Book-based TV series are a fabulous way to extend your reading pleasure. Whether you read first and view the adaptation later, or vice versa, the choices are endless. From classics to recent bestsellers and everything in between, books adapted for the small screen appeared initially in the library! What’s more, many of these great titles can be downloaded from the library’s website. Here are a few of my personal favorites that were as fun to read as they were to watch. All are available as ebooks on the Mechanics’ Institute website.
Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng - Elena Richardson has built a life on playing by the rules. A straightlaced family woman, she and her lawyer husband live in Shaker Heights, a suburb of Cleveland. But the Richardson family’s orderly existence is about to change. Enigmatic artist Mia Warren arrives in town and rents a house owned by the Richardsons. All four of the Richardson children find themselves drawn to this mysterious single mother and her charming teenage daughter, Pearl. After an old family friend tries to adopt a Chinese-American baby, Elena finds herself pitted against Mia, both at the center of a dramatic controversy with devastating consequences. The equally thrilling mini-series on Hulu began airing on March 18, 2020. The show stars Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington.
Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - On her honeymoon, former combat nurse Claire Randall touches an ancient stone and is hurtled back in time more than two hundred years. Caught in war-torn Scotland of 1743, Claire is forced to marry James Fraser, a young soldier. And so begins this epic love story rich with historical details of the Jacobite uprising and 18th-century life. The outstanding show of the same title, now in its fifth season on Starz, has a 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Not at all surprising, as the costumes, setting, and cast are truly breathtaking.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood - In the Republic of Gilead, birth rates have declined dramatically. Wealthy couples now own “Handmaids,” female slaves used for child-bearing purposes. Offred, Handmaid to the Waterford couple, remembers her life before Gilead, a time when she had a husband and a child. Atwood’s dystopian novel chronicles a patriarchal, fundamentalist world where females have lost nearly all freedoms, including the ability to raise their biological children, handle money, or read. In an all-too-believable scenario, the TV show plunges this 1985 tale into a future where society is based on a caste system, women are enslaved, and martial law reigns. The Hulu adaptation has won several Emmy awards, including Outstanding Drama Series. Atwood’s 2019 sequel, The Testaments, is being adapted for TV. The Testaments is also available in ebook format from our library’s catalog.
