Best Book-to-Movie Adaptations

Books and movies share different storytelling strengths and weaknesses because of their very different modes of communication. Movies make us immediately think of imagery to tell a story, but there are also aspects like music, color, animation techniques and special effects that help to make the film come to life. Books, on the other hand, have only the writing style to convey the story. Things like fonts, formatting and possibly cover art do impact the reader's perception of the story, but it's much more a marriage between what the writer is able to convey combined with the reader's imagination that gives us the story contained in the pages (or digital file) of a book.

Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon used their readers' suggestions to put together a list of the 23 best book-to-movie adaptations of all time. It's a great list with a broad range of genres as well as release dates, and I have to say that I completely share the sentiment when it comes to the film version of To Kill a Mockingbird. Additionally, not all the movies on the list are featured because they parallel their literary counterparts exactly; some of them are acknowledged for being all-around fantastic adaptations of and different takes on the original work, which is acknowledged in the comments. Take a look at the list, and maybe add some titles to your "To Read" and "To Watch" lists!