by Ciara Hogan from Celbridge Library
One of my favourite ways to read more widely is to pick up books that are being adapted for television or film. While a lot of filming has been halted due to social distancing, there are a few adaptations coming out in 2021. I had a look on BorrowBox to see  if many of them featured and have a great list of potential books that will let you get your critical hat on…will you prefer the book to the film, the age old question?
Films
French Exit by Patrick DeWitt
Release date of adaptation: February 12th 2021
Frances Price – tart widow, possessive mother and Upper East Side force of nature – is in dire straits, beset by scandal. Her adult son Malcolm is no help, mired in a permanent state of arrested development. And then there’s their cat, who Frances believes houses the spirit of her late husband, an infamously immoral lawyer whose gruesome tabloid death rendered them social outcasts.
To put their troubles behind them, the trio cut their losses and head for the exit. Their beloved Paris becomes the backdrop for a giddy drive to self-destruction, helped along by a cast of singularly curious characters: a bashful private investigator, an aimless psychic and Mme. Reynard, friendly American expat and aggressive houseguest.
Brimming with pathos, warmth and wit, French Exit is a one-of-a-kind tragedy of manners, a riotous send-up of high society and a moving story of mothers and sons
Available to borrow on BorrowBox in  eBook form here (Link)
Without Remorse – Tom Clancy
Releasing 2021, date to be confirmed.
Book Synopsis
His code name is Mr Clark. And his work for the CIA is brilliant, cold-blooded and efficient … But who is he really? In a harrowing tour de force, Tom Clancy shows how an ordinary man named John Kelly crossed the lines of justice and morality ‒ to become the CIA legend, Mr Clark. This is an unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness. Without mercy. Without guilt. Without remorse.
Available to borrow on BorrowBox in Audiobook form here (Link)
Dune by Frank Herbert
Release date of adaptation: October 1st, 2021
Book Synopsis
Set on the desert planet Arrakis, Dune is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, heir to a noble family tasked with ruling an inhospitable world where the only thing of value is the “spice†melange, a drug capable of extending life and enhancing consciousness. Coveted across the known universe, melange is a prize worth killing for….
When House Atreides is betrayed, the destruction of Paul’s family will set the boy on a journey toward a destiny greater than he could ever have imagined. And as he evolves into the mysterious man known as Muad’Dib, he will bring to fruition humankind’s most ancient and unattainable dream.
Available to borrow on BorrowBox in audiobook format here  (Link)
The Knife of Never Letting Go – Patrick Ness
Release date of adaptation: March 5th, 2021
Book Synopsis
An unflinching novel about the impossible choices of growing up, by an award-winning writer.
Imagine you’re the only boy in a town of men. And you can hear everything they think. And they can hear everything you think. Imagine you don’t fit in with their plans… Todd Hewitt is just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man. But his town has been keeping secrets from him. Secrets that are going to force him to run…
Available to borrow on Borrowbox in audiobook format here (Link) or
in eBook format here (Link)
White Tiger – Aravind Adiga
Release date of adaptation: January 13th, 2021
Book Synopsis
Balram Halwai is the White Tiger – the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor for him to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur and takes him to live in Delhi.
The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India – by murdering his master.
Available to borrow on BorrowBox in audiobook format here  (Link)
Television
This is going to hurt – Adam Kay
Release date of adaptation: Date TBC
Book Synopsis
Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships . . .
Welcome to the life of a junior doctor.
Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay’s This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the NHS front line. Hilarious, horrifying and heartbreaking by turns, these diaries are everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn’t – about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar.
Available to borrow on BorrowBox in eBook form here (Link) or audiobook format here (Link)
All Creatures Great and Small – James Hernott
Series 2 Release date of adaptation: TBC
Book Synopsis
Fresh out of Glasgow Veterinary College, to the young James Herriot 1930s Yorkshire seems to offer an idyllic pocket of rural life in a rapidly changing world. But from his erratic new colleagues, brothers Siegfried and Tristan Farnon, to incomprehensible farmers, herds of semi-feral cattle, a pig called Nugent and an overweight Pekingese called Tricki Woo, James finds he is on a learning curve as steep as the hills around him. And when he meets Helen, the beautiful daughter of a local farmer, all the training and experience in the world can’t help him,
Available to borrow in BorrowBox audiobook form here (Link)
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