Top Ten Books I Would Love to See Filmed

“Traveller, embrace the morning light, but do not take the hand of night.”

Garth Nix

1. The Dark Tower series – Stephen King. There are already plans to make the septet into some kind of film/TV hybrid, which is either going to be fantastic or soul-crushingly terrible. But the series’ visual world alone, to say nothing of its characters or plot, could propel it into filmic amazingness in the right hands. Blaine the Mono swooping across the dead lands! Roland’s ka-tet in Mejis riding across the Drop! The wide and empty desert in The Gunslinger! Oh, to be that director.

2. Good Omens – Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. A sensitive director could make a really lovely thing of this: blackly funny, with a strong plot and the kind of Christian imagery that’s easy to understand in a cinema setting. Again, there’s the potential for some stunning visuals: the bikers of the apocalypse, the climactic showdown, that sequence with the nuclear missiles.

3. Sabriel – Garth Nix. Anything that gets this criminally under-read series some love is a good thing in my book, but there are plenty of other reasons why Sabriel could make a good film: a nuanced female lead, a novel and visual form of magic, a vividly realised world, and, most importantly, a talking cat.

4. Temeraire – Naomi Novik. Another book that would need really careful treatment, more whimsical magical realism than full-on fantasy blockbuster (I’m thinking Stardust off the top of my head). But as long as Temeraire was on screen I could probably be happy with anything. (Dragons in films are always really sweet – you just want to give them a hug, don’t you?)

5. The Amber Spyglass – Philip Pullman. Hollywood never got around to this one, which is a shame, because I think it would actually work better on screen than it does in prose: on screen you tend not to notice plot holes if the visuals are good enough, and, come on. A fight between angels and men and ghosts and armoured bears and witches? What more could you ask from a film?

6. The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe. Old crumbling castle, things that go bump in the night, mysterious mysteries. Classic suspense right there.

7. Cinder – Marissa Meyer. I just think the beaten-down, Star Wars-y aesthetic of New Beijing would translate really well to the screen. It’s also got a simple but strong plot line and a great female lead.

8. A Face Like Glass – Frances Hardinge. The lush, detailed, dark world of Caverna would make a phenomenally atmospheric film, and dystopias seem to be doing well right now. Another book that could do with the extra publicity.

9. Phoenix Rising – Ryk E. Spor. This was an enormously fun read, and I think the Dungeons & Dragons-type feel would make it an enormously fun film, too.

10. The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien. I do not recognise the existence of Jackson’s travesty, and I would like someone to make The Hobbit as Tolkien actually wrote it: a small, low-key, light-hearted fairy tale about cunning, and kindness, and well-meaning, and pointedly not hitting things over the head at the first sign of trouble.

(The theme for this post was suggested by the Broke and the Bookish’s weekly meme Top Ten Tuesday.)