If you’ve fallen behind on your 2024 reading goals, don’t fret. We’ve got a solution—albeit an unconventional one: Stream your reads!
But before you roll your eyes, hear us out. Watching a visual adaptation can be just the thing to get your brain in the mood for books. Familiarizing yourself (and, perhaps, falling in love) with the story is a great way to decide if a book is for you. Plus, it’ll help you decrease your DNF rate and choose titles you already know you’ll enjoy!
To help you get back in the reading mood, we’ve compiled a few upcoming adaptations to explore. From historical fiction to speculative YA, we’ve got you covered. And, before you set your sights on a title, check out our eNotes summaries for a handy overview. Be warned: We can’t promise they’re spoiler-free!
Our top five recent and upcoming book-to-stream adaptations, just for you:
All the Light We Cannot See
Release date: November 2, 2023
Where to stream: Netflix
This four-episode, limited series adapts Anthony Doerr’s much-acclaimed 2014 novel of the same name. Now, ten years later, Netflix has brought the Pulitzer Prize-winning tale to the silver screen (or, more accurately, to laptops and other streaming devices near you).
Just as the novel, the series follows the lives of Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind Frenchwoman active in the French Resistance, and Werner Pfennig, a bright German orphan turned unwilling Nazi soldier, as they unexpectedly intertwine during the Nazi invasion of Paris in August of 1944.
Situated amid the chaos of war and the horror of invasion, Doerr’s original novel and its adaption touch on sensitive, deeply human themes. Yet, viewers (and lovers of the original novel) should beware. The series does not, perhaps, share the novel’s true complexity. In the scathing end to a November 2023 review for Variety, Alison Herman argues: “In its current form, “All the Light We Cannot See” calls on viewers to acknowledge the complex humanity of others while failing to depict much itself.”
But reviews are mixed, so perhaps it may be better to decide for yourself—and then let us know what you think in the comments below!
The Peasants
Release date: January 26, 2024
Where to stream: Not yet available for streaming…but could be at a theater near you!
Published in four parts between 1905 and 1909, The Peasant offers a heartfelt, if desolate, vignette of rural life in Poland at the turn of the century. Its author, Władysław Rejment, grew up in a small Polish village much like that in the story. As such, his insight into the desperate lives of its inhabitants bears the raw marks of lived experience.
Filmmakers DK Welchman and Hugh Welchman brought the emotional richness of Rejment’s portrait of rural life to audiences with an equally vivid filmmaking style. Their digital animation techniques grant each frame a painterly quality, as if rendered in oil. Like the novel, the film unfolds in four parts, detailing Jagna Paczesiówna‘s tumultuous life across a year of quiet sorrows and infrequent but always charged joy.
As Wendy Ide of The Observer commented: “[The Peasants is] a disconcertingly beautiful picture about the ugliness of humanity.” That the film preserves the cutting juxtaposition of nostalgia and bucolic melancholy is telling, proving that Rejment’s century-old homage to the scenes of his youth not only lives on in the film but continues to entice.
Shōgun
Release Date: February 27, 2024
Where to stream: Hulu and FX
44 years after its Golden Globe-winning adaptation, James Clavell’s 1975 Shōgun returns to screens. The limited series follows a shipwrecked Englishman, a cunning daimyo with political machinations, and a female samurai with a complex past as they collide and intertwine in a series of high-stakes—but historically accurate—events.
Set in feudal Japan, Shōgun considers the essential question of power, asking who holds it and what it costs. In the context of John Blackthorne and Lord Toranaga’s struggle, these questions are no longer philosophical. Instead, they are vivid, real-world examples of the lengths people will go in the pursuit of greatness.
Framed against the global context of the early seventeenth century, Clavell’s novel is a portrait of clashing values, novel interactions, and complex cultural and political dynamics. But will Hulu’s adaptation faithfully preserve the threads of colonial commentary of Clavell’s original? That remains to be seen.
The Sympathizer
Release Date: April 14, 2024
Where to stream: HBO Max
Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning literary debut marries the bleak historical backdrop of the waning days of the Vietnam War with Nguyen’s characteristic black humor. Directed by Park Chan-wook and produced by A24, the upcoming adaptation should reproduce this intersection with ease.
The Sympathizer lingers in the ambiguity of identity, following an unnamed narrator through his espionage efforts for North Vietnam. Publicly, he is a high-profile leader in the South Vietnamese army. Privately, he’s a card-carrying member of the Vietnamese resistance movement. The novel follows the narrator through a series of increasingly difficult and ultimately deeply traumatizing decisions, all of which lead him to question his values, his allegiance, and the person his actions have allowed him to become.
With the creative backing of Park, A24, and Nguyen all funneled into the mini-series, it’s unlikely that the upcoming adaptation will be anything short of a resounding success. Plus, it’s hard to go wrong with Robert Downey Jr. in absurd wigs and even more ridiculous costumes. But who knows? For now, we’re on the edge of our seats, impatient for April 14th.
They Both Die at the End
Release Date: Sometime in 2024
Where to stream: Netflix
Carpe diem is an excellent motto—until it’s literally your last day on Earth and you’re painfully, painfully aware of it. That’s the premise of Adam Silvera’s third novel, the 2017 sensation They Both Die at the End. The novel swirls through a series of existential musings, wondering what it must be like to each day as if it’s your last—when it actually is. Silvera traces this question through the interconnected stories of two strangers-turned-lovers, Mateo and Rufus, who have each been notified by Death-Cast that they will die within twenty-four hours.
Much like Silvera’s two previous works, They Both Die at the End became an instant sensation, quickly gaining cult status among popular Booktokers and YA fans alike. And, eventually, that virality paid off when Netflix acquired the novel in early 2023. While the show is currently in development, it is slated to release sometime this year. It’s too bad the showrunners don’t have Death-Cast’s insight—fans of Mateo and Rufus will just have to wait patiently for their day of reckoning to be announced.
Looking for more book-to-screen adaptations? Check out the top five adaptations of 2018 or peruse ten of our favorite Oscar-nominated adaptations to settle the age-old question: Which was better, the book or the movie?