Booking Through Thursday: Movie Potential

What book do you think should be made into a movie? And do you have any suggestions for the producers?

Or, What book do you think should NEVER be made into a movie?

I love this question - I’m one of those people who has a mental film reel running in their head as they read!

I recently re-read Far From the Madding Crowd and thought about how much I’d love to see an adaptation. I’m sure it’s been done before, but the BBC could do it again, couldn’t they? Or some other classics, like The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, The Woman in White, The Picture of Dorian Grey, Three Men in a Boat, etc, etc, etc. Lindsay Davis’s Falco series and Iain Pears’s Jonathan Argyll series would make entertaining films. Or A Conspiracy of Paper by David Liss. Or the half-dozen other titles that will occur to me ten minutes after I switch the computer off.

As for books to be barred from the screen ... I do think truly enormous books - like Sharon Penman’s re-creations of history - are best left alone, because of the huge amount that would have to be cut or compressed to squeeze them into two or three hours. The rumour of a forthcoming adaptation of Cross Stitch (Outlander to my American readers) has me worried for just this reason. And mystery novels - Agatha Christie, say - should only ever be adapted if the writers don’t alter the little things like, oh, the identity of the killer, the motive, the identity of the victims, the nature of the characters ... it’s going to be a while before I can read Ordeal by Innocence or The Sittaford Mystery without thinking of the on-screen butchery.