Books to movies

[Mandy Muffin]

If you look atop most best seller lists today, in the top five is found "The Great Gatsby."  Of course, this is because Hollywood is planning a remake sometime soon.  I read/watched this "book to movie" last time around.  But I just did two "book to movie" read/views in the past couple of weeks. 

I had the discs of "The Last Song" by Nicholas Sparks which I enjoyed on the way north from Florida, as the action took place in one of my favorites part of America, the Wilmington NC shore area where I once spent a couple of months on special assignment with my company back in the '80s.)  But I noticed that a TV movie had been made, so I streamed it about a week ago.  (I have unlimited streaming in my Amazon Prime membership.)  If you don't mind that the main character being played by Miley Cyrus, it was fairly good movie.  In fact, she did a credible job of acting as far as I could tell.

But not wanting to redo "The Great Gatsby" read/watch, I found a copy of "Billy Bathgate" by Doctorow on the shelf.  This is a another classic NYC book/movie of crime and corruption in 1935 Depression era, with features all kinds of intriguing characters, including Dutch Schultz and his gang, Lucky Luciano and Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey on their tails.  So I read the book and streamed the movie version after the enjoyable read.  The movie is great and features Dustin Hoffman, a young Nichole Kidman (nude!), Stanley Tucci  and Bruce Willis to name a few of the stars in this "dark" classic.  Arthur Hill of "Law and Order" fame has a major role. 

Any one who has access to the these unlimited streaming movie banks (there are thousands in the Amazon Prime program) might decide to do a read/view of one of the classics in literature.  I plan to pick out a few more to do.  To me, nothing is more satisfying than closing the cover on a book then watching it in a movie just afterwards. 

[Beezerette]

I read The Great Gatsby years ago, and went to the movie yesterday--I think it showed the extravagance of Gatsby's house and entertaining to a degree I never envisioned in the book--I enjoyed this remake!

[Mandy Muffin]

I will most likely watch the Great Gatsby remake.  I'm just not reading the  book again.  In a selection of great NYC area movies I once read that the three classics are: "The Great Gatsby" Fitzgerald; "The Gold Coast" DeMille and "Bonfire of the Vanities" Wolfe.  Of course there are many novels that have been placed in the NYC area that could challenge this list. 

[Eaglewoman]

Our book club is reading The Great Gatsby later in the summer,don't really plan on seeing the movie.

You know they say Don't Judge a Book by Its Movie

[Mandy Muffin]

In an interesting twist, our library is featuring "The Hound of the Baskervilles" with a jig saw puzzle of Sherlock Holmes' mysteries as part of the promotion.  I sent away for the  puzzle on Amazon and will combine a book reading and puzzle solving as part of my activity in the next week or so.   Of course, there is the movie to watch. 

[Eaglewoman]

Our library had a speaker who writes Jane Austin stories on each table they had paper doll old fashion dress and colors, for everyone to color their own, then in the adult section you could go back and put your dress on a paper doll and hang it by the fireplace. Only one man  came and he was most intense on doing his.