Top 3 Books that Should Be Turned into Movies

The book-to-movie translation doesn't always pan out the way that readers would prefer, but real fans of a book can't help themselves when it comes to lining up for movie versions of their favorite tomes. The choice of actors, sets, and even musical scores often don't gel with our mental images, but it's great to see our favorite stories come to life, anyway. Here are three books that I'd like to see on the big screen.

Ball Four

This is the original and quintessential sports tell-all book, in which Jim Bouton lays bare baseball off-field world of locker rooms, road trips, and general shenanigans. By publishing the detailed diary of his comeback with the 1969 Seattle Pilots, Bouton violated baseball's unwritten closed-door policy and started us down the road to the broad access that we have to our athletes today. Baseball always has made for good cinema, and the telling of Bouton's true and riveting story would be a welcome addition to the film vault. A good choice for the role of Jim would be Matt Damon. The inimitable Ken Burns, who created the epic PBS series, Baseball, would be the obvious choice for director/producer duties.

Walden

In 1845, at the age of 28, Henry David Thoreau decided to pack up ... well, to pack up nothing, actually. But Thoreau moved into the wilderness near Walden Pond on land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson, built a cabin, and spent the next two years in near-isolation (he did have occasional visitors). Not surprisingly, Thoreau did a lot of soul-searching during this period and came to truly value self-sufficiency, solidifying his views of life. In this age of rampant environmentalism, Thoreau's story is ripe to be retold, and what better way than in a large-scale theatrical release. I see this as an edgy film with an M. Night Shyamalan flair led by a gruffed-up Adrian Brody.

Anthem

Anthem is one of Ayn Rand's earlier novels and is very stark in its portrayal of Objectivism's main tenets, especially when compared to the rich, rambling tapestries woven by The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. The main character, Equality 7-2521, finds himself in a futuristic "utopian" world in which all people are completely equal and interchangeable, and in which all individuality is strictly forbidden. A scientist with a strong but repressed sense of self, our protagonist explains how things got so bad and how he escaped from this unfair society, to an underground tunnel. The film version could plausibly play out along the lines of Tom Hanks' Cast Away, where the main (and only) character tells his story through words and actions. I'm tabbing Ron Howard as the boss for this production.

Projecting your favorite books to the silver screen is a fun thought exercise, and the possible permutations are nearly limitless. These are three of my top choices for the book-to-flick makeover. Have fun thinking of your own!