What is the Price of Experience?

Salman Rushdie has a great essay in the Guardian today on film adaptations of books – and, wow, he really didn’t like Slumdog Millionaire.  It’s a good read, even though I don’t agree with everything he says.  It did set me thinking about what I might consider to be good film adaptations from books (especially considering I hadn’t seen a lot of the films he references).

Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” – great film of a great book (and, trivia point, Robert Duvall’s first screen role as Boo Radley).

Umberto Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” – a decent film of a fantastic book.  There’s no way anyone could cover 1/10th of the content in the novel, but the film is challenging enough and stands alone as something worthwhile.  This was the book that led me into (almost) everything that Umberto Eco has published.

Malcolm Bradbury’s “The History Man” (probably cheating because it was a TV series rather than a film).  Works just as well in either medium – and now it’s hard to think of Howard Kirk  as anyone other than Anthony Sher.

Tolkein’s “Lord of the Rings” – as Rushdie says, in some ways better on the screen than the page.

This is hard!

Maybe easier is a short list of books desperate to be made into good films:

Moby Dick (I mean, please – it’s even in public domain so the rights would be free) – the 1956 movie is OK, but not great (IMHO).

Anything and everything by William Gibson (and while I don’t count Johnny Mnemonic as being as bad as some people make it, it doesn’t count).

Michael Chabon’s “The Yiddish Policeman’s Union” – rumour has it that the Coen brothers will film it, which would be great.

Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” – except that the execrable Da Vinci Code has spoiled the whole genre.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” – although Wikipedia tells me there was a movie with Crispin Glover, John Hurt, and Vanessa Redgrave which sounds promising.

Any other suggestions?

Can I step back through the books I’ve read so far this year?  Let me try:

Granta 103 – The Rise of the British Jihad.  Granta is consistently excellent and I’ve been reading it since University and subscribing for over 10 years.  It’s a wonderful introduction to new writers and a way to see new writing that I would probably never pick up otherwise.

Thong Nation –  Henry Sutton.  Trash.  I apologise for even mentioning it here. I bought it on the strength of an excerpt in a magazine that turned out to be the best paragraph in the book.

Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All – Christina Thompson.  Has to win a prize for one of the best titles ever.  It’s a great story of a woman who marries a Maori guy intertwined with history of the interaction between Maori and pakeha in NZ over the past 360 years.

The Wisdom of Whores – Elizabeth Pisani.  I think Jen was shocked when she saw this title on my shelf, but it’s actually a fascinating account of the “AIDS mafia” and the strange and illogical way that epidemiology and the AIDS establishment butts heads with reality in places like South Africa and Indonesia.  I heard the author interviewed on CBC and managed to find the book at the Strand.

The Ice Museum – Joanna Kavenna .  Subtitle is “In Search of the Lost Land of Thule” and it’s a great travelogue and exploration of places through the North Atlantic and into the Arctic.  Very evocative and interesting in her search of sources.

I feel like I’m missing a couple more.  I just reorganized my bookshelves so it’s not so obvious what was read and when.  I’ll update if and when I remember other titles.