The Ultimate Movie List for Book Lovers

Even the most voracious readers need a break from the books sometimes, but just because you aren’t reading doesn’t mean you have to stop thinking about your next great story altogether. Movies can provide the bookish escape you seek in your pages. Here are 14 movies with central themes of reading, writing, and libraries that any bibliophile will enjoy!

Jane Austen Book Club

A group of six unsuspecting friends come together to create a book club who exclusively reads novels by Jane Austen. As they make their way through Austen’s anthology, they find each of their lives are curiously parallel to their favorite stories.

You’ve Got Mail

Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) and Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) are sworn enemies. Kathleen owns a mom-and-pop bookstore in New York City that is struggling to make rent while Joe opens his big-box bookstore chain across the street. When the two unknowingly become chatroom pen pals, they must slowly come to terms with their complicated feelings for one another on and offline.

Notting Hill

William Thacker (Hugh Grant) is a London bookstore owner living a boring existence when A-List American actress Anna Scott (Julia Roberts) visits his shop. As a romantic connection blooms between the two, they must navigate the complications of love between two very different lives.

The Words

When a little-talent aspiring writer (Bradley Coopers) finds an old manuscript by chance, he decided to pass it off as his own work until the actual author reveals himself and threatens to expose him.

Stuck in Love

Samantha (Lily Collins) and Rusty (Nat Wolff) are competitive siblings who both dream of being successful writers like their father, William Borgens (Greg Kinnear), who encourages their artistic abilities. Meanwhile, William, Samantha, and Rusty are each exploring the complicated paths of new loves and dating. Stuck in Love is both serious and insanely clever. It weaves romantic themes with a deep appreciation of the literary world — and features a fun cameo from Stephen King!

Austenland

Jane Hayes (Keri Russell) is obsessed with all things Jane Austen. After an unlucky love streak, Jane scrounges up her savings and spends it on a trip to Austenland, an Austen-themed immersive resort where she can live the lives of her favorite literary heroines. While there she creates colorful friendships and rivals out of the other guests and paid actors of the resorts. Jane hopes to find love, but must first separate fact from fiction.

Freedom Writers

Erin Gruwell (Hillary Swank) is an English teacher who takes a job at a racially divided school in Los Angeles with a reputation for unmotivated students. Gruwell takes a creative approach to teaching and assigns each student a journal to keep throughout the school year. What starts as an annoying assignment for the students blossoms into a space for expression and emotion in their high-pressure lives. Based on Gruwell’s real-life experience at the high school, it reveals that sometimes what we really need is someone who will listen.

Stranger Than Fiction

An eccentric IRS auditor (Will Ferrell) hears a narrator in his head and quickly realizes he is living out the life of the newest protagonist of author Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson). As he aims to understand the plot of his own existence, he challenges fate and sets out to convince Eiffel to change her ending.

Book Club

Four best friends come together each month for their decades-long book club meeting. When they select the spicy romance Fifty Shades of Grey as their next read, they are taken by surprise when the book brings about new revelations for each of them. As they navigate their own late-in-life relationships, they hope to make their next chapter the best one yet.

Dead Poet’s Society

When English teacher John Keating (Robin Williams) joins a stuffy all-boys boarding school, he makes waves for his eccentric teaching style. While testing the patience of the parents and other faculty members, he inspires his students and encourages them to question tradition, follow their hearts, and live fully.

Beauty and the Beast

Belle is an intellectual who dreams of adventure while living in a small-minded village. When fate makes her a prisoner to an unkind beast, she accepts her fate but won’t give up her spirit. As the beast and Belle get to know one another, their coldness thaws, and a friendship blooms. The story is set to a beautiful castle backdrop and, to Belle’s excitement, a fully-stocked library.

The Shawshank Redemption

Banker Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) is wrongly convicted of murder and sentenced to two life sentences at Shawshank State Prison. While there, Andy is assigned to work in the prison’s library while he secretly provides the guards of the prison with financial advice in exchange for protection. Andy also works to improve conditions at the prison and regularly writes to the state legislature for funding for the library. The Shawshank Redemption is a story about what happens when you allow yourself to hope.

The Breakfast Club

When five high schoolers from very different social groups find themselves sharing Saturday detention under the watch of their strict but oblivious principal, they’re sure they’ll never get along. As the hours pass in their school’s enormous library, they each share their own story and realize they may not be as different as they once believed.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

Under German occupation during World War II, a secret book club is formed on the island of Guernsey. A year after the war has ended, the book club is still meeting and invites the writer of their latest read to come for a visit. When she arrives, she is charmed by the resilience and heart that beats through the club.