The Year in Adaptation - NYTimes.com Cinematic book adaptations dominated 2012, with "Life of Pi," "Silver Linings Playbook" and "Anna Karenina" springing from novels, and "Lincoln" and "Argo" drawing their stories from the nonfiction shelves. There was plenty of bookish inspiration in 2013, but the results elicited less enthusiasm. Martin Scorsese's Oscar contender, "The Wolf of Wall Street," was adapted from a memoir by Jordan Belfort. The book begins: "You're lower than pond scum." The movie's leading man, Leonardo DiCaprio, also played the most famous literary character brought to the screen in 2013: Jay Gatsby. In The New Republic, David Thomson wrote his review in the form of a letter from Jay himself, who judged: "It's stupefying, it's vulgar, it's demeaning." Salman Rushdie's novel "Midnight's Children," long considered too complex for adaptation, finally moved on screen, to mixed reviews. The Boston Globe called it "an indigestible stew." "Labor Day," a romance adapted from the novel by Joyce Maynard about a sad single mother (Kate Winslet) romanced by an escaped convict (Josh Brolin), was released late in 2013. The A. V. Club said the movie "suggests the experience of being pelted with a thousand supermarket paperbacks at once." Will 2014 fare better with the tricky art of conversion? The directors of "Gone Girl" (from Gillian Flynn's suspense novel) and "The Fault in Our Stars" (John Green's love story involving a teenage girl with cancer) are bravely approaching large, loyal readerships. But Akiva Goldsman, who directed "Winter's Tale," adapted from Mark Helprin's 1983 novel, arguably took on the toughest task. Goldsman might sympathize with Benjamin DeMott, who wrote about the novel in the Book Review: "I find myself nervous, to a degree I don't recall in my past as a reviewer, about failing the work, inadequately displaying its brilliance." I've recently become slightly gendered in my theories about plot. I think that men really like to build a book like a machine, you know? The lever you pull that makes the cogs go round and then the balls drop. I don't do it that way." - Anne Enright, in an interview with The Believer Mallon Joins the Roster Thomas Mallon officially joins our list of Bookends contributors with his answer to a question about "negative influences." Fans of Donald Barthelme, beware. Mallon's eight novels, most of them deeply rooted in historical fact, include "Henry and Clara," "Bandbox," "Fellow Travelers" and "Watergate," a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. His nonfiction includes books about plagiarism ("Stolen Words"), diaries ("A Book of One's Own"), letters ("Yours Ever") and the Kennedy assassination ("Mrs. Paine's Garage"), as well as two books of essays ("Rockets and Rodeos" and "In Fact").