From Bookshelf to Box Office

This month’s Mums Reading Group choice (The Memory Keeper’s Daughter) has got me thinking about books that were made into film, so I thought I’d share a ‘Books to film’ guide with you. It could prove useful if you fancy a searching out a good read this summer which you can watch in film afterwards.

Reel Books shows a selection of some of the best UK writing from the last 20 years that has been turned into film. Each entry offers a brief description of the book, along with the relevant publication details. You can download the Reel Books part 1 and Reel Books part 2 online.

Here are the Telegraphs 25 best book to film adaptations – or twenty-five films that they consider made it from the book shelf to the box office with credibility intact. The Guardian posted their top 50 adaptations here. There are some great ones in both lists, but do you agree with their choices? Have they missed any of your favorites out?

As you’d expect Russell also has a number of these book titles in stock - I’ve listed half a dozen or so below.

Books to film currently in stock...

Armadillo

RRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50

One winter morning Lorimer Black goes to keep a business appointment and finds a hanged man. This is just the start of what turns out to be a horrendous period for Lorimer as he realizes that he's being set up at work and cast adrift outside the office.

This is a very funny novel with its dark side that shows a good man being boxed in and unable to see how to help himself.

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The Lovely Bones

RRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973."

So begins the story of Susie Salmon, who is adjusting to her new home in heaven, a place that is not at all what she expected, even as she is watching life on earth continue without her -- her friends trading rumours about her disappearance, her killer trying to cover his tracks, her grief-stricken family unravelling.

Atonement

RRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50

On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house. Watching her is Robbie Turner, her childhood friend who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever. Robbie and Cecilia will have crossed a boundary they had not even imagined at its start, and will have become victims of the younger girl's imagination. Briony will have witnessed mysteries, and committed a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

Captain Corelli’s Mandolin

RRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50

It is 1941 and Captain Antonio Corelli, a young Italian officer, is posted to the Greek island of Cephallonia as part of the occupying forces. At first he is ostracised by the locals, but as a conscien-tious but far from fanatical soldier, whose main aim is to have a peaceful war, he proves in time to be civilised, humorous - and a consumate musician. When the local doctor's daughter's letters to her fiance go unanswered, the working of the eternal triangle seems inevitable. But can this fragile love survive as a war of bestial savagery gets closer and the lines are drawn between invader and defender?

Chocolat

RRP:£7.99
Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50

When the exotic stranger Vianne Rocher arrives in the old French village of Lansquenet and opens a chocolate boutique called "La Celeste Praline" directly across the square from the church, Father Reynaud identifies her as a serious danger to his flock. To make matters worse, Vianne does not go to church and has a penchant for superstition. Like her mother, she can read Tarot cards. But she begins to win over customers with her smiles, her intuition for everyone's favourites, and her delightful confections.

Last Orders

RRP:£7.99

Bridgnorth Books Used Price: £1.50

Four men once close to Jack Dodds, a London butcher, meet to carry out his peculiar last wish, to have his ashes scattered into the sea. For reasons best known to herself, Jack's widow, Amy, declines to join them.

On the surface the tale of a simple if increasingly bizarre day's outing, Last Orders is Graham Swift's most poignant exploration of the complexity and courage of ordinary lives.