Once upon a time, I discovered a wonderful, wonderful book. Gail Carson Levine’s Ella Enchanted is immerses you in Ella’s world, giving you a best friend as well as an adventure.
Then Hollywood got their hands on it. And THEY RAPED IT.
Below is an off-the-cuff rant I wrote in 2004, before the movie was even released. [...]

By Joanne Harris
Read: December 2009
Rating: Delicious
I saw the movie ages ago, but I don’t remember it very well. A good deal of the book felt familiar, which means the movie did bear some similarity to it. Not that anyone would really care when they could gaze on a GORGEOUS Johnny Depp.
The book is lovely. Intriguing, [...]

By Helen Fielding
Read: October 2009, repeatedly since ~2002
Rating: v.v.v.v.g.
Bridget Jones is a classic of our time. She can’t be anything but. Plenty of people have gone on and on about how this book changed womens’ literature to chick lit (for better or worse). When I first read it, I was sixteen and trapped on a [...]

aka The Julie/Julia Project
aka 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
aka My Year of Cooking Dangerously
aka a movie with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams
By Julie Powell
Read: August 2009
Rating: Nifty
Yeah, this is one of those books that is suddenly on everyone’s mind–or just was, anyway. The movie version came out earlier this month, and I [...]

By Diane Johnson
Read: November 2008
Rating: Mmph.
Right, so. I saw the movie ages back and don’t remember much about it except that I liked it more than my mother did, and she thought it was very disappointing.
The book is… strange. I wish we’d read it in one of my writing classes because it pulls all kinds [...]

by Robert C. O’Brien
Read: Middle school?, July 2008
Rating: J’adore
If you have never read about Mrs. Frisby, you are missing are a wonderful, crucial piece of childhood. I was given the movie, The Secret of NIMH (also reviewed below, when I was really, really young. Both my parents enjoyed watching it with me, and it was [...]

By Arthur Golden
Read: high school, January 2008
Rating: Lovely
A lot has been said about MoaG, so I’m not going to give it a huge, thorough review. What I am going to say is that it is wonderful.
The settings are thorough. The culture feels alive and natural. You sympathize with the characters and want so much for [...]

By Marc Levy
Rating: Disappointing
Read: June 2006
A quaint little bestseller from 2001 about love that transcends (near) death. A 2005 chick flick starring Reese Witherspoon.
The movie was better. It was much more real. That says a lot about the book.
It was passed on to me by mother, who got it from a family friend. They [...]

by Olivia Goldsmith
I would plug it, but is this out of print?! Amazon has this movie tie-in thing…
Rating: Nrrgh.
Read: August 05
Honestly, honey, if you only ever see the movie with Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn, you’ll be ok. No, really. This book was… very… 80s? Clawd knows I abhor the 80s, but this was [...]