The Hunger Games

Some of the best books that I have ever read were ultimately made into movies. However, as you might already know, the books are always better than the movie. Jaws by Peter Benchley was so much scarier when I read it than when I viewed it on the big screen. Carrie by Stephen King gave me nightmares, and even though the movie lived up to my expectations, the book was better.

One reason that this is so is that when you read the book, you use your imagination to picture what the characters look like, and sometimes whole sections of a book are not in the film, because the movie would just be too long. In addition, sometimes the movie is so different than the book. I found this out when I first read My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult and then saw the movie. There were many changes, including the ending.

Here are some recent movie releases that were books before becoming movies:

• The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chobosky (watch NYPL staff chat with the author on Google+.)
• Life of Pi by Yann Martel
• Tean of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules by Jeff Kinney
• The Dark Knight Rises: Batman versus Bane by Jodi Huelin
• Road to Marvel's The Avengers
• Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Sparkle: A Novel by Denene Millner
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
• The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
• Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

See other blog posts on books made into movies, and browse books in Bibliocommons tagged books made into movies.

Make it your December resolution to try one of these books. They are all available at NYPL.