List Love 4: 10 Best Horror Novels That Have Been Made Into Good Horror Films

Time for a little List Love.

I came across this list of 10 best horror novels made into films when I was checking if had forgotten to mention something good on my Top Ten Books for Halloween list.

This does not seem to be a consensus list, but rather one person’s opinion, but since film adaptations of books are a subject I am interested in, I decided it was worthwhile to look at this list in an issue of List Love.

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971). The book made me afraid to go to sleep – the last book ever to do so. The movie was good, very creepy and the “pea soup” scene was disgusting.
Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin (1967). I have neither read nor seen this one, but the book is on my Top Mysteries Challenge list, so I will read it one day. I generally find that reading the book before I see the movie is better, so I will not be watching it until I am done with the book.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959). One of my top 10 best supernatural suspense novels. The 1963 movie captured the atmosphere perfectly and was fairly faithful to the book. I haven’t seen the second movie, but I have been told it sucks. Both are titled The Haunting.
The Silence of the Lambs by Thomas Harris (1988). Good novel, although I preferred Red Dragon, and the movie is very good, very creepy.
Misery by Stephen King (1987). I have neither read nor seen this one, and am not particularly interested in doing so.
The Shining by Stephen King (1977). Another one of my Top 10 supernatural suspense/horror novels. The Kubrick movie changed the story considerably but captured the atmosphere perfectly, while the TV mini-series was more faithful to the book but didn’t capture the atmosphere as well. My advice is to not view the Kubrick movie as an adaptation of the book as much as an independent work inspired by it.
Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley (1818). I wrote my thesis in English literature on this novel. My favourite film adaptation is the old James Whale film, starring Boris Karloff. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was more faithful, but it doesn’t have the atmospheric tension of the old black-and-white feature.
The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham (1957). I have neither seen nor read this one, but I like Wyndham’s writing and plan to read the book. It has been filmed twice as Village of the Damned and once as Children of the Damned. I am following a webcomic that speculates about what could have happened if the children in the story had grown up: FreakAngels.
Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897). I also wrote a detailed essay about this one when I was in college. I have seen several film adaptations of it, but the two that I like best are the 1958 adaptation with Christopher Lee, who made a damn creepy count, and the Coppola version, Bram Stoker's Dracula, from 1992, which followed the book pretty well. This is probably the horror novel that has been filmed the most times, and definitely the one with the most spin-offs.
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin (1972). This is one I have no desire to either see or read.

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went and

Reading in Reykjavík

Search This Blog