Often times, my interest in a book will only be piqued when I’ve heard it’s being turned into a movie. However, a few times I’ve actually read the book before Hollywood gets its hands on it:
I read the LotR series before Peter Jackson’s version (but after the laughable cartoon attempts).
I read I, Robot before the completely different Will Smith adaptation.
They just announced that production is starting on Watchmen, however I read the TPB a few months ago.
I started reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide series right after Douglas Adams died, so after the BBC mini-series, but before the Hollywood movie.
These are all I can think of for now. What have you read?
Just Cause
Flight of the Phoenix
Hunt for Red October
Many Bond movies
The Bourne Identity
The Godfather
True Crime
The Perfect Storm
Carrie
Misery
Dolores Claiborne
Shrek
Jurassic Park
The Accidental Toursit
Field of Dreams
Grisham’s first novel - never read another.
Paper Lion
Coma
The Right Stuff
One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest
Damage
Serpico
Something that Goodfellas was ripped off from - I knew it all when I saw the movie
Helter Skelter
The Shipping News
Presumed Innocent and all his other books
Catch 22
Story of O
Silence of the Lambs
Schindler’s Ark(List)
The Devils of Loudon (The Devils I think)
Fight Club
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Out of Africa
Shawshank Redemption (from Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption)
Stand By Me (from The Body)
A River Runs Through It
The Friends of Eddy Coyle
Cat Dancer
Before and After
and on and on
Plus lots I read before seeing the older movie like Hammet and Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Graham Greene,
Dozens for me, too. But I remember specifically ‘The Silence of the Lambs’
It was such a scary, exciting book, I could hardly wait to turn the pages. I read it in one go and when my SO came in, I was startled to see the time and only then realised my cats were hungry as hell.
I saw the movie much later. I liked it and was pleased to see it had won so many Oscars, but I liked the book better.
Dozens for me also. One book that I almost wished I hadn’t read, however, was Mystic River. Both the book and the movie were excellent. However, I couldn’t really appreciate the movie because it was so faithful to the book, and so the entire element of suspense was lost on me.
What surprised me about this was that I had read “Red Dragon” years before but didn’t know that it had been made into a movie as “Manhunter”.
I first saw “Silence” on sale at a major book chain after I had heard that the movie was being shot. They were selling the book remaindered in hardback for a few dollars. I remarked to the shop assistant that in a few months the same book would be selling like crazy in paperback with Jody Foster or Anthony Hopkins on the cover. He had no idea what I was talking about.
Like you I think I read the book cover to cover in one sitting.
Months later the bookshop had piles of paperbacks on the floor.
Like most here, there are too many to mention. Jurassic Park comes to mind, though. The book was much better than the movie, and I’m not much of a Crichton fan.
Quite a few, but one really stands out – a short story, but not a book:
“The Greatest Gift”
Never heard of it? Probably. But you have heard of the movie:
“It’s a Wonderful Life.”
Further, I may be the only person alive who actually read the story before I saw the movie. I remembering wondering how they’d manage to fill out an entire film with it.
There are some very interesting differences, the most important being that George is just a lowly clerk in the bank, and discovers that, merely by filling that place and doing nothing in particular, he made a real difference in the community (the person who got the job in his place ended up embezzling money and wrecking the bank). Also, Mary doesn’t end up an old maid – she ends up with an abusive husband.
The Godfather
Jurassic Park
The Andromeda Strain
The Puppet Masters
Starship Troopers(didn’t actually see all of this movie, it was so awful compared to the book)
Ben-Hur(read the book before I saw either movie version)
Patriot Games
The first three Harry Potter books
To Kill a Mockingbird
A Christmas Carol
Centennial(before I saw the miniseries on TV)
The Shining(before either miniseries on TV)
The Stand-same as above
Tai-Pan
The Boys From Brazil
For most of my life, my literary interests layed outside the kind typically found in Hollywood movies and it’s only been in the last five years that I’ve branched out from my little corner and started reading more mainstream books and authors. As of yet, none of the books I’ve read have been turned into movies after the fact.
The Lord of the Rings books
The Harry Potter books
Hannibal. Even as I read Hannibal, I knew that it would be made into a movie, and that this movie would suck. Don’t get me wrong; the book was decent enought (tho not as good as Silence of the Lambs, but something about it just didn’t lend itself to the big screen.
I read most of the early Grisham books and the John Irving books (other than Garp, which I read before seeing the movie but after the movie was made) before they were ever made into movies and was irritated by them all, but none moreso than Cider House Rules (which condensed the half-century covered int the book into about two years). I was also irritated by the ending of the film version of The Firm as, having spent vacations on the Panama City Beach strip since infancy, I thought that getaway was brilliant and couldn’t believe they totally changed it.
About a Boy is a case where the movie completely changed the ending of the book and I knew this from the trailer. However, I didn’t mind the new ending at all as the last third of the book deals with
the death of Kurt Cobain [or, as Marcus calls him, Kirk O’Bane]
and while well written it permanently dates the book to the 1990s.
I can’t express how irritated I was when I learned that Will Ferrell had been cast as Ignatius in Confederacy of Dunces, but thanfully Fortuna seems to have spun downward for that movie ever being filmed.
One of the best book-to-screen adaptations I’ve ever seen of a book I’d read years before the film was announced was the indie film of Vonnegut’s Mother Night. When it was announced that Breakfast of Champions was going to be a movie I wondered “How?”; I finally saw the result on video (which it went straight to) and it was an even bigger mess than I would have imagined. There’s a reason most people don’t even know it exists even though it had some big stars (Bruce Willis, Albert Finney, Owen Wilson, etc.).
I’ve read Zeus-knows-how-many biographies of Alexander and was curious which one Stone was going to with for the movie. Having seen it, he seems to go mostly with the primary sources with a tad of Mary Renault thrown in, but the result pleases nobody.
Too many to recite here, but the most significant on was John Varley’s Millennium, which is just about my all-time favorite time travel book. Imagine my chagrin when this happened.
Even if you’ve seen that god-awful crapfest, read the book. It’s really good, and Kris Kristofferson, Cheryl Ladd, and director Michael Anderson have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
Another one for whom the list would be very very long, so I won’t try to be comprehensive.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
The Andromeda Strain
Escape to Witch Mountain
Harry Potter series
Jaws
Audrey Rose
Lord of the Rings trilogy
anything by Stephen King
Fantastic Voyage
Possession
I’ve had this happen a few times. “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” became Bladerunner, and a portion of “In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash”, became “A Christmas Story” (you know, with Ralphie and the BB gun).
My issue is that I hardly ever watch movies.:eek:
::looks around in terror - “Yikes - What am I doing in Cafe Society???”::
Hmm… actually, the only book I’ve read after seeing the movie was the first of the Harry Potter series. Oh wait, and The Hobbit (although that one I saw as a wee lad and read the book about 25 years later).
A probably incomplete list of books I’ve read before seeing the movies:
Lord of the Rings
Catch-22
Solaris
The Andromeda Strain
Timeline
The Divine Comedy
A buttload of Stephen King
Barefoot Gen
Dune
Into Thin Air
The Da Vinci Code (I hear the movie’s scheduled for next year or so)
Well, not really, but I’m more of a reader than a moviegoer, so the list would be really long.