Once a book is made into a film, its circulation stats go through the roof and we have lines of eager readers on the hold list. (Not that we’re complaining!)
Don’t worry page-to-screen aficionados — the librarians of O’Fallon have you covered. Get a jump on the maddening crowd and reserve the books being made into movies or tv shows this year with this handy reading list.
All the summaries are taken from the library’s catalog. Click on the book title to request it.
📖Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens. This popular book recently appeared on the most loved list from O’Fallon Public Library. You can bet copies will be flying off the shelves again this year. Movie insiders say this film will star Daisy Edgar-Jones.
Here’s the book summary for those who missed it: For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. She’s barefoot and wild; unfit for polite society. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark. But Kya is not what they say. Abandoned at age ten, she has survived on her own in the marsh that she calls home. A born naturalist with just one day of school, she takes life lessons from the land, learning from the false signals of fireflies the real way of this world. But while she could have lived in solitude forever, the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. Drawn to two young men from town, who are each intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new and startling world — until the unthinkable happens.
📖Fire and Blood by George R.R. Martin. This is a prequel to the massively-popular Game of Thrones series.
Book Summary: Centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen — the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria — took up residence on Dragonstone. Fire & Blood begins their tale with the legendary Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and goes on to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold that iconic seat, all the way up to the civil war that nearly tore their dynasty apart. What really happened during the Dance of the Dragons? Why was it so deadly to visit Valyria after the Doom? What were Maegor the Cruel’s worst crimes? What was it like in Westeros when dragons ruled the skies? These are but a few of the questions answered in this essential chronicle, as related by a learned maester of the Citadel.
📖Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie. Like the last major Agatha Christie film, Kenneth Branagh is set to star in it.
Book Summary: Linnet Doyle is young, beautiful, and rich. She’s the girl who has everything-including the man her best friend loves. Linnet and her new husband take a cruise on the Nile, where they meet the brilliant detective Hercule Poirot. It should be an idyllic trip, yet Poirot has a vague, uneasy feeling that something is dangerously amiss.
📖The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. Elle and Dakota Fanning will star.
Book Summary: France, 1939. In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. When a German captain requisitions Vianne’s home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive. Vianne’s sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose. While thousands of Parisians march into the unknown terrors of war, she meets and falls in love with Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France. But when he betrays her, Isabelle joins the Resistance, risking her life time and again to save others.
📖The Power by Naomi Alderman. (Heidi, the library’s social media manager says this book was particularly good. You can read her review of it HERE.)
Book Summary: The world is a recognizable place: there’s a rich Nigerian boy who lounges around the family pool; a foster kid whose religious parents hide their true nature; an ambitious American politician; a tough London girl from a tricky family. But then a vital new force takes root and flourishes, causing their lives to converge with devastating effect. Teenage girls now have immense physical power—they can cause agonizing pain and even death. And, with this small twist of nature, the world drastically resets.
📖Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney.
Book Summary: Frances is a cool-headed and darkly observant young woman, vaguely pursuing a career in writing while studying in Dublin. Her best friend and comrade-in-arms is the beautiful and endlessly self-possessed Bobbi. At a local poetry performance one night, Frances and Bobbi catch the eye of Melissa, a well-known photographer, and as the girls are then gradually drawn into Melissa’s world, Frances is reluctantly impressed by the older woman’s sophisticated home and tall, handsome husband, Nick. However amusing and ironic Frances and Nick’s flirtation seems at first, it gives way to a strange intimacy, and Frances’s friendship with Bobbi begins to fracture. As Frances tries to keep her life in check, her relationships increasingly resist her control: with Nick, with her difficult and unhappy father, and finally, terribly, with Bobbi.
📖The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin. Kunal Nayyar, of “The Big Bang Theory” fame, will star.
Book Summary: A.J. Fikry’s life is not what he expected it to be. His wife has died, his bookstore is failing, and his prized possession, a rare collection of Poe poems, has been stolen. He is isolating himself from all the people of Alice Island and from Amelia, the Knightley Press sales rep who refuses to be deterred by A.J.’s bad attitude. And then a mysterious package appears at the bookstore that gives A.J. the ability to see everything anew. It doesn’t take long for the locals to notice the change; or for that determined sales rep, Amelia, to see her curmudgeonly client in a new light; or for the wisdom of all those books to become again the lifeblood of A.J.’s world.
📖Luckiest Girl Alive by Jessica by Knoll. Mila Kunis will star in this film.
Book Summary: Her perfect life is a perfect lie. As a teenager at the prestigious Bradley School, Ani FaNelli endured a shocking, public humiliation that left her desperate to reinvent herself. Now, with a glamorous job, expensive wardrobe, and handsome blue blood fiancé, she’s this close. But Ani has a secret. There’s something else buried in her past that still haunts her, something private and painful that threatens to bubble to the surface and destroy everything. With a singular voice and twists you won’t see coming, in Luckiest Girl Alive the question remains: will breaking her silence destroy all that she has worked for—or, will it at long last, set Ani free?
📖All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque.
Book Summary: War has broken out in Europe. A group of German college students are convinced to enlist after their teacher, Professor Kantorek, gives an impassioned speech about the honor of dying for their Fatherland. Paul Bäumer — sent to the Western Front where the fighting is most severe — is soon stripped of illusions about war being glorious. There is nothing but fear, pain, and the randomness of death. Paul is the sole survivor of his group and when he returns home, he denounces the war and his professor. Returned to the action, Paul tries to cope with the incessant fear that eats away at a soldier’s insides, turning them hollow and empty.
📖The Wonder by Emma Donoghue.
Book Summary: An eleven-year-old girl stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story. Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, The Wonder — inspired by numerous European and North American cases of ‘fasting girls’ between the sixteenth century and the twentieth — is a psychological thriller about a child’s murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes. Pitting all the seductions of fundamentalism against sense and love, it is a searing examination of what nourishes us, body and soul.
The O'Fallon Public Library News 