We've all read books we can picture being made into movies, but have you ever watched a movie you liked so much you wished it were a book?
For those who have, here is a brief list of popular small- and big-screen gems that could have been based on (or at least inspired by) certain written works:

The Knick - The new Cinemax series featuring Clive Owen as the early twentieth-century Dr. Thackery has been a hit among viewers enthralled by all things medical. What's not enthralling about a woman who loses her nose to syphilis, gets a skin graft from her arm to cover the gaping hole in her face, and is forced to recuperate with said arm in a permanently lifted position until the graft takes? If you, too, are a fan of such case studies, Dr. Mütter's Marvels is for you. Documenting the life, times, and medical cases tackled by the legendary Dr. Mütter in the early 1800s, the biography offers plenty of its own grisly tales of pre-anesthesia days gone by. Don't read it over breakfast!

The Conjuring - The breakout horror hit of 2013 was such a success it's already spawned a prequel. For those readers who wish the film's screenplay was based on a book (rather than a taped interview between paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren and the real Carolyn Perron, whom Lili Taylor portrayed in the film), Help for the Haunted by John Searles is eerily similar, right down to the freaky doll.

Downton Abbey - If you're one of the many who can't get enough Downton Abbey, you can fill your time until the new season starts (January 4 at 9 p.m.on PBS!) with Below Stairs, a description of what life was like for the servants during those Downton days of wine and roses (or ale and daffodils, as the case may be). Fiction lovers might prefer The Shooting Party, whose Upstairs/Downstairs intrigue bears a striking resemblance to the show (which may be why creator Julian Fellowes was influenced by it, and why its film adaptation also inspired him to write the screenplay for the similarly plotted Gosford Park). 

Gravity - Girl power stole the show when Sandra Bullock finagled her way through one outer space disaster after another, but was the show stolen from a novel? Though author Tess Gerritsen at first said that her book, which also features a female protagonist stranded in space following a disaster that kills her colleagues, had nothing in common with the movie except for its title, this year she decided to pursue legal action, saying that the film shares too many similarities with her 1999 novel (and it sure sounds like it does). In any event - it's obviously a readalike.

Mad Men - What's the TV audience to do without their weekly dose of Don Draper? They could read Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, a 1961 novel that so captures the disillusionment and desperation of a suburban couple in the mid-fifties that you'll  no longer wonder why those advertising fellows in the TV show drink and smoke so much.

Captain Phillips - Okay, this movie was based on a book, yes - Phillips' own first-person account of his capture by Somali pirates. But fiction lovers (especially teens) may prefer Hostage Three, by Nick Lake, a YA take on the whole Somali-pirates-terrorizing-innocent-sailors theme.

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