Last week in our regular You Be the Guide section of this here newsletter, we asked you to recommend books that would make for great film or TV adaptations. The response was massive: it turns out that, for all the books that were adapted into lousy movies or shows, there are just as many, if not more, great books crying out to adapted into (hopefully) great movies or shows.
So we’ve decided to devote this week’s newsletter to a bumper selection of your recommendations, along with some picks from our culture writers too. War epics, period romps, supernatural chillers: there are some terrific suggestions here that really should be getting optioned any second now – but even if they don’t, our list should hopefully double up as a helpful guide to some great new reads.
Guardian picks
I’d love to see a film version of Ponzi’s Scheme: The True Story Of A Financial Legend by Mitchell Zuckoff. It tells the story of Charles Ponzi, who arrived in the US as a penniless Italian immigrant in the 1920s, and went on to invent the Ponzi scheme, becoming the toast of greedy high society for his trick. It would be a great “charming sociopath” role for an actor like Jason Sudeikis. – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian film critic
Maggie Shipstead’s huge, gorgeous novel Great Circle – about the life of a female aviator and the Hollywood star who is playing her in a biopic – was my favourite book of last year. It’s part-western, part-war epic, part-adventure story, part-Hollywood satire, and so much more besides. It would need a mega-budget to do it justice, but if they can make something as strange and wonderful as Station Eleven into a television series, then there’s no reason this couldn’t be done. – Rebecca Nicholson, Guardian TV writer
A slightly niche choice, but I absolutely loved the book Sounds Like Titanic by Jessica Chiccehitto-Hindman, who was part of a fake orchestra who conned audiences across America with their too-perfect recitals, which were actually a CD recording. I think this “classical Milli Vanilli” story could be an amazing miniseries – and Maude Apatow looks a bit like Jessica come to think of it … – Hannah J Davies, deputy editor, newsletters
The elaborate bank job at the heart of The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray means that it’s already a book with an in-built cinematic feel. Add in the physical comedy of the robbers utterly botching it, and you have the kind of goofy crime caper that’s just begging for a primetime Sunday night slot. – Alexi Duggins, deputy TV editor and writer of the Hear Here newsletter
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ The Water Dancer is a moving, complex book that combines history with magical realism. It tackles slavery in a vivid way, and would lend itself perfectly to the screen. – Nimo Omer, assistant editor, First Edition newsletter
We’ve never had a definitive Kurt Cobain biopic – all the more galling then that the source material is already there. Heavier Than Heaven, Charles R Cross’s celebrated biography, vividly charts the Nirvana frontman’s progression from shy child to reluctant rock god. Anton Corbijn, director of the band’s iconic Heart Shaped Box video and the Ian Curtis biopic Control would be the perfect choice to direct. – Alex Mistlin, culture commissioning editor, Guardian Saturday
Open Water, Caleb Azumah Nelson’s debut, is one of the best books I’ve read in the last couple of years. The British-Ghanaian novelist is a photographer as well as a writer, so it’s not surprising that the slim volume already feels cinematic in style, bringing to life the hazy London summer in which it’s set. The slow-burning love story between two young Black artists is just begging to become an award-winning indie film – someone please snap up the rights?! – Lucy Knight, books commissioning editor
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. A thousand pages made up of only eight sentences: this is truly the Mission: Impossible of screen adaptations, a meandering narrative so impossibly dense it would need more episodes than Grey’s Anatomy to simply scratch the surface. – Ammar Kalia, Guardian culture writer
Reader picks
Joe Abercrombie’s First Law books are absolutely begging to be adapted for TV. Grittier and much, much funnier than Game Of Thrones, they eschew dragons and only hint at magic, instead preferring to concentrate on character and, you know, cohesive plotting and themes. Sandy Nelson
I absolutely love Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Shadow of the Wind and its subsequent sequels and prequels. I’m convinced they’d make wonderfully rich epics but if I’m not mistaken the author, who has since passed away, made it expressly clear that he never wanted that to happen, which I can understand. But still … Simon Marczycha
Anything by Georgette Heyer! I love a costume drama and her Regency romances are gorgeous, witty and so, so enjoyable. Bernadette Stott
I have always thought that a series based on the life of the novelist Frances Burney could be great. She wrote a bestselling novel at age 26 and became a celebrity; she served for five years at the court of King George III as his queen’s wardrobe mistress, living at Windsor, and her diaries describe his psychotic episodes first-hand; she was a member of the bluestockings of London, and a favourite of Dr Samuel Johnson; she had a mastectomy without anaesthesia for cancer or an abscess; she married a dashing French émigré general after the French Revolution; she was living in Paris during Napoleon’s return from Elba, fleeing the city to describe the battle of Waterloo. Her father was a famous musician and historian of music, she heard and met the great singers and musicians of the time. What more would one want? Donna Bergen
I’ve always wanted to see a version of The Yiddish Policeman’s Union by Michael Chabon made into a TV series – it seemed ripe for the Coen Brothers to do it, maybe there’s been a few too many counter-factual shows recently – The Plot Against America for one but I still think it would make a great show. Derek O’Neill
The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I loved this book when I was an impressionable university student. I think a film adaptation was mooted in the 90s but it would be perfect for a TV adaptation, maybe in six parts on Apple or HBO. It has nostalgic 80/90s vibes, which are all the rage, and a classic ‘outsider trying to fit in with the cool kids’ story that jumps backwards and forwards. I imagine if it was on Netflix it would turn into a parody of Cruel Intentions, or just a dull slog if it was on Amazon. Tupon Bhowmik
The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver – all her books are fab but this one is her best, in my humble opinion. It’s probably too long to make into a really good film, but it would be a terrific epic. Valerie Mitchell
The book I would love to see adapted is A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. I think it screams movie adaptation given it is so tightly bound by the strange but endearing mix of characters and the friendship that unites them. It is an incredibly powerful and emotive study on sexual abuse, along with its pernicious suffering the act causes and the difficult road of recovery. Jason Wasiak
I was only thinking yesterday that Matt Wesolowski’s Six Stories series of books about a podcaster who revisits old mysterious crimes would be fantastic as a TV series. Every book is told from six different points of view – six people who were involved in the crime in question. Each story has a supernatural slant (possession, changelings, haunted woods, cult-style killings) and they can be properly terrifying, but are always very clever and satisfying. Rachel Lowe
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