film adaptations

The next Genre Reading Group meeting will be Tuesday, May 26, 2020 at 6:30pm, most likely via Zoom again.  

The topic will be space, as in outerspace, and I’ve compiled a list of digital resources on the Library’s blog at https://eolib.blogspot.com/2020/04/space-final-frontier.html. A link to the blog always lives on the Library’s homepage at www.eolib.org as well.

This week, we talked about books and short stories adapted to stage, tv, and film.

Plum Pudding Murder by Joanne Fluke (Hallmark series Murder, She Baked https://www.hallmarkmoviesandmysteries.com/murder-she-baked-movies)

The Cookie Jar's busiest time of the year also happens to be the most wonderful time … for Christmas cookies, Hannah's own special plum pudding—and romance! She also gets a kick out of “Lunatic Larry Jaeger’s Crazy Elf Christmas Tree Lot,” a kitschy carnival taking place smack-dab in the middle of the village green. But then Hannah discovers the man himself dead as a doornail in his own office …Now, with so many suspects to investigate and the twelve days of Christmas ticking away, Hannah's running out of time to nab a murderous Scrooge who doesn't want her to see the New Year.

Greyfriars Bobby by Eleanor Atkinson (aired frequently on The Wonderful World of Disney so check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

The famous true story of a devoted dog. Although first published in 1912, Greyfriars Bobby is still in print and widely read all over the world. The story is about the little Skye terrier, who kept vigil over his master's grave from 1858 to 1872 in Greyfriars kirkyard in the heart of Edinburgh’s Old Town. Greyfriars Bobby was made into a Disney film of the same name in 1960. Bobby, a sparky silver haired Skye terrier, adopts Auld Jock, a worn-out simple shepherd, as his master. Jock is 'let go' by the farmer and dies in poverty having suffered one winter too many. The farmer tries to reclaim Bobby as a pet for his daughter but the dog owes allegiance only to Auld Jock, guarding his grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard. His devotion changes the lives of those around him and ultimately the conditions of the poor in Edinburgh. Bobby's loyalty is eventually rewarded and he becomes a famous dog indeed! This story will capture and uplift every heart.

Emma by Jane Austen (2020 film release, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Jane Austen's beloved comedy about finding your equal and earning your happy ending is reimagined in this delicious new film adaptation of Emma. Handsome, clever and rich, Emma Woodhouse (Thoroughbreds' Anya Taylor-Joy) is a restless "queen bee" without rivals in her sleepy little English town. In this glittering satire of social class, Emma must navigate her way through the challenges of growing up, misguided matches and romantic missteps to realize the love that has been there all along.

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (2019 film release, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Writer-director Greta Gerwig (Lady Bird) has crafted a Little Women that draws on both the classic novel and the writings of Louisa May Alcott, and unfolds as the author’s alter ego, Jo March, reflects back and forth on her fictional life. In Gerwig’s take, the beloved story of the March sisters – four young women each determined to live life on their own terms – is both timeless and timely. Portraying Jo, Meg, Amy, and Beth March, the film stars Saoirse Ronan, Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Eliza Scanlen, with Timothée Chalamet as their neighbor Laurie, Laura Dern as Marmee, and Meryl Streep as Aunt March.

Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng (Hulu)

Starring Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington, Little Fires Everywhere follows the intertwined fates of the picture-perfect Richardson family and an enigmatic mother and daughter who upend their lives. Based on Celeste Ng’s 2017 bestseller, the story explores the weight of secrets, the nature of art and identity, the ferocious pull of motherhood – and the danger in believing that following the rules can avert disaster.

Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty (Hulu)

Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman and Shailene Woodley star in this series about three mothers whose lives unravel to the point of murder.

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (Hulu)

A woman forced into sexual servitude struggles to survive in a terrifying, totalitarian society.

The Loudest Voice in the Room: How Brilliant, Bombastic Roger Ailes Built Fox News and Divided a Country by Gabriel Sherman (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Drawing on hundreds of interviews with Fox News insiders past and present, Sherman documents Ailes’s tactical acuity as he battled the press, business rivals, and countless real and perceived enemies inside and outside Fox. Sherman takes us inside the morning meetings in which Ailes and other high-level executives strategized Fox’s presentation of the news to advance Ailes’s political agenda; provides behind-the-scenes details of Ailes’s crucial role as finder and shaper of talent, including his sometimes rocky relationships with Fox News stars such as O’Reilly, Hannity, and Carlson; and probes Ailes’s fraught partnership with his equally brash and mercurial boss, Rupert Murdoch.

Locke & Key by Joe Hill (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Now a Netflix original series! Named a "modern masterpiece" by The A.V. Club, Locke & Key tells a sprawling tale of magic and family, legacy and grief, good and evil. Acclaimed suspense novelist and New York Times best-selling author Joe Hill (The Fireman, Heart-Shaped Box) has created a gripping story of dark fantasy and wonder—with astounding artwork from Gabriel Rodriguez—that, like the doors of Keyhouse, will transform all who open it. The epic begins here: Welcome to Lovecraft. Following their father's gruesome murder in a violent home invasion, the Locke children return to his childhood home of Keyhouse in secluded Lovecraft, Massachusetts. Their mother, Nina, is too trapped in her grief—and a wine bottle—to notice that all in Keyhouse is not what it seems: too many locked doors, too many unanswered questions. Older kids Tyler and Kinsey aren't much better. But not youngest son Bode, who quickly finds a new friend living in an empty well and a new toy, a key, that offers hours of spirited entertainment. But again, all at Keyhouse is not what it seems, and not all doors are meant to be opened. Soon, horrors old and new, real and imagined, will come ravening after the Lockes and the secrets their family holds.

The Perfect Horse: The Daring US Mission to Rescue Priceless Stallions Kidnapped by the Nazis by Elizabeth Letts

(From Holley: I sort of cheated on this one because, of course, Disney’s Miracle of the White Stallions wasn’t based on this book, but this book will give you all the behind the scenes details and stories that Disney couldn’t/wouldn’t share. Check your video streaming subscriptions for availability.)

WINNER OF THE PEN AWARD FOR RESEARCH NONFICTION

In the chaotic last days of the war, a small troop of battle-weary American soldiers captures a German spy and makes an astonishing find—his briefcase is empty but for photos of beautiful white horses that have been stolen and kept on a secret farm behind enemy lines. Hitler has stockpiled the world’s finest purebreds in order to breed the perfect military machine—an equine master race. But with the starving Russian army closing in, the animals are in imminent danger of being slaughtered for food.

A Discovery of Witches: All Souls trilogy Book 1 by Deborah Harkness (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Now “[a] hot show that’s like Twilight meets Outlander” (Thrillist) airing Sundays on AMC and BBC America, as well as streaming on Sundance Now and Shudder.

Deborah Harkness’s sparkling debut, A Discovery of Witches, has brought her into the spotlight and galvanized fans around the world. In this tale of passion and obsession, Diana Bishop, a young scholar and a descendant of witches, discovers a long-lost and enchanted alchemical manuscript, Ashmole 782, deep in Oxford's Bodleian Library. Its reappearance summons a fantastical underworld, which she navigates with her leading man, vampire geneticist Matthew Clairmont.

Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

First published in 1812, Johann David Wyss’s “The Swiss Family Robinson” is a classic story of survival on a deserted tropical island. While en route to Australia, the titular Swiss Family Robinson finds themselves in great peril when their vessel is caught in a violent storm. As the ship breaks apart when it is battered against a reef, the family is abandoned by their crew, who escape without them in the lifeboats. The family, which consists of a mother, father, and their four sons, are left to fend for themselves. Luckily as the storm subsides they see an island in the distance. After salvaging a plethora of food, livestock, and other supplies they fashion a crude raft from the wreckage and make their way for the island. Every day on the island brings a new adventure and a new obstacle to overcome, as the family struggles to survive in a foreign land isolated from society. Johann David Wyss, a Swiss pastor, wrote this tale of adventure not only to entertain but to instruct, specifically his four sons, in the ways of good family values and the virtue of self-reliance. This exciting adventure has been loved for generations by readers both young and old. 

Testament of Youth: An Autobiographical Study of the Years 1900-1925 (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

This classic memoir of the First World War is now a major motion picture starring Alicia Vikander and Kit Harington. Includes an afterword by Kate Mosse OBE. In 1914 Vera Brittain was 20, and as war was declared she was preparing to study at Oxford. Four years later her life - and the life of her whole generation - had changed in a way that would have been unimaginable in the tranquil pre-war era. TESTAMENT OF YOUTH, one of the most famous autobiographies of the First World War, is Brittain's account of how she survived those agonising years; how she lost the man she loved; how she nursed the wounded and how she emerged into an altered world. A passionate record of a lost generation, it made Vera Brittain one of the best-loved writers of her time, and has lost none of its power to shock, move and enthral readers since its first publication in 1933.

Alice (2009 tv show, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Writer-director Nick Willing, who turned The Wizard of Oz on its ear with 2007's Tin Man, takes a similar approach to another childhood classic with Alice, one of the more visually striking and offbeat live-action adaptations of Lewis Carroll's fantasy stories. Willing's Alice (Caterina Scorsone) is a grown woman--and a karate instructor to boot--whose lack of luck in love seems to have finally taken a turn toward the positive with Jack (Philip Winchester). Their idyll is shattered when Jack is abducted, and Alice's search for him leads her to Wonderland--the one visited by Carroll's Alice a century ago, but now overrun by gloom and vice and anachronistic machinery, and lorded over by a Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates) who kidnaps people from the "real" world to harvest their emotions. Willing's Alice looks impressive, with its richly saturated colors and CGI environment that suggests a world with one foot in Carroll's absurd realm and the other in a futuristic dystopia, and he's abetted by a terrific supporting cast, including Matt Frewer (as the White Knight), Harry Dean Stanton (Caterpillar), Tim Curry (Dodo), and Primeval's Andrew Lee Potts as a sort of glam-rock Mad Hatter. 

GENERAL DISCUSSION: Cheshire Crossing by Andy Weir, illustrated by Sarah Andersen

In a one-of-a-kind graphic novel collaboration between the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Martian and the beloved illustrator behind Sarah’s Scribbles, Alice, Wendy, and Dorothy team up to save the multiverse, from Wonderland to Neverland and Oz. Originating as fan fiction from the brilliant imagination of Andy Weir, now brought to vivid life by Sarah Andersen, Cheshire Crossing is a funny, breakneck, boundlessly inventive journey through classic worlds as you’ve never seen them before. Years after their respective returns from Wonderland, Neverland, and Oz, the trio meet here, at Cheshire Crossing—a boarding school for girls.

The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowski (Netflix)

For over a century, humans, dwarves, gnomes, and elves have lived together in relative peace. But times have changed, the uneasy peace is over, and now the races are fighting once again. The only good elf, it seems, is a dead elf. Geralt of Rivia, the cunning assassin known as The Witcher, has been waiting for the birth of a prophesied child. This child has the power to change the world - for good, or for evil. As the threat of war hangs over the land and the child is hunted for her extraordinary powers, it will become Geralt's responsibility to protect them all -- and the Witcher never accepts defeat.

The Lord of the Rings (books and movies, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Fellowship of the Ring

The Two Towers

Return of the King

The Hobbit (prequel)

The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

The Big Sleep (1939) is a hardboiled crime novel by Raymond Chandler, the first to feature the detective Philip Marlowe. It has been adapted for film twice, in 1946 and again in 1978. The story is set in Los Angeles

The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

In noir master Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye, Philip Marlowe befriends a down on his luck war veteran with the scars to prove it. Then he finds out that Terry Lennox has a very wealthy nymphomaniac wife, whom he divorced and remarried and who ends up dead. And now Lennox is on the lam and the cops and a crazy gangster are after Marlowe.

The Russia House by John le Carre (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

"Glasnost" is on everyone's lips, but the rules of the game haven’t changed for either side. When a beautiful Russian woman foists off a manuscript on an unwitting bystander at the Moscow Book Fair, it's a miracle that she flies under the Soviets' radar. Or does she? The woman's source (codename: Bluebird) will trust only Barley Blair, a whiskey-soaked gentleman publisher with a poet's heart. Coerced by British and American Intelligence, Blair journeys to Moscow to determine whether Bluebird's manuscript contains the truth - or the darkest of fictions. At once poignant and suspenseful, John le Carré's The Russia House is a captivating saga of lives caught in the crosshairs of history.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John le Carre (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability

The inspiration for the major motion picture Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. The first novel in John le Carré's celebrated Karla trilogy, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a heart-stopping tale of international intrigue. The man he knew as "Control" is dead, and the young Turks who forced him out now run the Circus. But George Smiley isn't quite ready for retirement - especially when a pretty, would-be defector surfaces with a shocking accusation: a Soviet mole has penetrated the highest level of British Intelligence. Relying only on his wits and a small, loyal cadre, Smiley recognizes the hand of Karla - his Moscow Centre nemesis - and sets a trap to catch the traitor.

Different Seasons by Stephen King (short stories that spawned films Stand By Me and Shawshank Redemption, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Four gripping novellas tied together by the changing of seasons.

Ice Station Zebra by Alistair MacLean (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

The atomic submarine Dolphin has impossible orders: to sail beneath the ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean to locate and rescue the men of weather-station Zebra, gutted by fire and drifting with the ice-pack somewhere north of the Arctic Circle. But the orders do not say what the Dolphin will find if she succeeds – that the fire at Ice Station Zebra was sabotage, and that one of the survivors is a killer…

Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi by Neil Bascomb (This story, though not this particular book, inspired the film Operation Finale, starring Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, and Melanie Laurent, check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

When the Allies stormed Berlin in the last days of the Third Reich, Adolf Eichmann shed his SS uniform and vanished. Following his escape from two American POW camps, his retreat into the mountains and out of Europe, and his path to an anonymous life in Buenos Aires, his pursuers are a bulldog West German prosecutor, a blind Argentinean Jew and his beautiful daughter, and a budding, ragtag spy agency called the Mossad, whose operatives have their own scores to settle (and whose rare surveillance photographs are published here for the first time). The capture of Eichmann and the efforts by Israeli agents to secret him out of Argentina to stand trial is the stunning conclusion to this thrilling historical account, told with the kind of pulse-pounding detail that rivals anything you'd find in great spy fiction. 

Neal Bascomb wrote another book on this topic, The Nazi Hunters:How a Team of Spies and Survivors Captured the World’s Most Notorious Nazi.

Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand (check your video streaming subscriptions for availability)

Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes: overnight millionaire Charles Howard, mysterious mustang breaker Tom Smith, and Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.