go all adult on you now, you should read it. It’s a different and more fulfilling experience. :)

Don’t try to act adult on me, I read all the time! I’ve read well over 100 books in my lifetime, mostly for fun. I just think those books are boring. xD

Only because you didn’t stick it out, one of my favorite books of all time was ruined for me for four years because of the first line. I finally picked it up and was angrier than you can imagine with myself. Can you imagine if I’d never read past that? I would have been depriving myself!

If you’re curious, it was A Wrinkle In Time.
Now, get off Fluther and get crackin’ on those books.

My favorite book ever I couldn’t read the first time I tried. I’ve read it 6 times now, but I don’t own it. I have it in my possession from the library now. I really need to buy it, my rule is I have to read it at least once a year. I’ve read it 6 times since 4th grade, and I’m in 8th grade now. In case you’re wondering, it’s The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. I’ve already mentioned it several times on this website I believe. You need to read it.

I’ll read that if you read HP.

Right now.

;)

I’ll read HP if you read that! :) But I only have the first and second book right now, and the second one’s on loan. And they’re not here, I’m at my mom’s house, and they’re living at my dad’s house. ;) I’ll read them on Tuesday though! :)

Yes! Deal. Thank god the mods haven’t noticed us yet. I feel like any second now, we’re gonna get yelled at.

I know right? We should stop. But I don’t want to. Go to the bookstore RIGHT NOW.

Mmkay!

It’s The House of the Scorpion. by Nancy Farmer. It’s red. Don’t forget! :)

IT’S HARRY FRICKIN’ POTTER AND IT’S YOUR NEW RELIGION. Don’t forget! ;)

I won’t forget! Promise! ;)

Children, stop whispering and go to bed!

And no reading under the covers!

Aww, why not!