Books that became films

The Guardian newspaper in England came up with a list of 1,000 books it says everyone should read. Of the 1,000 listed, I recognized 296 that have been made into movies, TV mini-series, and made-for-TV films (there may have been more that I just didn’t recognize). They are as follow:

A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (x)
The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens
The Commitments by Roddy Doyle
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding
Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame (x)
Brewster’s Millions by Richard Greaves (George Barr McCutcheon)
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller (x)
Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgkins
High Fidelity by Nick Hornby
The Castle by Franz Kafka
Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor
Bright Lights, Big City by Jay McInerney
Topper Takes a Trip by Thorne Smith
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Penrod by Booth Tarkington
The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain (x)
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon
Thank You Jeeves by PG Wodehouse
The Man with the Golden Arm by Nelson Algren
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler (x)
Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler
Trent’s Last Case by EC Bentley
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (x)
The Asphalt Jungle by WR Burnett (x)
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain (x)
Double Indemnity by James M Cain (x)
The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (x)
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (x)
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (x)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (x)
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (x)
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
A Study in Scarlet by Arthur Conan Doyle (x)
The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle (x)
The Sign of Four by Arthur Conan Doyle (x)
The Manchurian Candidate by Richard Condon (x)
The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad (x)
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
The Ipcress File by Len Deighton (x)
Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (x)
An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser (x)
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (x)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (x)
The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (x)
LA Confidential by James Ellroy
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (x)
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming (x)
You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming (x)
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (x)
A Gun for Sale by Graham Greene (x)
The Ministry of Fear by Graham Greene
The Third Man by Graham Greene
A Time to Kill by John Grisham
The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett (x)
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (x)
Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett (x)
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett (x)
Black Sunday by Thomas Harris
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins (x)
Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith (x)
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
A Rage in Harlem by Chester Himes
A Taste for Death by PD James
Friday the Rabbi Slept Late by Harry Kemelman
Misery by Stephen King
Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King
Kim by Rudyard Kipling (x)
The Constant Gardener by John le Carre
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre (x)
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carre (x)
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley (x)
The Godfather by Mario Puzo (x)
The Laughing Policeman by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo
Gorky Park by Martin Cruz Smith (x)
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (x)
The Getaway by Jim Thompson
Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain (x)
Native Son by Richard Wright (x)
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (x)
The L Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
The Way of All Flesh by Samuel Butler
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
Howards End by EM Forster
The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (x)
Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
Ulysses by James Joyce
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence
How Green was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn
Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust
East of Eden by John Steinbeck (x)
The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss (x)
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Lorna Doone by RD Blackmore
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey
My Antonia by Willa Cather
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot (TV)
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
Tender is the Night by F Scott Fitzgerald
Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford (TV)
A Room with a View by EM Forster
The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles
The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico (TV)
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (TV)
The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (x)
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (x)
Green Mansions: A Romance of the Tropical Forest by WH Hudson
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
The Wings of the Dove by Henry James
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
The Far Pavillions by Mary Margaret Kaye
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis
The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera
Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Pierre-Ambroise-Francois Choderlos de Laclos
Lady Chatterley’s Lover by DH Lawrence
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann -150
Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Lolita, or the Confessions of a White Widowed Male by Vladimir Nabokov
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan
The Reader by Benhardq Schlink
Love Story by Eric Segal
Enemies, a Love Story by Isaac Bashevis Singer ?
Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
Breathing Lessons by Anne Tyler (TV movie)
The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
The Graduate by Charles Webb
Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
Naked Lunch by William Burroughs
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (x)
Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There by Lewis Carroll
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K Dick
The Magus by John Fowles (x) 175
Neuromancer by William Gibson
Lord of the Flies by William Golding (x)
The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dune by Frank L Herbert
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
The Children of Men by PD James
The Trial by Franz Kafka
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (basis of 1968 film Charly)
The Shining by Stephen King
Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (x)
The Butcher Boy by Patrick McCabe
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (x)
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (x)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (x)
Dracula by Bram Stoker (x)
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (x)
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (x)
The Time Machine by HG Wells (x)
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells (x)
The Sword in the Stone by TH White (x)
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (x)
Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin (x) (Made for TV movie)
Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
Room at the Top by John Braine
Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell (x)
Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (x)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (x)
Bleak House by Charles Dickens (2 silent films and 3 BBC TV adaptations)
Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (x)
The Book of Daniel by EL Doctorow
Notes from the Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky (influenced Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver)
The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky
Sister Carrie by Theodor Dreiser
Silas Marner by George Eliot (x)
Independence Day by Richard Ford
A Passage to India by EM Forster
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (2 TV adaptations)
Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (x)
The Leopard by Giuseppi di Lampedusa
Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (x)
Animal Farm by George Orwell (x)
Cry, the Beloved Country by Alan Paton
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby Jr
One Day in the Life of Denisovich by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (x)
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (x)
Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse
Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard
Fair Stood the Wind for France by HE Bates (x) (TV mini-series)
Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (x)
Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (x)
Sharpe’s Eagle by Bernard Cornwell (x) (PBS TV series)
The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane (x)
Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (x)
Deliverance by James Dickey
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (x)
Justine by Lawrence Durrell
The African Queen by CS Forester (x)
Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
King Solomon’s Mines by H Rider Haggard
She: A History of Adventure by H Rider Haggard
Covenant with Death by John Harris
Enigma by Robert Harris
The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Hasek
For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway
The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A High Wind in Jamaica by Richard Hughes
From Here to Eternity by James Jones (x)
Andersonville by MacKinlay Kantor (x)
On the Road by Jack Kerouac (x) (a film adaptation in the works for years)
The Call of the Wild by Jack London (x)
The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean (x)
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy (x)
The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley
Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty (x) (TV mini-series)
The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer (x)
Fortunes of War by Olivia Manning (BBC TV mini-series)
Moby-Dick or, The Whale by Herman Melville (x)
Tales of the South Pacific by James Michener
The Cruel Sea by Nicholas Monsarrat (x)
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Emmuska Orczy (x)
The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolp Erich Raspe
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (x)
Sacaramouche by Rafael Sabatini (x)
Captain Blood by Rafael Sabatini (x)
The Hunters by James Salter (x)
Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (x)
Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
The Young Lions by Irwin Shaw (x)
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute (x) (both a film and TV series)
Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson (x)
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson (x)
Sophie’s Choice by William Styron
Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (x)
War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (x)
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (x)
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (x)
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne (x)
Candide by Voltaire
Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut (x)
Men at Arms by Evelyn Waugh (2 TV adaptations)
The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells (x)
The Virginian by Owen Wister (x)
The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk (x)

Films being based on books is the way it used to be. No more, really.

Other films that were based on books:

Schindler's List

The Incredible Journey

The Cardinal

Ben-Hur

Exodus

(to name afew)

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"It does not take a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brush fires of freedom in the minds of men." -- Samuel Adams (1722-1803)

A raisin in the sun

Ender's Game - I think

Uncle Tom's Cabin- I believe

12 angry men

OK I named my few.

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Arnie Cunningham - All of this because some drunk ran over that sh*tter Welch?


Arnie Cunningham- Right up the little tramps @ss!

Right--I'm not saying these are the only films made from books: The point is out of what someone with some knowledge of books and their merits lists as the 1,000 most important novels (I don't think there was a wholly non-fiction book or biography among them) to read in one's lifetime, only some 300 have yet made the transition to film.

That means most of what someone considers to be the best books ever written are still awaiting adaptation to screen. If Hollywood (extending that to mean the major movie industries around the world) were interested in making high quality films, they might mine the other 700 books on that list--some of which have been around for hundreds of years and some that are realitively rececent. Regardless of the age of any one book on the list, it is still a contender today as one of the best books ever written. There has got to be something in the quality of a book that has maintained its popularity for say 200 years. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet still works when updated on screen into a teen-gang musical. His Macbeth is just as interesting when set as a Mafia war in Men of Respect.

The truly great books still maintain their appeal as outstanding stories, more so I would argue than a long-running 20-year-old TV series being compressed into a single film. The appeal of a TV series is that it appeared in small bites week after week after week, the main characters virtually the same but each story-line a little different, and had time to build a following (I can't think of a single TV series whose audience peaked with its pilot film). That appeal cannot be duplicated when it changes the basic concept and, in some case, actors and characters as with The Brady Bunch, Sgt. Bilko, and Mission: Impossible. Star Trek has been popular as a movie series because it retained as much as possible its original actors, characters, and storylines.

Of course, the major problem is making a good movie from a great book is finding a good writer to do the screenplay. Competant stuntmen, special effects, and quick-cut editors are more plentiful and likely cheaper.

As great as their stories are and as fine the films made from them, A Raisin in the Sun and 12 Angry Men technically do not qualify as great books because they actually began as plays: Raisin was written for and first produced on Broadway. 12 Angry Men was written and first performed as a play for a TV drama program (as was another great play-to-movie Requem for a Heavyweight).

I'd never heard of the book or movie Ender's Game; although it won a Best Novel award in 1986, it was not on that particular list of 1,000 best books. Neither was one of my particularly favorite books and movie, On the Waterfront. But then more extremely good books would be left off a list of the 1,000 best books than the number of extremely good movies that would have to be culled from a list of the 1,000 best films.

On the other hand, Uncle Tom's Cabin was indeed listed as one of the 1,000 best books and as one also made into a film.

You can tell my reading tastes from the 300 list I posted. Each of the books that I've read is marked (x) at the end of the entry.

the notebook think you might of said that
um interview with the vampire

You're right, those were books before they became movies, but they weren't on The Guardian's list of 1,000 books everyone should read.

I started to read the Vampire book, but gave it up halfway through. Just didn't hold my interest. Never have seen the movie, just occasional scenes when clicking to the next TV channel. Not only did I not like the book the movie was based on, but I don't like the two stars (Pitt and Cruise, wasn' it?). If they had sandwiched Julia Roberts and the Baldwins into that movie, they would had all of my "favorite don't-likes" in a single film.

Did read and enjoy The Notebook, but was really disappointed in the movie switched the focus from the old couple to them in their youth and even added some silly or smarmy situations. Hollywood also dumbed down the ending, giving up in the process a chance to do a sequel.

So, more interestingly, which books were on the list that haven't been made into films yet? Maybe we can speculate as to why, or pick which ones we'd like to see adapted...

Oh, lord! That's an appropriate and fair question, but surely you don't want me to list the more than 700 novels not included in my first list!

Instead, let me direct you to the following website (remember, I just listed the 300 books that I recognized as having been made into movies. There likely were more than 300, including several books and films with which I am not familar):
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009...tbooks-fiction

I generally don't enjoy books I or others "should" read.

I did like Interview With The Vampire very much when I found it. It was a very cool and new idea on so many levels. I believe it took a decade or more for a sequel to be published.

I'm not terribly fond of Cruise or Pitt. I remember being somewhat outraged at the idea of Cruise as Lestat but the movie, while it over reached the original book a bit, was far better than I had expected.

Two dismal failures of great read to film are The Odessa File by Frederick Forsythe and The Keep by Paul F. Wilson. Both books were so wonderful to read. I could see the movie as it should be in my mind. Yet the movies were just terrible, awful things.

Translating books to movies is often very difficult. Internal dialog is one of the more interesting aspects of many stories and difficult to "show" on film. I believe this is one reason why it's such a challenge.

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Bleacheddecay

Reading, to me, is something that should be savored over a good few days or even weeks if need be. Movies are wonderful in their ability to share a story in only 90 mins+ . I love both, and will always lean towards books as the best way to tell a story and movies as the best way to tell a story, quickly.

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“The gladdest moment in human life, methinks, is a departure into unknown lands.” – Sir Richard Burton

My favorite book has never become a movie...

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I used to be addicted to crystal meth, now I'm just addicted to Breaking Bad.

Lmao!

Let's see which if any, of these have I read? Or even seen?

The Commitments by Roddy Doyle (s)
Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding (s)
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark (s) I loved this movie.
The Witches of Eastwick by John Updike (s)
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil by Fay Weldon (r)
The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan (s)
The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr (s)
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (s)
The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler (s)
And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie (s)
The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton (s)
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (s)
My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier (R)
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (R)
Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (s) Bond before he was Borne, LOL.
Goldfinger by Ian Fleming (s)
You Only Live Twice by Ian Fleming (s)
The Day of the Jackal by Frederick Forsyth (r and s)
A Time to Kill by John Grisham (r and s_
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett (s)
Red Dragon by Thomas Harris (r)
The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (s)
The Constant Gardener by John le Carre (s)
Get Shorty by Elmore Leonard (s)
The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (s)
Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley (r and s) One of my many all time fav authors!
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott (r)
Ulysses by James Joyce (r)
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey (r and s)
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx (r)
Swiss Family Robinson by Johann David Wyss (S)
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (r and s)
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (r and s)
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote (s)
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (r and s)
The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides (s)
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (r and s)
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (r and s)
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (r)
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (r)
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (basis of 1968 film Charly) (r and s) Loved this book.
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (r and s, s, s, LOL) Enjoyed the journeys.
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (r and s) Horrible film IMO. The book was better.
Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk (r and s)
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by JK Rowling (r and s)
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (r and s) Adorable and somehow profound story.
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (r and s) The film is silly the book is so much more.
Dracula by Bram Stoker (r and s)
The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (r)
The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien (r and s)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain (r and s, s, s, . . .)
The Time Machine by HG Wells (r and s, s) Loved the book.
The War of the Worlds by HG Wells (r and s, s)
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (s, s, s)
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (r)
Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis (s)
Animal Farm by George Orwell (r and s) Ugly movie but there was some humor.
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (s) Class assignment. Ugh.
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (r and s)
The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West (s) I saw this, back when I didn't know a "sneak preview meant you have to watch this one before you can watch the one you came to see. LOL.
The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (s)
The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean (s)
The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolp Erich Raspe (s)
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque (s, s) The first version is just incredible.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (s)
Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne (s)
A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne (s)
The Island of Dr Moreau by HG Wells (s) At least it starred Barbra Careera, that's about all I can say for the film.

ERB's Tarzan, a number of Shakespeare's plays, Shadow, Doc Savage, Quatermass, Monkey, a number by Alexander Dumas, a number by Charles Dickens, Gulliver's Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, Mickey Spillane books, Spenser:For Hire, John Buchanan books, Sherlock Holmes, Lost World (Prof Challenger), Lone Ranger, Zorro, Raymond Chandler books, REH's Conan, Mr Moto, Charlie Chan, Fu Manchu, Edgar Allan Poe books, H P Lovecraft books, a fair number of bible stories, Hornblower, Sharpe, P G Wodehouse books, R Compton's William books, Untouchables, West Side Story, On the Beach, MASH, A number of H R Haggard books, Black Beauty, Pinocchio, a number of Jules Verne's books and Jack London books, H G Well's books, The Bat, a number of Agatha Christie books, Some of Sapper's books, Little Women, Little House on the Prairie, Dr Syn, 1001 Arabian Nights, Peter Pan.

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All secrets are safe with this man, because none are as deadly to him as his own. His secret is that he is Richard Kimble. (The Fugitive - Conspiracy of Silence)

The two discworld novels turned to movies,

The Hogfather
The Colour Of Magic

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~In the event of a Zombie Uprising, remember to sever the head or destroy the brain!~

I've never made it a point to read books just because they were listed as great, but it seems that many of the books I've read and enjoyed have turned up on such lists. As a kid, I enjoyed adventure books: read one Leatherstocking story and enjoyed it, so I then read the rest of the series. Same thing with authors like Stevenson and Twain. Even American and English lit classes in college introduced me to some great books--probably never would have picked up Catcher in the Rye otherwise. Only assigned book I had a problem with was The Scarlet Letter--the time and idiom and style in which it was written couldn't hold my attention, and the characters just didn't seem real to me. But the biggest problem was the instructor's emphasis on the symbolism all through the book. I tried to argue with him (imagine that! ) because to me sunlight in the forest was just sunlight in the forest and a stream was just a stream, not symbolic of something deeper. But you know, it's funny how I started spotting symbols in subsequent books I read.

You're right, it must be difficult to translate the verbal to visual at times, but it seems to me that the films that make that transition the best are films that have good writers produce the scripts, sometimes the original author himself. It usually helps, too, if the script sticks closely to the original story and its dialogue. That worked really well in The Maltese Falcon for example but a lousy script by a lousy writer totally sabotaged Catch-22.