Monday Discussion: TV Adaptations

Like millions of others, I watched the Season 4 premiere of True Blood last night. I am not ashamed to admit that I find the series outrageous, raunchy, unbelievable, violent, and just plain awesome. Personally, I enjoy the show more than Charlaine Harris' books, but that might be more because I have so much else I have to read and am able to get my Sookie fix through the TV.

I know I am not alone. Hello out there, stand up and be counted.  This post I did last year on Sookie Stackhouse readalikes for the Season 3 premiere is one of my most popular ever (we are talking hits in the thousands) and its sister post on the Browser's Corner is also one of that site's most popular pages.

But Sookie is not the only character born in a book and brought to the small screen.  Writers used to strive to sell the movie rights to their work, but these days it seems that television is nabbing some of the best novels to turn  into a TV series. A couple of years ago, The AV Club Blog ran this article commenting on the trend. And when Karin Slaughter came to the BPL last Thursday, she also mentioned that she is actively shopping her books to be made into a television series.

Right now, people are talking about a lot of TV shows. Check out the non-comprehensive list I have compiled below.  These are very popular shows right now and they all began as novels (or graphic novels). The titles are linked to the show, followed by a link to the corresponding book:

• Game of Thrones (books)
• Rizzoli & Isles (books)
• Bones (books) 
• Dexter (books)
• The Walking Dead (books)

And then there are the books that get made into TV shows, are be rejected by the network that ordered them, only to see a fan campaign to let the show be seen.

So for today's Monday Discussion tell me either your favorite book to TV transfer or a book/series you want to see on the small screen.

For the record, I would love to see the bumbling bookmobile librarian Israel Armstrong get his own series, but I may be alone on this one since a British-Jewish librarian working in rural Ireland who can barely keep himself together, let alone solve a mystery is a fairly small niche. But hey, we dream big here on the Monday Discussion.

Monday Discussion archive is here.