Sunday Salon... Let's go to the Movies (and those books they're made from)

Welcome to The Sunday Salon! It's the place where Book Bloggers from around the world share their bookish finds with one another in a virtual place called The Sunday Salon. Thank you to for Deb at ReaderBuzz keeping us all together on Sundays and hosting The Sunday Salon now! I also visited with Kim at The Caffeinated Reader, another Sunday gathering place for us bookish people called The Sunday Post!

It's been a fun reading and "watching" week! Every year around this time, when the Oscar nominations are released, I like to watch the Best Picture nominations. I usually like to read the book before I see the movie adaptation, but too many for me to do that this year, as I haven't read any of the nominees yet. And I also like to read the book first because of what gets changed in the movie, which sometimes really changes the "meaning" of the book. Have you read/seen any of the Best Picture nominees?

Some of my past books before movies are Jurassic Park (they changed the ending), The Reader ( they really changed the ending), Memoirs of a Geisha (book so much better) and All the Harry Potter Books (great books, great movie adaptations)...

Here are this years Oscar nominations for Best Pictures 2026 that are adapted from books...

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley... The story of the madman and his all too human monster! OMG, the movie by Guillermo del Toro is amazing. BUT, it is a bit different then I remember... the last Frankenstein movie. And gosh, I just realized I have never read the actual novel. So, which version is more accurate? AND, did you know that there are 2 versions of the original novel? Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein as kind of a challenge... part of the ghost story contest proposed by Lord Byron. Mary was 19 at the time in 1816 when she wrote Frankenstein, but in 1831 she edited the story to make it a better more polished story and removing some questionable parts. 

But Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein takes some liberties in the story, but I really loved it. Omg, cinematically it is beautiful. My only slight disappointment in the del Toro movie is the look of the monster. Frankenstein just doesn't give me the fright I wanted. But from all the Oscar Best Picture nominees, this is the one I would give the Oscar to. (and I saw all but Hamnet... that will be this weekend.)

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One Battle After Another, based on Vineland by Thomas Pynchon... On California's fog-hung North Coast, the enchanted redwood groves of Vineland County harbor a wild assortment of Sixties survivors and refugees from the "Nixonian Reaction," still struggling with the consequences of their past lives. Aging hippie freak Zoyd Wheeler is revving up for his annual act of televised insanity when news reaches him that his old nemesis, sinister Federal agent Brock Vond, has come storming into Vineland at the head of a heavily armed Justice Department strike force. Zoyd instantly disappears underground, but not before dispatching his teenage daughter Prairie on a dark odyssey into her secret, unspeakable past . . . That is the book. The movie changes the story to a modern dayish 2010 with a group of imaginary radicals (Pynchon's book is suppose to be based on real people) and the consequences of their past. Really good movie... Leonardo DiCaprio is very good, but I think Sean Penn steals the show. Sean Penn was amazing playing Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw. OMG, talk about a villain you just can't kill. His acting, the way he walked, he deserves the Oscar for best supporting actor, which he is up for. 

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Train Dreams by Denis Johnson... Suffused with the history and landscapes of the American West―its otherworldly flora and fauna, its rugged loggers and bridge builders―this extraordinary novella poignantly captures the disappearance of a distinctly American way of life.

It tells the story of Robert Grainer, a day laborer in the American West at the start of the twentieth century―an ordinary man in extraordinary times. Buffeted by the loss of his family, Grainer struggles to make sense of this strange new world. As his story unfolds, we witness both his shocking personal defeats and the radical changes that transform America in his lifetime.

The movie was a beautiful movie to watch, but it was a slow and quiet movie. And I actually started to fall asleep at one point.  Based on Denis Johnson's 128 page novella published in 2012, I've read that the movie changed the story from the epic stories of the "traveling" logger to more of a movie about the sadness of Robert Grainer losing his family. I still need to read this book. The funny thing about this book-- I bought this book in 2016, just before I moved from CT to SC. It got packed and is still packed lost in the boxes still in the storage shed. Talk about a TBR pile. lol. In any case, good movie, very sad, very slow. Book is suppose to be very good. I still want to read it! My library had a copy, but it is registered as LOST! So, I will be going thru the storage boxes for this book now.

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Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell... England, 1580: The Black Death creeps across the land, an ever-present threat, infecting the healthy, the sick, the old and the young alike. The end of days is near, but life always goes on.

A young Latin tutor—penniless and bullied by a violent father—falls in love with an extraordinary, eccentric young woman. Agnes is a wild creature who walks her family’s land with a falcon on her glove and is known throughout the countryside for her unusual gifts as a healer, understanding plants and potions better than she does people. Once she settles with her husband on Henley Street in Stratford-upon-Avon, she becomes a fiercely protective mother and a steadfast, centrifugal force in the life of her young husband, whose career on the London stage is just taking off when his beloved young son succumbs to sudden fever.

This book is on my TBR list! Movie is suppose to be wonderful, book is suppose to be very good too. I'll be watching this, this weekend! 

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Two other movies I watched up for the Best Picture Oscar, but not based on books... Sinners and Bugonia. Have you seen either of these movies? I don't want to ruin it for anyone who has not seen these movies, but talk about crazy!! 

Sinners... "Trying to leave their troubled lives behind, twin brothers return to their hometown to start again, only to discover that an even greater evil is waiting to welcome them back." OMG, I had no idea what I was going to be watching when I streamed Sinners. I expected a period piece about the Deep South and the origins of Blues music... OMG, that's all I can say. Half way thru the movie something happens and turns the "period piece" into a horror movie!.... I can't decide if I really liked it or thought it was too crazy. Up to the horror part, I thought it was really good. When crazy hit the screen, I was totally dumbfounded. Then reading up on the "meaning of the film', makes me appreciate it more for what it was suppose to "say". I love horror movies, and if I just consider as a horror movie, I think it was really good. Omg, I still am ambivalent about it after having watched over a week ago...

Now for Bugonia... "Two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the high-powered CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth." I knew what I was getting into, kinda... and then the ending just shocked me. I'm still not sure if it shocked me in a good way. It kind of ruined what I thought was a great movie... not because of the movie itself, but because of (all things) the costuming. Before the ending I thought the movie was amazing and that Jesse Plemons deserved an Oscar for Best Actor. He won a BAFTA for Best Actor, but did not get nominated for an Oscar. Too bad, he really deserves it for his performance! 

Weekly Wrap up...

Memoir Monday... A Seafaring tale for all you married couples. Read about it Here! 

First Lines Friday... House Hunting never was so... deadly! Follow this link to read the first lines of this book! 

Book Review!... On Wednesday, I reviewed Road Trip by Mary Kay Andrews! My first Mary Kay Andrews book and it won't be my last. Really loved this book! Here's my review.