What? No Grendel?
I've only encountered a quarter of these villains but Oliver Twist is pretty high on my to-read list. High School left a bad taste for Dickens in my mouth after we had to over-analyze Great Expectations, although I do recall Miss Havisham being a Royal Bitch.
His Dark Materials was a tour de force though, wasn't it? Philosophy, action, fantasy... You're damn right about the books being better than the movie - what a disaster. I dragged my wife to that, telling her how great the books had been. After she said, "what the hell just happened?" and I could just shake my head and say, "I don't know. I really don't know."
Did they ever make a sequel? I never bothered to check.
VC Andrews is kind of underrated. As a connoisseur of fucked-up families, you can always trust her to share the five-star monsters.
No, no Grendel. Beowulf has passed me by in life strangely. The only encounter I've had with him is that Star Trek Voyager episode where Harry's playing the Beowulf game.
I was soooo disappointed with The Golden Compass - just the fact they changed the name from Northern Lights got up my nose. I think it would look great as a dark animation like ... um ... have you seen the animated version of Dante's Inferno? Or maybe some of the Animatrix cartoons. And no they never made The Subtle Knife.
I've read tons of Andrews' books. They were very "in" when I started high school. I really enjoyed My Sweet Audrina and just found out that they made a movie of that one to.
Thanks for your input as always @winstonalden