Also have heard The Power of The Dog was an amazing book. Have seen the movie (was luke warm on it), but heard the book is a must read.

Also Steinbeck's East of Eden. Made both into a movie and tv.

Sorry, I have a long ass to read list to pull from. No chance I get through all of the 100+ books on it

East of Eden is on our bookshelf but I've always avoided it bc my wife said it was a beating to read. Maybe need to consider it.

Appreciate all the suggestions! Keep them coming!

I've got the Bourne books on my shelf as well. Bought them all about 15-20 years ago and remember not loving the first one, so I never read the others. Maybe I should give it another try.

Wolfpac 08 said:

---

Quote:

---

Another vote for Sphere
Meg
Friday Night Lights
Enders Game
The Martian
Ready Player One

---

Didn't realize FNL was a book
I read Project Hail Mary...same author as The Martian, right? I thought PHM was good, but it didn't blow me away like it seems to have done with a lot of people. Wasn't in love with his writing style.

---

What about his writing style did you not like?

I loved it, reading Sphere immediately afterwards has actually been a little bit of a chore at times for me with how it was written.

Alistair McLean if you're into WW2. He wrote Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone, plus Cold War movie Ice Station Zebra among others.

And then The Eagle Has Landed, also WW2. Book has sold something like 50 million copies and is a bit darker than the movie.

oragator said:

---

Alistair McLean if you're into WW2. He wrote Guns of Navarone, Force 10 from Navarone, Ice Station Zebra among others.

And then The Eagle Has Landed, also WW2. Book has sold something like 50 million copies and is a bit darker than the movie.

---

Was Ice Station Zebra, the book, about WWII? I have seen the movie, but it was about a conflict in the Arctic between the US and USSR (unless my memory has that wrong).

Wolfpac 08 said:

---

East of Eden is on our bookshelf but I've always avoided it bc my wife said it was a beating to read. Maybe need to consider it.

Appreciate all the suggestions! Keep them coming!

---

If you read it let me know. I have it on my list based on a couple of reviews of their favorite book of all time. Same with another classic Count of Monte Cristo (add Slaughterhouse Five to that as well).

Yeah that's the exception on my list. I'll fix the post.

Fleen said:

---

Shawshank Redemption

I know, not a book (novella) but still one of the best adaptions...

Different Seasons collection had three adaptations...

---

Shawshank is the rare example of the movie being better than the book.

I think saying I didn't like writing style is probably not the right phrasing. It's been a few months since I read it, but I remember not liking the way he wrote the main character. His one-off's and asides really came off as obnoxious to me, and I think it distracted me from the story bc I really didn't like the main character.

It's probably just me. And it also speaks to how good the story was that I didn't like the main character and still came away giving it an A rating (see the Books Read 2025 thread)

Salem's Lot
The Godfather
Alive

Tom Clancey - The Hunt for Red October

John Grisham books / movies

bagger05 said:

---

El Gallo Blanco said:

---

The Perfect Storm
No Country for Old Men

Great adaptations imo. With No Country almost being perfect. What a book...but what a film too.

---

NCfOM is probably the best adaptation of a book I've seen.

Both the book and movie are fantastic.

---

It's incredible. I remember being in the theater with a friend for some other movie in 2006 I think...just seconds into the trailer, I realized it was for NCFOM and became ecstatic. I had read the book and told my buddy "just wait for this movie to come out". You could tell from the trailer, and seeing "Coen Brothers" that it was going to be amazing and true to the book.

Some of the scenes in that movie are almost identical to how they played out in my imagination while reading that book. Cormac McCarthy's level of description, and the Coen Brothers masterful attention to detail and authenticity was a match made in heaven.

Credible Source said:

---

My favorite series beside LOTR, is by far, the Bourne Identity. It's my favorite bc I read the books a full decade after the movies, and was blown away at how good the books are. It's not even remotely the same story, the movies deviate entirely from the books around page 10 and never look back. Bad ass book series.

---

Problem is that it makes you absolutely hate the movies if you've read the books.

Bourne/Webb in the books = a patriotic hero and an easy protagonist to root for (I won't spoil it)

Bourne in the movies = a cold blooded assassin who turns good only after his amnesia

It's a radical difference, and when the movies reveal that Bourne was an actual killer, I was super pissed. Also they radically changed Marie's character from a helpful and meaningful companion to a rando gypsy.

Yeah, Unbroken is one of the best books I've read. I literally gasped and had to put it down when the bird turned out to be at the new camp..
The movie could never do the book justice in 2 hours, I always said it would have been an amazing BoB style miniseries. Heck an entire episode could have been on the life raft alone. At least one episode post war, which the movie skimmed over.

Sphere is one of the better Michael Crighton books turned movie.
Ready Player One (been said, but one of my favorites and a yearly read)
Holes
Princess Bride
Contact
The Accidental Billionaires (About Facebook, became The Social Network)

Plenty of others that have been mentioned already.

Not a movie, but I enjoyed the Bosch series based on the Michael Connelly series.

Two that I loved the books, and was meh on the movie/TV show- The Postman- The book premise is so much deeper and better carried out than the movie.
The Last Ship-awesome book-completely different than the TV series, and so much better in my opinion.

Rosemary's Baby

Cain is for Charlie and Delta is for Cain!!

A couple of other notables by Blake Crouch. Dark Matter which has already been adapted for tv, and Recursion which is in the process of being developed for tv.

The Wager (David Gran) is suppose to be an amazing book, and Martin Scorsese was working on a film adaptation, but there have been no updates on it.

Can't believe I forgot about this one, came across it reading an article on Danny Boyle. The Beach! One of my favorite books. Movie failed to capture the magic in the book. The book is a must read.

Hopefully this will be done right... Project Hail Mary.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12042730/

I am a big fan of the book, The Martian, but the movie just didn't have "it."

Hwy30East said:

---

Tom Clancey - The Hunt for Red October

John Grisham books / movies

---

Would really like to see J.G.'s Playing for Pizza and also Calico Joe made into movies.

Not quite a movie (miniseries):

Shogun

Three Body Problem

Movie:

Catch-22

All You Need Is Kill (Edge of Tomorrow) this one is if you are looking for something different

Things I echo:

Lonesome Dove, Hunt for Red October, the Godfather, and Starship Troopers.

G.I.Bro said:

---

"The Once and Future King"- "sword in the stone" is based on the first part of that book

"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil"

Those are the first 2 to pop into my head, I'll think of others

---

"Midnight" is one of the rare cases where I think the movie is better. The actual events took place over several years, and the book kind of rambled along. Eastwood took a great bit of artistic license with the original facts and compressed the timeline, but I feel it yielded a much better movie.

And it turns out Kevin Spacey is not that different from the character he played.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

---

Another book that was made into a movie, Empire of the Sun by JG Ballard. This is one of Spielberg's most underrated movies, set in WWII Shanghai and a Japanese POW camp and starring a young Christian Bale and John Malkovich. I read the book after having seen the movie. It was a good book that Spielberg made better through his visuals and a moving score by John Williams.

---

Totally agree, bad ass movie

The Prestige
A Simple Plan
The Maltese Falcon
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre
Shane
Lonesome Dove
The Sand Pebbles

I'm waiting for someone to adapt The Forever War and The Stars My Destination.

More Cormac McCarthy

- No Country for Old Men (listed)
- All the Pretty Horses
- The Road

Elmer Kelton's Time It Never Rained needs to be made a movie (or mini series).

Wrong thread

Gone with the Wind
Catch 22
Grapes of Wrath

Ton of great suggestions in here! Gonna be busy for a while...Here's my initial list:

Jurassic Park
The Firm
Runaway Jury
A Time to Kill
LOTR/Hobbit
Lonesome Dove
Sphere
Enders Game
The Martian
Ready Player One
The Godfather
Jaws
Starship Troopers
I Am Legend
No Country For Old Men
The Haunting of Hill House
Bourne Trilogy
Princess Bride
Contact
The Postman
The Beach
Three Body Problem
A Simple Plan
All the Pretty Horses

What did I miss?

Too many to list, but here's a few more

Tom Clancy - The Hunt For Red October, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger, The Sum of All Fears
Stephen Coonts - Flight of the Intruder
Frank Herbert - Dune, Dune Messiah (coming soon to theaters)
Michael Crichton - Disclosure, Congo, The Great Train Robbery, The Andromeda Strain
John Grisham - The Pelican Brief, The Client
Ernest Hemingway - A Farewell To Arms, The Sun Also Rises, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Old Man and the Sea