The last couple of days I’ve been home sick with a bad cold and while that sucks it has given me time to think about what books I’ve read would make good movies or TV shows. Why I was thinking this I don’t know. I guess I was looking through all the options you can watch TV and movies now. Netflix, Hulu AppleTV, DisneyPlus, traditional cable, etc. It seems like there is an endless number of places that need contact to fill so why not give a few suggestions.
- Genuine Fraud by E. Lockhart Who doesn’t love a good suspense mystery. I would be interested in seeing how a filmmaker would take the unusual structure of the narrative as it’s told in part real time and partly in reverse. I think it would be true challenge to balance all the nuances right and not let too much away to soon. This would work both as a movie or as a serialized series.
- Seafire by Natalie C. Parker I could see this as a movie but I think it would work best as a HBO prestige series. There is so many aspects of the story that a movie wouldn’t be able to get to it all. Not to mention, I think TV would be more willing to have an an all diverse female cast then movies would and it would have to be HBO because to do it justice it’s going to have to have a big budget. It would be great because who wouldn’t want to all a Girl Pirate Crew take on the patriarchy of the seas? Mad Max Fury Road but on a boat. It has a lot of potential.
- Dread Nation by Justina Ireland An historical drama with zombies Really what else do you need?. It may take place after the Civil War but it is relevant today as it ever was. Racism, Sexism and Classicism all play a part in the series. So far it only has one book out. The sequel comes out early next year. If HBO is still looking for a “What if the Civil War had ended differently” drama now that it’s ill advised Confederate show is dead because D&D of Game of Thrones left for Netflix. This is it. The Civil war didn’t end because one side won over the other but because the dead came back to life. Slaves were freed, sort of. They are now used to stop the Zombie attacks It can examine how the US is different and how slavery plays a part without the messiness of the other show’s premise. Not to mention Jane is an excellent protagonist
- Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. I can’t be the only one who has been disappointed in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them movies. The first one was okay. Entertaining but the second one was a big ol’ mess. I’m not even going to mention the Johnny Depp situation. So why not make a movie of Rainbow’s Simon and Baz series? All the magical elements are there. Wizards and witches and mythological creatures. Magic schools. A mysterious and powerful villain. Rivals turned lovers. A real LGBTQ love story that is front and center and not just in context or added later. The second book expands on the world but going on a road trip through the US and series hi-jinks ensue. I feel like it’s the remedy for the bad Harry Potter content we’ve been getting lately.
- A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro Yes, I’m aware we have had a lot of Sherlock Holmes adaptations recently but we haven’t had one like this one. Not only is our Holmes a teenage girl and our Watson a teenage boy but it takes place in a world where the novels exist and Holmes and Watson were real people. It’s a fun and breezy mysteries that would make excellent movies or TV shows.
- The Diviner’s by Libba Bray This one would have to be a series. The amount of detail and length of each novel could not be properly shown in a movie. How lush it would look. All the glitz and glamour of 1920’s New York. Again, it may be a period piece but it is so relevant to today. It tackles racism, sexism, class and immigration with the supernatural element in the background. Not to mention all of our main characters have their own X-men like powers! The possibilities are endless.
- Three Dark Crowns by Kendare Blake Game of Thrones type of series but from an all female perspective. You get all the court intrigue and magical elements without all the messiness that Game of Thrones had. Women can be just a ruthless. They have to be when to become Queen you must kill your sisters to do it. I would love to this on big or small screen.
- The Scorpion Rules by Erin Bow Okay, I want to this as a movie only if Tilda Swinton plays Talis. The sassiest, homicidal AI in history of Artificial Intelligence. The world was in constant war so Talis was like let’s go all Medieval on you. I’m taking your heirs as Hostages. If you declare war, I kill them. That’s oversimplification but it’s awesome and tense and has LGBTQ love triangle in it that is just too good to ignore. This should be made into a movie but again only if Tilda Swinton is involved. I won’t accept anything less.
So there are few books I think need to get the big or small treatment. What do you all think> What book or book series do you want seen into a movie or TV show?
The Swan Riders is the sequel to The Scorpion Rules that I didn’t even know existed until I made a little trip to The Strand last year with a friend. When I saw it, I knew I had to buy it. The Scorpion Rules was one of the better books I read in 2015. It’s yet another dystopian novel but this time with a very sassy AI. It takes place about 500 years in the future after several devastating natural and non-natural disasters. The biggest problem is a shortage of water that has lead to several violent wars. So the U.N. decided to appoint the A.I. named Talis to come up with a solution. His solution was to go all medieval on the world. Every government must give a child as hostage and if they open war on another nation, the hostage dies and oh, a city is going to be blown up too. At the end of The Scorpion Rules, our heroine Greta, the crown Princess of the PanPol Confederation that covers Canada to Great Britain, volunteers to become an A.I. not save herself but also save Elian, the hostage from the neighboring country that openly declared war on her nation. It turns out that turning Greta into an A.I. doesn’t sit well with a lot of people. The new King of PanPol Confederation refuses to give up a new hostage to replace Greta and soon rebellion starts to take hold. As for Greta herself, the transition from human to A.I. isn’t an easy process. In fact no many new A.I.’s survive the first couple of days so it’s a race to get Greta to the home of A.I. across Saskatchewan through an open rebellion. The thing is the rebellion isn’t from the people Talis thinks it from. Talis, Greta and two Swan Riders race across the country they are attacked and Talis is gravely injured. Now they all must figure out why he was attacked before he dies and the city of Halifax is destroyed. In way they have to convinced an A.I. to be more human and a human to be more A.I to change the world. I’ll admit that I liked the ending of the first book. I liked the open ending so when I did see the sequel I wasn’t sure how I felt about it beyond I had to read it. This wasn’t as good as the original but it was still good. While The Scorpion Rules was fast paced, this one was at times a little sluggish. It just didn’t have the same flow. While the main theme of this one is what makes us human and if we take out our human emotions from solving our problems then when do we cross the line of turning into a monster. Can you really have peace through terror? The threat of killing off a hostage or destroying entire cities hasn’t stopped countries from declaring war on another. Maybe there are less conflicts but I wouldn’t say this world was peaceful by any means. So while Talis rule may have saved billions people statistically but it hasn’t changed the world for the better and everyone needs help now and then.
All right I’m going to just get into it. Talis is by far the sassiest AI in history. I knew that I was going to love this book from the the get go. Talis starts things off with outlining how he took over the world. It truly was love at first read. So, here’s the deal, the world was in chaos, the icebergs in the Arctic have melted. Humanity was killing each other with war after war after war so the UN decided to give Talis the task of finding solutions to stop the chaos. So he blew up a couple of cities, just to get people’s attention and then went medieval on all of them and demanded royal hostages. You declare war, well, then your beloved heir to your throne is going to die. Talis’ number one rule. Make it Personal. Mission accomplished. Fast forward 400 years and for the most part, Talis’ rule has worked. The nations of the world have been almost peaceful. Greta is the heir to the PanPol throne aka Canada and has been raised to be the perfect hostage and heir. She knows that the likelihood of her living to rule her people is getting slim. Her people have been at the brink of war for years and she has become sort of ok with it since it is her duty. That is until Elian shows up and challenges everything she thought was true. Elian is everything she is not. He wasn’t raised to rule or to be a hostage. He knows that he is going to die and instead of accepting it, he fights for it. He, with the help of Xie, Greta’s roommate and fellow royal, open Greta’s eyes to different possibilities. Show her how to be strong and how to rule. They show her what she has been missing by only doing her duty. She makes real friends, falls in love and possibly changes the world. All the while Talis is there being his sassy self, keeping the jokes coming and his no nonsense rule. I highly recommend this book. Come for the sass but stay for the heart.
2 Women, So Many Books 