The Book

The Movie
The Hobbit (Essential Modern Classics)
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The Hobbit

Peter Jackson's movie version of "The Hobbit" the prequel of "The Lord of the Rings" Trilogy is in production for release late 2012.  "The Hobbit" is a much smaller book that LOTR and so is a great introduction to JRR Tolkien's writing.  Personally it was the hook that launched me into the world of Middle Earth.
The Eye of the Storm
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The Eye of the Storm

Set in 1950's Sydney this movie is based on the novel by Nobel Prize winner Patrick White.
Ex-socialite, Elizabeth Hunter, has her two expatriot children return to her on her deathbed during a mystical Summer Sydney storm.  Even in her eighties, Elizabeth proves she is a mighty force as Patrick White explores the turmoil of family relationships.
The Hunger Games (Hunger Games Trilogy)
Hunger Games Trilogy Boxset
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The Hunger Games

Coming to theatres from March is "The Hunger Games" based on the trilogy by Suzanne Collins.  The trilogy has as its heroine 16 year old Katniss Everdeen who must train to represent her District in The Hunger Games - a televised fight to the death.  Set in the near future this series will be popular with teen- readers that enjoyed the "Tomorrow When the War Began" series as well as with a more mature audience.
Enjoy the series before the movie comes out with either the single book or the boxed set triology.
The Hugo Movie Companion
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Hugo

The multi-award winning movie directed by Martin Scoreses is based on the book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret" by Brian Selznik.
One for the Money
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One for the Money

Stephanie Plum is down on her luck. She's lost her job, her car, her furniture ...  enter Cousin Vinnie, a low-life who runs a bail-bond company. If Stephanie can bring in vice cop turned outlaw Joe Morelli, she stands to pick up $10,000. But tracking down a cop wanted for murder isn't easy...
This great book has been adapted for the big screen and is due for release in the US in early 2012.  Stars Katherine Heigl, Debbie Reynolds, and John Leguizamo.
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The Help
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The Help

The Help

This book by Kathryn Stockett is set in Jackson Mississippi in 1962 where Skeeter, a young graduate, returns home and takes up a job as a journalist.  She sees the ptential for a story in the black maids entrusted to raise white children but not to share a bathroom.  Together with two black maids, Aibileen and the sassy Minny, they embark on a project that grows and grows.  The tale of these three amazing Southern women is full of humour and irony.
Water for Elephants
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Water for Elephants

Set in a travelling circus touring the backblocks of America during the Great Depression of the early 1930s this is a story of love and hate, trains and circuses, dwarves and fat ladies, horses and elephants - or to be more specific, one elephant, Rosie, star of Benzini Bros Most Spectacular Show on Earth . . . Now a major motion picture starring Reese Witherspoon.
Water For Elephants
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The King's Speech
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St.. St.. Stunning

One man saved the British Royal Family in the first decades of the 20th century - amazingly he was an almost unknown, and certainly unqualified, speech therapist called Lionel Logue, whom one newspaper in the 1930s famously dubbed 'The Quack who saved a King'. Logue wasn't a British aristocrat or even an Englishman - he was a commoner and an Australian to boot. Nevertheless it was the outgoing, amiable Logue who single-handedly turned the famously nervous, tongue-tied, Duke of York into the man who was capable of becoming King.
The King's Speech
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Rabbit Hole (Movie Tie-In)
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Rabbit Hole

Pulitzer Prize winning story of family grief which has now been made into a movie starring Nicole Kidman, AAron Eckhart and Diane Wiest.
Becca and Howie Corbett are returning to their everyday existence in the wake of a shocking sudden loss. Just eight months ago they were a happy suburban family with everything they wanted. Now they are caught in a maze of memory longing guilt recrimination sarcasm and tightly controlled rage from which they cannot escape. While Becca finds pain in the familiar Howie finds comfort.
Rabbit Hole
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One Day
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One Day

Twenty years, two people and One Day - one anniversary.
'I can imagine you at forty,' she said, a hint of malice in her voice. 'I can picture it right now.' He smiled without opening his eyes. 'Go on then.' 15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet for the first time on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on this one day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows? 
One Day
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Beastly
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Beastly

Love is never ugly I am a beast. A beast! Not quite wolf or bear, gorilla or dog but a horrible new creature who walks upright. I am a monster. You think I'm talking fairy tales? No way. The place is New York City. The time is now. It's no deformity, no disease. And I'll, stay this way forever--ruined--unless I can break the spell. Yes, the spell, the one the witch in my English class cast on me. Why did she turn me into a beast who hides by day and prowls by night? I'll tell you. I'll tell you how I used to be Kyle Kingsbury, the guy you wished you were, with money, perfect looks, and the perfect life. And then, I'll tell you how I became perfectly . . . beastly. Now a major motion picture starring Vanessa Hudgens and
Alex Pettyfer.
Beastly
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The Dam Busters (Pan Military Classics)
Dambusters: A Landmark Oral History
Bomber Boys: The Ruhr, the Dambusters and Bloody Berlin
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Dambusters

The Dambusters raid is an unforgettable event in British military history and has passed into legend. On 16 May 1943, nineteen Lancaster bomber crews gathered in the dusk at RAF Scampton. Their brief was to fly at night across occupied Europe and drop specially designed 'bouncing' bombs at a mere 60 feet above water to destroy three crucial and heavily defended dams deep in the German industrial heartland.

There are a lot of non-fiction books about the dambusting mission including the oral history by Max Arthur which gives first-hand accounts of the mission, the painstaking preparation that went into it and the sheer bravery of the men involved.

"Bomber Boys" by Kevin Wilson looks at the broader bombing of Germany, the Ruhr Dams and Berlin with a focus on the men and the many and varied emotions associated with the incredibly dangerous missions of flying over enemy territory causing such devastation and loss of life - including often their own.

The original "Dambuster" movie from 1954 was based on the book by Paul Brickhill as is the remake that is in production to be directed by Peter Jackson.
The Dam Busters
Click cover for the original 1954 movie of the Dam Buster mission. 

Coming Soon a remake by Peter Jackson.

The Book

The Movie
Limitless
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Limitless

This is a stunning international thriller and a wild, compulsive ride into the greedy vortex of modern life. Imagine a drug that made your brain function to its full potential. A drug that allowed you pick up a foreign language in a single day. A drug that helped you process information so fast you could see patterns in the stock market. Just as his life is fading into mediocrity, Eddie Spinola comes across such a pill: MDT-48 - a sort of Viagra for the brain. But while its benefits materialise quickly, so do certain unwelcome side-effects. And when Eddie decides to track down other users, he soon discovers that they're all dying, or already dead...
Limitless
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Fight Club: A Novel
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Fight Club

Chuck Palahniuk's outrageous and startling debut novel that exploded American literature and spawned a movement. Every weekend, in the basements and parking lots of bars across the country, young men with white-collar jobs and failed lives take off their shoes and shirts and fight each other barehanded just as long as they have to. Then they go back to those jobs with blackened eyes and loosened teeth and the sense that they can handle anything. Fight club is the invention of Tyler Durden, projectionist, waiter, and dark, anarchic genius, and it's only the beginning of his plans for violent revenge on an empty consumer-culture world.
Made into a film by David Fincher starring Brad Pitt and Edward Norton.
Fight Club
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The Time Travellers Wife

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The inconvenient practicalities of time travel form the basis of this fabulous book which has since been made into a movie.  In some ways it creates a new genre of "Sci-Fi realism" - take one unlikely concept as a given (time travel) and then explore the ramifications of it on daily life and a relationship. The movie is very good but there's so much more in the book.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

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A Swedish journalist reluctantly takes up an assignment to investigate the disappearance of an industrialist's niece forty years earlier.
When signs of a much more sinister crime emerge he teems up with a much-tattooed social misfit that has uncanny investigative abilities.

The Other Boleyn Girl

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Before Anne Boleyn there was Mary.  This fabulous historical novel is set in the court of King Henry VIII where Mary Boleyn attracts the attention of the young king and becomes his mistress; when he tires of her, she sets out to school her sister, Anne, as a replacement. Politics and passion are inextricably bound together in this compelling drama.   Much more detail and interest than the movie.

The Lovely Bones

The Lovely Bones

More great books that have been made into movies

Master and Commander
The English Patient
Minority Report
Twilight
The Bourne Identity
21: Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
P.S. I Love You
The Hours
Black Hawk Down
The Cider House Rules
Eat, Pray, Love
My Sister's Keeper
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood
The
Notes on a Scandal
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Kids Books made into Movies

Sometimes it can be hard to get kids into reading chapter books.  Reading as a habit is important for education, entertainment and relaxation but some just never get into it. 
Luckily many of the most popular movies for 10 - 15 year old kids are based on books and several are part of a series that can hook them into the joy of reading.

Below is a list of books that have been, or are to be, made into movies for kids.
Tomorrow, When the War Began
Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole
Eragon (Inheritance Cycle)
Bridge to Terabithia
The Hobbit (Essential Modern Classics)
The Joy Luck Club
A Beautiful Mind
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistlestop Cafe
Fried Green Tomatoes
Memoirs of a Geisha

You probably saw the movie years ago, so now enjoy the detail of the book....

The Shining
Patriot Games
Minority Report
Apollo 13
Trainspotting
Casino
Girl Interrupted
The Colour Purple
The Year of Living Dangerously
The Silence of the Lambs
Memento
Last of the Mohicans
Die Hard
A Beautiful Mind
Schindler's List
No Country for Old Men
Slumdog Millionnaire
One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest
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