Brenna
One sentence synopsis... Through their parallel searches for love, two sisters learn to balance personal happiness with the rules that govern their society.
Read it if you like... “Little Women”. Both feature a similar de-romanticizing of what marriage represented to women of the time.
Dream casting... just watch Emma Thompson's version. It's honestly better.
One sentence synopsis... A critique of the dysfunctional power dynamics of relationships under capitalism disguised as a will-they-won't-they love story between two millennial Irish intellectuals. .
Read it if you liked... ‘One Day' by Dave Nicholls (the book, not the movie... the movie was a disaster, Anne Hathaway's accent is a disgrace, it's painful to watch). .
Dream casting... turns out Hulu is already all over this casting Daisy Edgar-Jones as bookish and strange Marianne and Paul Mescal as popular jock Connell.
One sentence synopsis... Presented as the autobiography of Wilbur Daffodil-11 Swain, the King of Manhattan, this novel is ostensibly about the absurdity of loneliness and the subversive power of institutionalized “family” - “Lonesome No More!” .
Read it if you like... if you're a Vonnegut completionist, otherwise spare yourself. .
Dream casting... the main characters are described as twin geniuses, both born ugly and extremely tall. They were played by Jerry Lewis and Madeline Kahn in the 1984 adaptation of this novel. I wouldn't wish this role on anyone.
One sentence synopsis... Precocious young Emma Woodhouse's delusions of her own match-making abilities lead to a series of comic, romantic misadventures. .
Read it if you like... rom-com books like “To All The Boys I've Loved Before” or modern reimagining like “Clueless”. .
Dream casting... https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qsOwj0PR5Sk
One sentence synopsis... Fresh out of Princeton with an economics degree, a white boyfriend, and no job, Casey Han, struggles to reconcile her glamorous Manhattan tastes with the expectations of her Korean-American community in Queens. .
Read it if you like... ‘Crazy Rich Asians' meets Lee's other novel, ‘Pachinko'
Dream casting... Glen Powell and John Cho as Casey's rival love interests Jay and Unu.
One sentence synopsis... An imaginative portrait of a world hidden from us and the casual violence inflicted upon it's inhabitants: a North Korea rife with torture, propaganda, and innocence lost. .
Read it if you like... the writing is pretty Dickensian but the adventures are pure Fleming. .
Dream casting... Obviously Song Kang-ho as Pak Jun Do/“Commander Ga”. Let him play every character.
One sentence synopsis... A thoughtful portrait of the fallout a family experience after a child/chimpanzee study they're participants in is prematurely aborted. .
Read it if you liked... ‘Okja', man-of-the-moment Bong Joon-Ho's film about animal cruelty ft. the Animal Liberation Front. .
Dream casting... Four years ago this was supposed to be a miniseries starring Natalie Portman... nothing seems to have come from that but she'd be a great Rosemary Cooke. Obviously having an actual chimpanzee in the film would be a slap in the face to the subject matter of the book so maybe they're just waiting for the CGI technology to catch up.
One sentence synopsis... Billy Pilgrim's “unstuck in time” travels from the fire bombings in Dresden to the alien planet of Tralfamadore. .
Read it if you like... ‘Fahrenheit 451', ‘Catch-22', other modern classics with names and numbers as the title. .
Dream casting... Unfortunately I had recently seen ‘1917' so I could only picture George MacKay as Billy Pilgrim and Dean-Charles Chapman as Roland Weary.
One sentence synopsis... A harrowing semi-autobiographical story of Ruth Anne, ‘Bone' Boatwright, a young girl growing up entrenched in poverty, family dysfunction, and sexual abuse in the south.
Read it if you like... although it's now popular to put a poor, ‘white trash', female character as the center of a story (a la, ‘Winter's Bone' or ‘My Absolute Darling') this book was one of the earlier ones to accomplish it and the only one of those it's compared to written by a woman. Also a good read for people who liked the heartbreak of ‘A Little Life'. Very different but Bone is another character who will stick with me like Jude.
Dream casting... planning on checking out the 1996 movie version with a young Jenna Malone as Bone.
One sentence synopsis... ‘The Vanishing Half' follows the lives of the Vignes twins whose paths diverge and intersect in various heartbreaking ways after one sister makes the decision to erase her past and pass as white.
Read it if you like... ‘Girl, Woman, Other', ‘Homegoing', or 'Little Fires Everywhere'.
Dream casting... HBO paid seven figures for the rights to develop it into a limited series. I'd cast Kiki Layne as studious Jude and Elliot Fletcher as her trans boyfriend Reese.
One sentence synopsis... An eccentric gentleman's choice of a young slave as his prodigy sets off a series of wonderful, heartbreaking adventures fueled by scientific enlightenment and world exploration. .
Read it if you liked... Fantasy works of Jules Verne. .
Dream casting... DeRon Horton as the older Wash and Jude Law as gentleman-scientist Titch Wilde.
One sentence synopsis... ‘A Little Life' begins as a conventional postgrad New York ensemble but it quickly becomes evident Yanagihara has something much darker and unsettling in mind for her four unforgettable friends. .
Read it if you like... crying. Screaming at books. Simultaneously hating the author for putting her characters through this while also loving her for creating such an all-consuming story. Don't read it if you like happy endings. .
Dream casting... Robert Pattinson, Armie Hammer, or Garrett Hedlund as Willem Ragnarsson. John Boyega is the only JB. If anyone's read the book and has people in mind I'd love to know what you pictured.
One sentence synopsis... Set in modern-day Oakland and alternating perspectives amongst a dozen Native and mixed race characters this novel builds tension through deeply personal stories until the climactic big Oakland powwow. .
Read it if you like... modern history and stories of identity like (the previously favorably reviewed) ‘The Great Believers'. .
Dream casting... Gil Birmingham as the devoted Bill Davis and Chaske Spencer as the loner Edwin Black.
One sentence synopsis... A novella that defies explanation, Brautigan weaves social commentary, cultural satire, and hallucinations of the pastoral American wilderness in this strange, slim book. .
Read it if you like... Burroughs, Kerouac, Bukowski, or Pynchon but even more sparse prose and surreal metaphors. .
Further reading... https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/the-life-and-death-of-richard-brautigan-69316/amp/
One sentence synopsis... A sweeping history of twelve British women of colour - all a few degrees separated from each other.
Read it if you like... contemporary British culture. This book touches on Brexit, intersectionality, identity, Twitter, feminism, and more. It's a richly textured social novel and also a compulsive page-turner.
Dream casting... the rights to turn it into a limited series have already been snatched up but fingers crossed Michaela Coel gets involved in any capacity.
One sentence synopsis... Growing up fatherless in a dreary, alcoholic, coastal town a young woman who believes she's a mermaid falls hopelessly in love with a returning Iraq war veteran. .
Read it if you like... stories that flirt with magic realism, unreliable narrators, or complex female characters (think Ottessa Moshfegh “heroines”). .
Dream casting... Jamie Bell as the good-hearted but traumatized Jude and Thomasin McKenzie as the unnamed narrator.
One sentence synopsis... Ruthless and brilliant, Austen's last complete novel concerns Anne Elliot, a young Englishwoman, reunited with her first love 7 years after their breakup. .
Read it if you like... stories about second chances. .
Dream casting... Ella Hunt as Anne Elliot and Johnny Flynn as Frederick Wentworth.
One sentence synopsis... Exiled from their family home following the death of their father, this fairytale-esque story follows the Conroy siblings through the next five decades of their lives. .
Read it if you like... Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, anything with an evil stepmother really.. this book's one gives them all a run for their money. .
Dream casting... Margaret Qualley and Nicholas Hoult as the Conroy siblings Maeve and Danny.
One sentence synopsis... A masterful historical novel following the triumphs and struggles of generations of Parisians - from 1261 to 1968. .
Read it if you like... travel. Reading about other places is the closest thing any of us are going to get to taking a trip these days and Rutherfurd brings to life the City of Lights. .
Further reading... I've read two of this other books - ‘London' and ‘New York' - and both are equally transporting, informative, and entertaining.
One sentence synopsis... In a future where natural death has been conquered, elected Scythes are responsible for culling the human population. .
Read it if you like... like ‘Hunger Games', this book poses philosophical questions about mortality and societal corruption in an entertaining way... also like ‘Hunger Games' it features a weak, lazy romance between two characters as little suited for each other as Katniss and Peeta. .
Dream casting... Griffin Gluck as outcast turned Scythe-hunter, Rowan. Taylor Russell as relevant Scythe-in-training, Citra.
One sentence synopsis... In a dystopian society (barely different from our own) that is nearly completely automized, a conflicted engineer questions the negative impact machines have on humanity. .
Read it if you like... sci-fi, ‘Westworld', Philip K. Dick. Read it if you hate (or at least hold serious reservations about) Amazon, Facebook, technology's overwhelming and unregulated place in our lives. .
Dream casting... it's themes are huge and scary but this novel is mostly hilarious. Therefore I propose Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele as spiritual leader the Shah of Bratpuhr and his translator, respectively.
One sentence synopsis... The transformation of the wife and four daughters of an evangelical preacher who brings his mission to the Belgian Congo during the period of colonial upheaval in 1959. .
Read it if you like... “The Kite Runner”, “Memoirs of a Geisha”, historical fiction with a deeply personal plot. .
Dream casting... is currently in development with Amy Adams. Pure Best Actress Oscar gold.
One sentence synopsis... Ava, an Irish transplant teaching English in Hong Kong, starts sleeping with a wealthy English banker, but while he's away on business she falls in love with Edith, an equally wealthy lawyer.
Read it if you like... Sally Rooney - but queer. They both handle themes like class, capitalism, power, social mores, self-awareness - but Dolan writes with sharper edges and tighter pacing.
Dream casting... Jamie Demetriou as non-committal banker, Julian and Ellen Wong as Edith.
One sentence synopsis... The humour and horror of life through the eyes of a group of boys at a Catholic boarding school in Dublin. .
Read it if you like... “real” (aka gritty and dark, full of substance abuse, sex, and mental illness) high school stories - think Euphoria or Skins, but with a comic edge. .
Dream casting... the boys are supposed to be 13 years old... give Roman Griffin Davis and Archie Yates a few more years and then they'd be perfect as Skippy and his overweight genius roommate Ruprecht Van Doreen.
One sentence synopsis.. A Greek chorus of church-going elders tell the story (and pass hella judgement along the way) of a secret abortion's impact on their community in the years that follow.
Read it if you like... unlikable characters and slow-burn stories. Don't read it if you liked ‘The Vanishing Half' - a much better book in every way.
Dream casting... Kerry Washington is adapting the book for Warner Bros and will likely save it from the lackluster story on the page.