That’s the sum of it right there. I have four children, the oldest of whom is eleven. Books, music and movies are a significant part of our lives. The oldest is starting to read adult-level books and watch movies that aren’t just for kids, sometimes on his own. We ran into an impasse last week because he wanted to watch A Wrinkle in Time and I told him he would enjoy both more if he read the classic L’Engle novel first and watched the Oprah movie second.
This whole exchange made me realize that as a book-and-movie family, we should have a Read-Before-Watch list. Understand that my kids are always free to do as they please, but every single person reading this knows the tension in the air when they or someone else innocently says, ‘Wait, that’s a book?’ This is to save my many and various children from that kind of pain.
Here’s a few I have so far. Please give generously.
Fight Club
Station Eleven
Game of Thrones
Ready Player One
The Martian
Project Hail Mary
Pride and Prejudice
The Great Gatsby
Little Women
Handmaid’s Tale
The Witcher
The Lord of the Rings
Dune
Hunger Games
Chronicles of Narnia
No Country For Old Men
by ExpensiveDifficulty2
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(Though personally, I think I would have enjoyed the A Wrinkle in Time movie more if I’d watched it first. Since I read the book first, I was comparing the movie to the book and was disappointed because I felt it didn’t capture the feel of the book, though I liked the diverse casting. If I’d watched the movie first, I could have enjoyed it on its own terms instead of always comparing it to the book, which I liked much more.)
More Austen: Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Mansfield Park
Vanity Fair
Jane Eyre
Wuthering Heights
The Hunger Games
The Giver
Murder on the Orient Express
The Thursday Murder Club
Hamnet
Conclave
The DaVinci Code
The Lovely Bones
The Nickel Boys
Bridge to Terabithia
The Fault in Our Stars
Dracula
Frankenstein
One that’s less popular but I think was a really fun movie: [Jumper](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/47970.Jumper) – The movie stars Hayden Christensen and Samuel L Jackson and is about a person who has the ability to teleport. The book and movie are quite different but I think both explore teleportation in entertaining ways.
[Supergirl](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59854151-supergirl) comes out this summer. The comic is self contained and is a fairly shot read that I think shows Supergirl in a great light.
[Good Omens](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12070.Good_Omens?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_10) – Amazon series that is popular about what if an angel and a demon conspire to stop the apocalypse. Pratchett always writes things that are hilarious and absurd.
[Stories of Your Life and Others](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/223380.Stories_of_Your_Life_and_Others) is a collection of short stories. The main story is the basis for the movie Arrival.[](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/130698.Ted_Chiang)
The Princess Bride!