Books into Movies

With the popularity of recent movies that have come from books, Rebecca Vnuk proposes an interesting library display idea in the March/April issue of Public Libraries (vol 51, no 2, p.56).  Why not create a display of lesser known books that have been made into movies?  It's a great way to showcase some of the gems on your shelves that people may not know about - and often the movies do not have the same name as the book.  When people love a movie so much that they just want to get some more this is a great way to offer it to them and possibly even get them interested in books (after the Twilight movies came out, my niece became a rabid reader!)

Here is a list of possibilities provided by Rebecca:

• About Schmidt (2002) - loosely based on the 1996 novel of the same name, by Louis Begely. (The 3rd book of the trilogy is due to be released this spring)
• Paper Moon (1973) - based on the novel Addie Pray by Joe David Brown
• Thank You for Smoking (2005) - adapted from the Christopher Buckley novel
• The movies all came Richard Matheson books of the same name:
• Somewhere in Time (1980)
• What Dreams May Come (1998)
• I am Legend (2007) - 2 other films also came out of this book, The Last Man on Earth (1964) and Omega Man (1971)
• Philip K. Dick's short stories have been made into the following films:
• Blade Runner (1982) - based on "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep"
• Total Recall (1990) - based on "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale"
• Minority Report (2002) - based on "The Minority Report"
• The Adjustment Bureau (2010) - based on "The Adjustment Team"
• Election (1998) and Little Children (2004) - based on the Tom Perrotta novels of the same name
• Drive (2011) - based on the novel by James Sallis
• Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (2008) - based on the Winnifred Watson novel from 1938
• Up in the Air (2009) - based on the Walter Kirn novel
• Million Dollar Baby (2004) - based on the short story collection "Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner" by F.X. Toole
• Sideways (2004) - adapted from the Rex Pickett novel
• Winter's Bone (2011) - based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell
• Primal Fear (1996) - adapted from William Diehl's novel

Thanks for the great idea Rebecca!  (P.S. I highly recommend reading Rebecca's columns and books - you may have noticed I've referenced her before.  She is the author of 2 nonfiction readers' advisory titles for Libraries Unlimited: Read On ... Women's Fiction: Reading Lists for Every Taste and Women's Fiction Authors: A Research Guide)