I am a huge fan of horror, both movies and books, and so is my dad. Well, at least the movie part for him. One of the things that I enjoy doing with my dad is going to see new horror movies when they come out in theaters. An extra special occurrence happens when the movie is based off of a book: we will both read the book before going to see the movie, and afterword, we not only talk about what we enjoyed about the movie, but discuss how it compared to the book. This is also my sneaky way of getting my dad to read more, since he has never been an avid reader. I think this sort of thing could work well at a library too. There are a lot of good horror movies that have been coming to theaters in the last decade or so, and a good chunk of those are based off of books.
If I were in charge of promoting the horror collection at a library, I would start with a special display featuring some of the horror movies that have come out recently that are based on books, and have both the copies of the dvds and the books next to each other to encourage people to pick a pair. Some examples include:
It by Stephen King
Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (a new hit TV show on Netflix)
I Am Legend by Richard Matheson
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill
The Ritual by Adam Nevill
Bird Box by Josh Malerman (a new Netflix movie)
If there is the space available, this display has the potential to be quite extensive. Here is a list I found on GoodReads of 142 horror books that have been turned into a film at some point:
GoodReads List: Horror Films Based on Books
Depending on the success and interest of this display, I think it would be pretty neat to have a horror themed program/book club devoted to this experience. Schedule an evening to view a particular horror movie at the library and encourage people to read the book beforehand so that an open discussion can be had afterword to talk about how the book compares to the movie.
Hi Zach. When a new book based movie is released based on a book, we almost always see an increase in circulations of the title. In fact we've learned it's a good idea to have extra copies on hand. Your proposal would be a good means to boost circulations when the DVD is added to the library collection. While you specifically focus on horror your proposal would work with any genre. Nice post.
ReplyDeleteKelley used a similar idea with Romance novels and called it "Double Date" and I think this is a great theme for all genres. It could even be a rotating collection with summer being action adventure, October and horror (of course) and February and romance!
DeleteExcellent idea! There are soo many pairings you could do (the list is always growing!). Full points!
ReplyDelete