2011 Books to the Big Screen

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte


Charlotte Brontë’s most beloved novel describes the passionate love between the courageous orphan Jane Eyre and the brilliant, brooding, and domineering Rochester. The loneliness and cruelty of Jane’s childhood strengthens her natural independence and spirit, which prove invaluable when she takes a position as a governess at Thornfield Hall. But after she falls in love with her sardonic employer, her discovery of his terrible secret forces her to make a heart-wrenching choice. Ever since its publication in 1847, Jane Eyre has enthralled every kind of reader, from the most critical and cultivated to the youngest and most unabashedly romantic. It lives as one of the great triumphs of storytelling and as a moving and unforgettable portrayal of a woman's quest for self-respect. Free Kindle edition.

Film: (March 11) Director Cary Fukunaga. Stars Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Judi Dench, and Holliday Grainger. Available on video.

Desert Flower by Waris Dirie; Cathleen Miller


Waris Dirie ran away from her oppressive life in the African desert when she was barely in her teens, illiterate and impoverished, with nothing to her name but a tattered shawl. She traveled alone across the dangerous Somali desert to Mogadishu—the first leg of a remarkable journey that would take her to London, where she worked as a house servant; then to nearly every corner of the globe as an internationally renowned fashion model; and ultimately to New York City, where she became a human rights ambassador for the U.N. Desert Flower is her extraordinary story.

Film: (March 18) Directed by Sherry Horman. Stars Liya Kebede, Sally Hawkins, and Craig Parkinson. Trailer and more at the official movie site.

The Lincoln Lawyer by Michael Connelly


They're called Lincoln Lawyers: the bottom of the legal food chain, the criminal defence attorneys who operate out of the back of a Lincoln car, travelling between the courthouses of Los Angeles county to take whatever cases the system throws in their path. Mickey Haller has been in the business a long time, and he knows just how to work it, how to grease the right wheels and palms, to keep the engine of justice working in his favour. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years. The evidence mounts on the defence's side, and he is sure this is going to be a slam-dunk. He might even be in the rare position of defending a client who is actually innocent. But as Haller knows, criminal cases can turn on a dime; when his case starts to fall apart and neither the suspect nor the victim are quite who they seem, Haller quickly discovers that when you swim with the sharks, it's easy to wind up as prey.

Film: (March 18) Stars Matthew McConaughey, Marisa Tomei, and Ryan Phillippe.

Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen 


This is a great, glorious, big-hearted novel set in a travelling circus touring the backblocks of America during the Great Depression of the early 1930s. It's a story of love and hate, trains and circuses, dwarves and fat ladies, horses and elephants - or to be more specific, one elephant, Rosie, star of Benzini Bros Most Spectacular Show on Earth ...When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, swindlers and misfits in a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression. A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that Jacob meets Marlena, the beautiful equestrienne who is married to August, a charismatic but violently unpredictable animal trainer. Jacob also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems unmanageable until he discovers an unusual way to reach her. Water for Elephants is a story that has it all - warmth, humour, poignancy and passion. It has an energy and spirit like the feeling under a big top when the show is about to begin.

You can read my related post here.

Film: (April 22) Stars Reese Witherspoon and Robert Pattinson

Something Borrowed by Emily Giffin


Rachel White is the consummate good girl. A hard-working attorney at a large Manhattan law firm and a diligent maid of honor to her charmed best friend Darcy, Rachel has always played by all the rules. Since grade school, she has watched Darcy shine, quietly accepting the sidekick role in their lopsided friendship. But that suddenly changes the night of her thirtieth birthday when Rachel finally confesses her feelings to Darcy's fiance, and is both horrified and thrilled to discover that he feels the same way. As the wedding date draws near, events spiral out of control, and Rachel knows she must make a choice between her heart and conscience. In so doing, she discovers that the lines between right and wrong can be blurry, endings aren't always neat, and sometimes you have to risk everything to be true to yourself.
You can read my related post here.

Film: (May 6) Stars Ginnifer Goodwin, John Krasinski, and Kate Hudson

One Day by David Nicholls


It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. Dex and Em face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. And as the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed, they must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself.  
Film: (July 8) Stars Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess. Directed by Lone Sherfig

The Help by Kathryn Stockett


Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women-mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends-view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.
Film: (August) Stars a cast full of strong women: Viola Davis, Sissy Spacek, Emma Stone, Allison Janney, Cicely Tyson, and Octavia Spencer.

Moneyball by Michael Lewis


The Oakland Athletics have a secret: a winning baseball team is made, not bought.In major league baseball the biggest wallet is supposed to win: rich teams spend four times as much on talent as poor teams. But over the past four years, the Oakland Athletics, a major league team with a minor league payroll, have had one of the best records. Last year their superstar, Jason Giambi, went to the superrich Yankees. It hasn't made any difference to Oakland: their fabulous season included an American League record for consecutive victories. Billy Beane, general manager of the Athletics, is putting into practice on the field revolutionary principles garnered from geek statisticians and college professors. Michael Lewis's brilliant, irreverent reporting takes us from the dugouts and locker rooms-where coaches and players struggle to unlearn most of what they know about pitching and hitting-to the boardrooms, where we meet owners who begin to look like fools at the poker table, spending enormous sums without a clue what they are doing. Combine money, science, entertainment, and egos, and you have a story that Michael Lewis is magnificently suited to tell.

Journalist Michael Lewis also wrote the bestsellers: The Blind Side, Liar's Poker, and The Big Short.

Film: (Sept. 23) Stars Brad Pitt, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, and Jonah Hill. Directed by Bennett Miller of Capote.

Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin


In one of the most gripping financial narratives in decades, Andrew Ross Sorkin-a New York Times columnist and one of the country's most respected financial reporters-delivers the first definitive blow- by-blow account of the epochal economic crisis that brought the world to the brink. Through unprecedented access to the players involved, he re-creates all the drama and turmoil of these turbulent days, revealing never-before-disclosed details and recounting how, motivated as often by ego and greed as by fear and self-preservation, the most powerful men and women in finance and politics decided the fate of the world's economy.

Film: Now airing. HBO movie starring Cynthia Nixon, James Woods, Paul Giamatti, William Hurt, Matthew Modine, Tony Shalhoub, and Billy Crudup.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver


The gripping international bestseller about motherhood gone awry.
Eva never really wanted to be a mother—and certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker, and a much-adored teacher who tried to befriend him, all two days before his sixteenth birthday. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood, and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her estranged husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
Film: (Fall) Stars Tilda Swinton and Ezra Miller. Radiohead's Johnny Greenwood is scoring the film.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson


Harriet Vanger, a scion of one of Sweden's wealthiest families disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.
Film: (Dec. 21) The Hollywood version is directed by David Fincher and stars Daniel Craig and Rooney Mara.

Original Swedish versions of the trilogy star Noomi Rapace, which I've read are wonderful: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

I'd love to hear what your favorite book-to-movie adaptations are. 

Happy reading,

Angela