Books and Their Movies

Recently we’ve been caught short-handed (short-shelved?) when a movie based on a book is released. It seems lots of people have a hyperactive conscience-they just CAN’T see the movie until they’ve read the book. My kind of people.

It happened with Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. That’s the book based on the premise that a couple created a baby specifically to furnish spare parts for an ailing older sister. Just before the movie opened, we were flooded with requests for the book. At least ten people were waiting to read it. I didn’t want them to miss out on the movie or the book, so I made a quick trip to HyVee for a couple of paperback copies to add to our collection. We were able to get them out to patrons the same day. I haven’t seen the movie but I understand the ending was changed. The book’s ending was a real shocker; I can’t imagine how it could have been improved.

It is happening again with The Time Traveler’s Wife. It is the tale of a man who travels in and out of time, forward and back, and the little girl he visits when he travels. I was reading it several years ago when I drove 450 miles to visit my sister in southern Missouri. I checked out the book on cd, too. That way, when I stopped for a meal I could take up the book right where I left off the cd in the car. On the way home I was almost finished, so I stopped in Fort Dodge for a late evening meal and finished it up in Applebee’s. It’s that good.

Not wanting to be caught again, I studied up on what movies-based-on books were coming out soon. The Informant by Kurt Eichenwald was a non-fiction best seller in 2000. Shortly the movie will be released. It’s the story of a financial scandal at Archer Daniels Midland. Eichenwald covered the story for the New York Times. The reviews all say that it reads like a well-written whodunit with more twists and turns than a Grisham novel.

You may have seen the tv ads for this next one. Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell is a book with a new movie due out any minute. It is the mostly true story of the author cooking her way through Julia Child’s most famous cookbook. Powell does admit that some stuff she just made up. Like most people, I guess, her story just wasn’t interesting enough on its own without adding some fictional pizzazz. Personally, I’m having some trouble picturing Meryl Streep as Child. Amazing makeup job.

Some more recent book based movies:

Marley and Me by John Grogan
The Reader by Bernard Schlink
Coraline by Neil Gaiman
The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo

Some older ones still worth seeing:
Giant by Edna Ferber
Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
Sounder by William Armstrong
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry
Dr. Zhivago by Boris Pasternak

All available, of course, @ your library.