Watch This, Read That: Books and Movies Made for One Another

It’s not often when you can watch a movie adapted from a book and really enjoy it, so that’s not what this list is about. Instead, I’ve rounded up some movies and books that are better together.

Watch: Boy. Read: The Bone People 

Boy is one of those quirky and sweet films you can’t get out of your head. Set in New Zealand, it’s a coming-of-age story of a young boy whose absent father isn’t quite the hero he thought he was.

Meanwhile, The Bone People by Keri Hulme, is also set in New Zealand and also has a young boy as a main character who is dealing with his own set of issues – being orphaned in a shipwreck and being physically abused. It’s a challenging and complex book that causes you to rethink what you know about the very flawed characters. Having said that, it’s one of those books you’ll hug after you finish reading it.

Watch: Brooklyn. Read: Another Brooklyn

Oscar-nominated Brooklyn tells the story of a young Irish immigrant who moves to the U.S. in the 1950s in search of more job opportunities. She falls in love with an Italian-American, but unexpectedly has to return home to Ireland. While there, she has to decide between her old and new homes.

Fast forward a couple of decades and you’re still in Brooklyn, but with Jaqueline Woodson’s Another Brooklyn you get the story of a black girl who moved with her father and brother to Brooklyn from Tennessee in the 70s. The short book is packed with thoughtful insights about our memories coming into contact with hard truths.

Watch: The Dressmaker. Read: The Luminaries

Have you seen The Dressmaker yet? It is one dark, bizarre tragedy of a movie. Kate Winslet shines. Set in Australia, a young woman returns to her provincial hometown after launching a successful career as a dressmaker.

Elanor Catton’s The Luminaries is set in New Zealand during the gold rush and follows a very mysterious, twisting story with a dozen main characters. The connection between these two is a little harder to make, I know. But just trust me on this one.

Watch: The Railway Man. Read: Narrow Road to the Deep North

The Railway Man starts with a wife trying to understand her husband’s psychological problems. As a young man, he was in a Japanese POW camp during World War II where he was forced to work on the Thai Burma Railway. The wife and a close friend try to help him overcome the trauma of his youth.

Although The Railway Man is an adaptation of a book by the same name, the film shares a lot of similarities with the Man Booker Winning Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan. In the book, an Australian doctor becomes a war hero after surviving a Japanese POW camp tasked with building the Burma Railway.

Watch: Spotlight. Read: The Burglary

You watch Spotlight and you realize how the absolutely unglamorous work of investigative journalism can have a profound impact on so many lives.

You read The Burglary by Betty Medsger and you see how the brave actions of unlikely citizens (in conjunction with the help of a journalist to share their story) can bring down an institution as big as the FBI. More from me about that book here.