Friday, May 8, 2009

Book Challenge Theme

So, in thinking about what I'm going to read in June, I wanted a theme, but nothing too closely related, so that it wouldn't be boring, and I came up with the idea of reading books that have become movies. I started with a list of 1001 books to read before you die (so they're at least decent) and eliminated any books that I'd already read (fortunately, such as American Psycho - DON'T want to read that again....unfortunately, such as Hitchhiker's Guide). Right now, there are still books that I've seen the movies of. Don't know if it's better or worse going in with a pre-conceived notion. For example, this wasn't even on the list, but I've read the "Bourne" books by Ludlum. Great books, great movies, but NOTHING alike. However, I don't want to read something that will match word for word. Here are the books that are being debated. Feel free to comment on any you think should or should not be included:

Atonement - Ian McEwan*
The Hours - Michael Cunningham
The Reader - Bernhard Schlink
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis de Bernieres
The Virgin Suicides - Jeffrey Eugenides*
Get Shorty - Elmore Leonard
Like Water for Chocolate - Laura Esquivel
The Black Dahlia - James Ellroy
Watchmen - Alan Moore & David Gibbons
Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Márquez
The Cider House Rules - John Irving*
The Shining - Stephen King*
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
The Godfather - Mario Puzo*
2001: A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
In Cold Blood - Truman Capote*
The Graduate - Charles Webb
Breakfast at Tiffany’s - Truman Capote*
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest - Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
Doctor Zhivago - Boris Pasternak
Casino Royale - Ian Fleming*
I, Robot - Isaac Asimov
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day - Winifred Watson
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell*
The Postman Always Rings Twice - James M. Cain
The Thin Man - Dashiell Hammett
The Maltese Falcon - Dashiell Hammett
Tarzan of the Apes - Edgar Rice Burroughs*
The War of the Worlds - H.G. Wells
Dracula - Bram Stoker*
The Island of Dr. Moreau - H.G. Wells
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells*
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson*
Ben-Hur - Lew Wallace*
Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
Around the World in Eighty Days - Jules Verne*
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo*
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
The House of the Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas*
Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens*
The Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo*
Last of the Mohicans - James Fenimore Cooper*
Mansfield Park - Jane Austen
Dangerous Liaisons - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
The Thousand and One Nights - Anonymous

*I've seen the movie

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