Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Book to Movie Adaptations

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. 

It’s been forever since I did a TTT, but I finally carved out some time to put this together!

This week’s prompt is Top Ten Book To Movie Adaptations I’m Looking Forward To or Ten Book To Movie Adaptations I Still Need To Watch. I’ve tweaked it slightly, so I’m doing Ten Book to Movie Adaptations I Own.

1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: Yes, I know, a lot of stuff was missing from the movies, and I’ll never get over how Ginny’s character was treated, but they were still enjoyable and rank among my favourite films ever!
2. The Princess Bride: “Hello, my name is Inigio Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” Enough said.
3. Northanger Abbey: My friends and I swooned over Henry Tilney when we watched this for our Austen course in university. And it’s my favourite Austen novel (sorry, Pride & Prejudice, you’re a close third – after Persuasion).
4. Stardust: Mostly, I just remember Robert de Niro as a gay pirate, but as a Neil Gaiman fan, I love everything about this.
5. Coraline: Ditto (minus the gay pirate, of course).
6. A Series of Unfortunate Events: Again, there’s a lot missing from this adaptation and they gave it a whole different ending, but visually, it’s so much fun.
7. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants: While I didn’t love the sequel (because it skipped the middle books and changed the story lines a lot), this first one is girly fun at its best!
8. The Princess Diaries: One of the rare times I saw a movie before reading the books, the only thing that makes me sad is how Grandmere is not nearly as sweet as Julie Andrews makes her out to be (also the fact that it took THREE BOOKS for Mia and Michael to get together!!).
9. Beautiful Creatures: I enjoyed the books (though after hating the sequel series, I’m not sure if I can re-read them), and while the movie deviated somewhat, it was still cute.
10. The Great Gatsby: Visually gorgeous. Plus who can resist the always-charming Leo DiCaprio??

BONUS:

• 10 Things I Hate About You: Based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, this teen romcom is one of the greatest things to exist. Come for a young Joseph-Gordon Levitt, stay for Heath Ledger-with-his-Australia-accent (RIP, Heath).
• Easy A: Based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. I’ve said it before: the only unbelievable aspect is the idea that someone as gorgeous as Emma Stone could be invisible to her classmates.
• She’s the Man: Also based on Shakespeare (Twelfth Night), this was Amanda Bynes at her funniest. Also a then relatively unknown chap by the name of Channing Tatum who sticks a tampon up his nose. Hilarious.

All three of these bonus movies are high on my list of favourites; I’ve always loved retellings!

What adaptations made your list? Are there any I should check out immediately?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Characters Who Are Fellow Book Nerds

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. 

This week’s prompt is Ten Characters Who Are Fellow Book Nerds. A couple of these characters are more “word nerds” (or writers) than “book nerds”, but I think all book nerds have an appreciation for words in general.

1) Matilda from Roald Dahl’s Matilda
2) Daphne de Luce from Alan Bradley’s Flavia de Luce series
3) Hermione Granger from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series
4) Catherine Morland from Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey
5) Sadie from Sara O’Leary/Julie Morstad’s This is Sadie
6) Vander Burke from Page Morgan’s The Dispossessed series
7) Liesel Meminger from Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief

Word Nerds/Writers
8) Ambrose Bukowski from Susin Nielsen’s Word Nerd
9) Mia Thermopolis from Meg Cabot’s The Princess Diaries series
10) Lydia Jaackson-Oberman from Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Year of Secret Assignments

Those were the ones I could think of, though I’m sure I’m missing someone obvious. Who made it onto your lists?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Series I Started (and Never Finished)

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. 

This week’s prompt was a FREEBIE, so I decided to talk about the Ten Series I Started and Never Finished. Some are multi-book series, others are duologies/trilogies, but all of them were abandoned for reasons (that I will talk about).

Also, I apologize in advance if I talk ill about one of your favourite series, it’s just my opinion! And I’ll try not to spoil anything, but I can’t promise that.

1) The White Rabbit Chronicles – Gena Showalter

I love the covers, I love the concept, but I can’t stand the characters. I read Alice in Zombieland and was heartbroken when I hated it. I wanted to like this trilogy so much, but Ali (and Cole) infuriated me. I even considered reading the second book, but after mulling it over, I knew there was no point – it would have just disappointed me even more.

2) Teardrop duology – Lauren Kate

I’m scared to re-read Fallen (which I actually loved), because I don’t know if the trainwreck that was Teardrop will affect my opinion. This was basically Fallen expect with more water (and less angels), and I didn’t like any of the characters (Luce wasn’t the greatest heroine, but she at least had some personality). Again, the more I thought about it, the angrier it mad me.

3) Hush, Hush series – Becca Fitzpatrick

It pains me to admit it, but I loved this book when I first read it. I’d like to point out that I was deep in my Twilight phase and Patch (such a terrible name for an angel) was like a more aggressive Edward. And then my sister (Ro) read it, broke it down, and I was like “Welp, you’re right. This is awful”.

It’s interesting to see how much hate the series gets (I definitely DID NOT realize how abusive Patch/Nora’s relationship was).

4) The Immortals series – Alyson Noel

Ever started grating on my nerves sometime around book three, but I read the fourth one because I was intrigued. And then nothing too thrilling happened and the thing with Jude annoyed me, and I just couldn’t deal with any of the characters anymore.

4.5) Riley Bloom series – Alyson Noel

Once I stopped reading the original series, I didn’t see the point in finishing the spinoff! Plus Riley, while great comedic relief in the first Immortals book, was pretty meh as a protagonist.

5) House of Night series – P.C. and Kristin Cast

I think I suffered through four of these books too before I stopped caring: boring/annoying protagonist; the antagonist who ends up redeeming herself in some one and then also becomes boring; WAY TOO MANY guys falling all over themselves for her. I can’t take it when literally every guy has a thing for the main character – my maximum is two because love triangles are a thing (in YA, at least).

6) The Princess Diaries – Meg Cabot

Do not talk to me about the end of book eight (which is when I gave up) but you can highlight for angry spoilers:

Mia spends nearly SEVEN BOOKS talking about how much she loves Michael and then SHE BREAKS UP WITH HIM because he and Judith were “friends with benefits” BEFORE HE AND MIA EVEN STARTED DATING and then she KISSES J.P. and I was so mad.

I don’t care if they ended up together in the last book, it was HORRIBLE.

7) The Saga of Darren Shan – Darren Shan

This was a series that I always meant to finish, but never got around to (I don’t have the last book). I honestly don’t remember much from anything after book four, but Ro recently read them for the first time, and, according to her, half the books are just filler. So while I may still buy the last book – if only to complete my set – I’m not in any rush.

8) Blue Bloods series – Melissa de la Cruz

I read the first three and really liked them (again, this was during the Twilight years, so I mentally compared Jack to Edward and preferred Jack). But by the time the fourth book came out, I wasn’t as attached to the characters, and then I heard that werewolves were randomly being introduced, so I just gave up.

9) The Hollow series – Jessica Verday

Another series I desperately wanted to like, but I was bored to tears with it, and couldn’t connect to any of the characters (I’m very much a “character” person – if I don’t like any of them, I have a hard time with the book). Plus I (purposely) spoiled the ending of the third book and basically had a “WHAT IS GOING ON?!” moment, so I know I won’t read the sequels.

That was technically ten! What are some series that you’ve abandoned?