Books to Read Before the Movies Hit Theaters

After ‘Nanny Diaries,’ more books to read before the movies hit theaters

Fall book list: What to read now before the movie versions hit theaters Like “The Nanny Diaries,” plenty of upcoming movies are based on best-sellers. To prepare yourself, here are five of the best reads:

•Into the Wild (Oct. 5): Jon Krakauer’s account of a young loner who tries to live off the land in middle-of-nowhere Alaska.

•The Kite Runner (Nov. 2): Khaled Hosseini’s troubling tale of two boys growing up under Afghanistan’s Taliban rule.

•Love in the Time of Cholera (Nov. 16): Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s romantic saga in South America.

•Atonement (Dec. 7, limited): Ian McEwan’s story of an imaginative 13-year-old whose lies ruin the lives around her.

•The Golden Compass (Dec. 7): The first in Philip Pullman’s Dark Materials trilogy about a girl who may save the world, or destroy it. For young adults (and grown-ups, too).

•Extra credit: Beowulf, I Am Legend, No Country for Old Men, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, P.S. I Love You and, for kids and young adults, The Dark Is Rising and The Water Horse.