When books become screen dreams: adaptations that make us reread

There is a particular moment that happens when a beloved book is announced for adaptation.

Excitement flickers. Then dread. Then the quiet, possessive thought: please do not ruin this.

Adaptations are strange creatures. They can deepen a story’s reach, introduce it to entirely new audiences, and even sharpen our understanding of the original. Or they can flatten nuance, sand down complexity, and leave readers murmuring that the book was better.

Recently, conversation has been circling around several upcoming adaptations, alongside renewed appreciation for those that truly got it right.

Let us start with the good.

adaptations that honoured their source material

• Slow Horses, based on the novels by Mick Herron
  A masterclass in tone. The series captured the sardonic bite, the bureaucratic decay, and the bruised humanity of the books. It understood that spy fiction can be both cynical and deeply compassionate.

• Normal People, adapted from Sally Rooney
  Quiet, intimate, almost painfully faithful to the emotional interiority of the novel. It proved that subtlety can translate to screen if handled with care.

• The Handmaid's Tale, from Margaret Atwood
  Expansive rather than literal, yet true to the spirit of the text. It demonstrated how adaptation can extend a world without betraying it.

And then, inevitably, there are the others.

adaptations that missed something essential

• The Goldfinch, adapted from Donna Tartt
  Visually handsome, but somehow hollow. The density and psychological immersion of the novel resisted compression.

• Eragon, based on the novel by Christopher Paolini
  A reminder that world-building needs patience. When mythology is rushed, it feels weightless.

• The Dark Tower, from Stephen King
  A sprawling, genre-bending series reduced to something far more conventional.

And yet we keep hoping.

coming soon: adaptations to watch

• A television adaptation of the Boys of Tommen series by Chloe Walsh, already stirring fervent online anticipation.

• A new screen version of Wuthering Heights, proof that some stories refuse to rest.

• Continued expansion of literary thrillers into streaming territory, following the success of series like Slow Horses.

What makes an adaptation succeed is not strict fidelity. It is emotional intelligence. It is understanding what the book was really about beneath the plot mechanics.

A novel lives in interiority. It breathes through thought. Screen storytelling demands exterior expression. The challenge lies in translating silence into gesture, subtext into framing.

When it works, it sends us back to the page with renewed hunger. We reread with actors’ voices in our heads. We notice details we had forgotten. The story becomes layered, not diluted.

When it fails, we retreat to the book like it is something private and slightly wounded.

Perhaps that is why adaptations matter so much to readers. They test whether a story can survive transformation. They reveal what is essential and what is ornamental.

And sometimes, in the alchemy between page and screen, they create something that feels not like a copy, but like a conversation.

Which adaptations have you loved? And which have you quietly decided to pretend never happened?