The thing about House of Leaves is that it's impossible to even adapt it into an audiobook. You HAVE to physically read it and jumble it back and forth as you jump from various sections of the book to solve the insanity presented in the footnotes. Read it for the first time this year and absolutely love it.

I would kill for an animated Dark Tower. As to the -last entry. Just conceptually, I could see a set changing as the elements of what he's actually living in is revealed. You start out with a white tower that looks like a tower and as the elements are revealed, the visual shifts. That sounds to me more like something that would work better in animation too. But it's an interesting concept anyway.

Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov - the book is structured as a delusional self-obsessed editor providing line-by-line commentary on the final unfinished poem by a famous poet, but he’s convinced that the poem was actually written about his own (possibly imagined) backstory. The reading experience involves constantly flipping back and forth between the poem and the commentary and cross-referencing the various footnotes, and would be absolutely impossible to recreate in any other medium

Mark Lawrence’s Library Trilogy, for similar reasons to Book Of The New Sun - there are certain major twists that would be impossible to conceal in any visual medium.

I would nominate "The Wild" by Whitley Strieber. It is a werewolf book, but not the kind you are used to. The protagonist doesn't get bitten by an animal and change into a two-legged furred "wolf man" every month on the night of the full moon. He changes into an actual wolf, and the change is permanent. The reason I believe this is unadaptable is not the special effects, but rather how to show that this wolf has human intelligence without seeming to be a ridiculous variant of "The Shaggy Dog" films.

The first two books that came to my head somehow weren’t mentioned, Blood Meridian and Gump and Co. are like prime examples of unadaptable books.

I saw the title, and was immediately like, "If House of Leaves isn't on here....."

The only medium I could possibly see House of Leaves being adapted into properly would be video games. Tons of survival horror titles like Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Clock Tower, etc. deal with puzzle solving and backtracking, so I could maybe see it working there. Maybe

I am so glad that you picked "The Book of the New Sun".  I love this series.  It's so true about it being unadaptable. One of my favorites of all time.

They used to say The Lord of the Rings was unadaptable.

Dhalgren by Samuel Delany...utterly a book that is beyond adaptation.

I definitely want an animated Dark Tower series. I remember they actually made a film with Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. I was good, but not great, but my dad said it was all the books put into a 90 minute film. So u could definitely see it as an animated series

They already tried to adapt the "The Dark Tower" first book into a movie, it starred Idris Elba as the Gunslinger. And I totally agree with you about it being animated. Look at the Simpsons, 30+ years and they haven't aged.

House of Leaves was actually tried to be adapted back in 2017 with the author's involvement for a TV Series, it didn't go through but you can actually see some screenplays online. It did not copy the book in the sense that you are reading someone else's writing, but adapted the medium: in the show, the issue was about video tapes and actual films. I found it pretty fitting overall.

I heard that Mike Flanagan (who is a huge Dark Tower fan) wants to make a Dark Tower tv series where each season covers each book. He also mentioned that there is one specific scene from one of the books that he knows exactly how he would film and is excited to film it if given the chance.
Edit: I did not watch your full explanation to Dark Tower when I wrote this. So I did not know that you already knew this.

"Lord Foul's Bane" & "Nine Princes in Amber" are both unadaptable.  I'd love to see an animated version of Zelazney's Amber Chronicles.       tavi.

Truth be told, there are no bad adaptations--for writer's at least. If a movie is great, people buy the source material in droves; if it sucks, fans complain about how much better the book is and therefore recommend it to a new audience.

The "Jake" problem in "The Dark Tower,".... I have thought of this. They COULD just have him played by a different kid actor and go the route of putting 1 easily identifiable feature (a birthmark on his face, a scar....) that each iteration will have. Them go with either not even mentioning it, just to "King" it up or make some explanation of why. Wouldn't work 100%, but Kings works usually.needna little tweaking to be adapted anyway.

Another one to consider is "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn. It's the story of a town where there is a plaque saying 'The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'. Yep, every letter of the alphabet. But then somebody notices that one of the letters has fallen off, so from then on that letter is never used in the book. And then there's another letter fallen off. And then....... So as the book progresses it uses less and less of the alphabet. And with that in mind you might like to think about the title of the book.

Zelazny's "Amber Chronicles". Much of the impact of the series comes from the surrealism and grand vistas, neither of which would work at all on screen.

Brunner's "Stand on Zanzibar" - Mostly told in snippets of news articles and reports, it was difficult to follow on paper; it would be incoherent on screen

The passenger, Stella Maris, and blood meridian