To Film or Not to Film…That is the Question

Recently, my son and I bonded. Quite by accident…well, that’s not exactly right. We bonded via  required reading, detention and a grounding.

Here’s the story. Every weekday when my son comes home from school I make him read and write a paragraph on it—or else I would have no proof that he actually read the book. Well, after I tired of reading twenty paragraphs on Ben-10 and Bakugan, I told him to read Harry Potter. After grumbling *cough! whining!* he grudgingly started reading The Sorcerer’s Stone. Not long afterward, he cut up at school and received detention. And after all the amenities were stripped from his room, all he had was the Harry Potter books! So the next time I asked him about the books, he’d finished The Sorcerer’s Stone, The Chamber of Secrets and was well into The Prisoner of Azkaban! And more importantly, was enjoying them!

Soon he and I are having conversations about the books. And to celebrate—after he received his TV viewing privileges back—we watched the Harry Potter movies. Which set off a new set of dialogue. He noticed right off the bat things that were in the books but not included in the movies. Or something that happened in the movie but wasn’t fully addressed like it’d been in the books. It was really awesome! Okay, so that may not seem like much, but when a mother can communicate in more than monosyllables with her twelve-year-old son…

And yet the whole bonding thing isn’t what this blog is about. It’s about what he discovered that I found out a long time ago: The book is almost always better than the movie. Although the Harry Potter people did do a great job. So did the Lord of the Rings folks. And—don’t tease me!—the Twilight people did, too!

I know it’s impossible to include everything from the books in the movies, but with some, all they have in common with the book is the title! It makes me kinda nervous when I hear that plans are in the works for novels I love. For instance, I heard that there may be films based on Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter series. Those novels are so wonderful, and I’ve had years to picture what they all look like—especially Acheron! *drool*—that I so desperately don’t want to be disappointed! Another series I would be nervous about seeing on the big screen is J.R. Ward’s The Black Dagger Brotherhood series. Now I don’t know if there are plans to film it but, in my humble opinion, it is one of the absolute best series to hit the shelves! Could the PTB pull the actors, create the special effects, atmosphere and emotion that make those novels so special and fantastic? I don’t know! I just don’t know…

Sometimes I want to rail *fist shake*, leave well enough alone! Aren’t some things sacred? But, on the other hand, I love to see my favorite characters come to life! I’m so wishy-washy…

So what books do you hope they bring to the silver screen? Or hope they leave alone? Do you agree with my picks?