Film: Memoirs of a Geisha by Rob Marshall
Fiction: Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

Nitta Sayuri tells the story of her life as a Geisha. In Memoirs of a Geisha, we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. The movie captures the gorgeous textiles and brilliant pageantry of Geisha culture.

Film: A Thousand Acres by Jocelyn Moorhouse
Fiction: A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley

When an aging father retires, he passes the family farm on to his three daughters. This generous gift ignites an explosive series of events that threaten to tear the family apart forever. While you're checking out these materials, you might want to pick up a copy of King Lear, as the story is based on Shakespeare's tragedy.

Film: Jarhead by Sam Mendes
Nonfiction: Jarhead by Anthony Swofford

U.S. Marine Anthony Swofford wrote a book about his pivotal nine-month tour of duty. The boredom, frustration, fear, physical exertion, and relentless training all contributed to his sense of self, but in the end he felt capable of backing away from the total absorption of combat to live in the real world. Unfortunately, reconnection with civilian life turned out to be no easier than living in the combat zone. See if the movie delivers this inward journey during wartime as effectively as the book.

Film: All the Pretty Horses by Billy Bob Thornton
Fiction: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

John Grady Cole is a 16-year-old boy who leaves his Texas home when his grandfather dies. With his parents already split up and his mother working in theater out of town, there is no longer reason for him to stay. He and his friend Lacey Rawlins ride their horses south into Mexico; they are joined by another boy, the mysterious Jimmy Blevins, a 14-year-old sharpshooter. Although the year is 1948, the landscape--at some moments parched and unforgiving, at others verdant and gentled by rain--seems out of time, somewhere before history or after it.

Film: Apocalypse Now by Francis Ford Coppolla
Fiction: Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

The book Heart of Darkness and its movie adaption Apocalypse Now follow a military official's trip upriver to remove an insane man from power. While one story takes place in colonial Africa and another in Vietnam, they both present inward journeys that are at once revelatory and unsettling. You'll be left whispering, "The horror! The horror!"

Film: A Clockwork Orange by Stanley Kubrick
Fiction: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

Alex, a young punk in a future world, roams the streets gleefully committing cruel crimes with his gang. He is imprisoned for rape and conditioned against violence through repeated psychological treatments. Alex narrates his story using a strange, rhyming slang language that makes you feel transported out of your own culture and away from morality.

Film: A River Runs Through It by Robert Redford
Fiction: A River Runs Through It by Norman MacLean

Montana brothers who discover the joys and pains that rivers, flyfishing, love and loss bring. You'll be stunned by the beautiful imagery exhibited in both the movie and the book.

Film: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Tim Burton
Fiction: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

A poor young boy, Charlie Bucket, is rewarded by an eccentric candy-maker named Willy Wonka for having a kind heart. Oompa Loompas, anyone?

Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-do
I have a perfect puzzle for you
Oompa, Loompa, doom-pa-dee-dee
If you are wise, you'll listen to me

Film: Capote by Bennett Miller
Fiction: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

The Clutters, a respected farming family in Kansas, are murdered in their home, leaving the tiny town shaken and changed. Truman Capote captures both the community and the murderers with chilling accuracy. After reading his book, learn about Capote's eccentricities, selfishness, and brilliance in the Oscar Award-winning movie Capote.

Film: The Constant Gardener by Ferdnando Meirelles
Fiction: The Constant Gardener by John le Carré

Tessa Quayle, a beautiful young lawyer, is posted to Nairobi as the wife of British diplomat Justin Quayle. In the course of the voluntary work in which she becomes involved, she uncovers a trail of intentional malfeasance by the vast pharmaceutical multinational KVH, which is fast-tracking a new TB drug using Africans as guinea pigs. Both the book and the movie will make your heart race with suspense.

Film: Friday Night Lights by Peter Berg
Nonfiction: Friday Night Lights by H.G. Bissinger

Everything's bigger in Texas, especially football. Journalist H.G. Bissinger lived in the family rooms and locker rooms of Odessa, Texas for two years to compile his book. The obsession and pressure that surrounds football in this part of the country makes experiencing both the book and movie fascinating for an outsider.

Film: The Hours by Stephen Daldry
Fiction: The Hours by Michael Cunningham

The Hours tells the story of three women: Virginia Woolf, beginning to write Mrs. Dalloway as she recuperates in a London suburb with her husband in 1923; Clarissa Vaughan, beloved friend of an acclaimed poet dying from AIDS, who in modern-day New York is planning a party in his honor; and Laura Brown, in a 1949 Los Angeles suburb, who slowly begins to feel the constraints of a perfect family and home. By the end of the novel, these three stories intertwine in remarkable ways, and finally come together in an act of subtle and haunting grace.

Film: The Sweet Hereafter by Adam Egoyan
Fiction: The Sweet Hereafter by Russell Banks

A schoolbus accident kills a remote Alaska town's entire population of children, rendering the adults crippled by grief. A high-profile lawyer descends upon the community with promises of retribution and a class-action lawsuit. Using four different narrators, Banks and Egoyan create a small-town morality play that addresses one of life's most agonizing questions: when the worst thing happens, who do you blame?