I read.......at lot!! Several books a week and often those from a series by an author I like that focuses on a specific character. As these are typically rather popular books, oftentimes a movie is made based on one or more of the books that I sometimes feel compelled to see, just because I enjoyed the books so much.

I usually enjoy the movie version but not as much as the book and it is never the same. I think the primary reason is that the books tend to be very character driven and I develop a picture of that character in my head while reading.......and that character becomes very real to me. And that picture is never the same as the picture the casting director has :-) That is usually the primary reason I don't react to the movie in the same way as I enjoy the book - bad casting - but there is also a need to condense the storyline to get it to fit into a 2 hour or less movie that sometimes compromises the story.

One example that comes to mind is the movie 'Reacher' based on the Lee Child series about the protagonist Jack Reacher, an ex-military tough guy do-gooder. While they did a not too bad job of the storyline, they cast Tom Cruise as Jack Reacher and they couldn't have been further away from how his character was described and developed in the books!! He was just wrong!! Same with a dramatization of one of the Louise Penny novels - the characters onscreen just didn't match well with how I perceived them from the books. And that affects my appreciation of the movie.

This is not always the case........the made for TV Jesse Stone movies starring Tom Selleck worked just fine for me :-) And the old Spenser For Hire TV series was perfectly cast and every time I read or reread a Spenser novel, it is those characters I see in my head :-)

And I can honestly say I have enjoyed most of the movies made from Stephen King novels just as much as the books, sometimes even more. Stephen King novels can sometimes be very cumbersome.

gardengal, did you watch the 11.22.63 miniseries of Steven King's novel? I loved the book, but couldn't stay focused on the miniseries.

Oh it's a mixed bag.

We recently read and watched Light Between the Oceans and thought the movie was true to the book.

I also recently read and watched A Man Called Ove and I found I liked the movie better.

I watched Secret Life of Bees and found I enjoyed it as much as the book which I'd read quite awhile ago.

We read and watched Girl on a Train and I think I would've enjoyed the movie more had I not read the book and known what was coming.

I've been a long-time fan of Stephanie Plum novels and they did make a movie of the first one...what a miss!

I won't see My Sister's Keeper as everyone said the movie was such a disappointment as they changed the ending, and I so loved the book.

So it all depends.

Annie, I have A Man Called Ove movie queued up based on your recommendation on the reading thread. I loved the book!

"the books tend to be very character driven and I develop a picture of that character in my head while reading.......and that character becomes very real to me. And that picture is never the same as the picture the casting director has :-)"

Gardengal, that's how I feel too. I also tend to read a lot of series novels and I refuse to see movies or television versions of ones that are still being written and published because I don't want the picture I have of the character replaced by the one the director cast!

Thus I've not yet seen any of Game of Thrones (although I'm increasingly skeptical George RR Martin will ever finish that planned series), or Longmire which is supposed to be quite good--but I already know how Walt Longmire looks thankyouverymuch ;).

No, I haven't seen that Stephen King series nor have I read that book. But 'Carrie', 'Salem's Lot', 'The Shining' and 'The Stand' were all pretty good and I enjoyed them. Even 'Pet Semetary', although that creeped me out! I have yet to see 'It' but that's because I found that book very disturbing - I really dislike clowns in any form - and have not yet gathered up the courage to watch it :-)

I also read 'A Dog's Purpose' long before the movie and loved it........the movie fell far short.

I wasn't even aware there was a book series on Longmire!! But I love the series!! Just got done watching it all on Netflix :-) But I would feel the same as you with regards to any of the Joe Pickett novels by C.J. Box - I know what he looks like, thank you very much!

I wish they would let me cast these things.......I'd do a much better job :-) LOL!

I won’t read the book if I’ve seen the movie first because there are usually so many changes between them I figure it will be disappointing in some way. I will see a movie after reading the book, but I don’t see many movies so I don’t have any examples off the top of my head. I vaguely recall a movie that made so much more sense to me, since I read the book, than to my husband. Hmmmm, what was it...

I couldn’t get through the first GOT book and I don’t watch the show. I liked both the book and the Ove movie. I read Tom Hanks is making an American version. I like Hanks but I don’t know that I’d see an Americanized version of the movie. I think I’ve reached my fill of curmudgeons.

I did not read the Longmire books but love the series. I think they did a very good job of choosing actors who all have strong characters. I love Longmire and Lou Diamond Phillips, who plays Henry, has always been a favourite. Maybe you could just pretend they have had cosmetic surgery. :-). Or is that sacrosanct?

I generally find that I enjoy movies for their movie-ness. In other words it's a different art form; it's more an interpretive one to me. Books are more internal to me . They evoke different emotions.

I guess movies and books seem to be stored in different places for me. Ne're the twain shall meet. But then I've always been like that and probably always will. It's obviously different for many of you. That's okay I enjoy our differences. :-)

I am usually at lease mildly disappointed in the movie but sometimes pleasantly surprised. I agree with you on Seabiscuit. I als agree with Secret Life of Bees. So wonderful.

I was actually mostly pleased with Wild, but the book was obviously better. And the movie brought her mother’s character more to the forefront, but then Laura Dern did such a superb job I couldn’t be too critical.

I want to watch Glass Castle but am afraid I will be disappointed. The Girl on the Train is another I haven’t seen because they changed the location. I just can’t imagine it being set in another place. Maybe I’m wrong. I didn’t care for the book Gone Girl, so wasn’t impressed with the movie either and it took me a while to even watch it. Girl with the Dragon Tattoo had every bit of the suspense of the book and was well-acted, at least the Lisabeth Sander character was for me.

It's been a long time since I read Glass Castle that I probably wouldn't recognize specifics that could fail in the movie version. I'll likely watch it on-line. I surprised myself at how much I liked the Dragon books, but have not seen the movie.

Generally, I prefer books. If I see a movie, I prefer that it be an original screenplay rather than an adaptation of a book. That way, there's no comparison to be made.

I generally find that Tom Clancy's books and the movies made from them, well, the movies are really good. They avoid the enormous amount of researched detail that Clancy includes and get to the story. On the other hand, I felt Gone with the Wind fell short of the novel. There's so much more to the story! Same with Les Mis, but the book also includes looooooooong passages that, honestly, I didn't need. Descriptions of battles? Priesthood in Switzerland? The Paris sewer system? TMI. But, the movies haven't thrilled me that much, either. The musical is fine, but still misses a lot of information.

Of the Harry Potter series, the books, movies, and audiobooks all strike the right chord with me!

I usually think the books are better. I wait a while before I watch a movie if I've read the book. Then my memory of the details fades a bit and I'm not as disappointed in the movie. One that I'm thinking might be better in movie form vs. book is Hidden Figures. I got kind of lost in all the aeronautical terms in the book which I'm sure are not as prevalent in the movie.

I forgot about the Harry Potter books/movies. Loved the books and thought the movies were very well done as well.

And I think I saw the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo before I read the book (somewhat fuzzy recollection) but I know I was prompted to read the entire trilogy. And I loved that movie - the casting was perfect!!

Yeo, you put in a spoiler!! Now I have to forget a name associated with a Longmire character on the tv version :)

It's rarely that movie is as good as a book but sometimes good adaptations happen-and I tend to remember them all since happens not often

For example "Girl With a Dragon Tatoo" i liked more as a movie..the non-American version. But I started with a movie, that probably influences things.

"The Joy Luck Club" managed to be a great adaptation of the book-and I actually read the book several yeas before watching the movie

Mini series of "Pride and Predjudice" are nice adaptation while the movie with Keira Knightly was something I kinda dismissed because to me that wasn't a good adaptation at all. Still, I prefer the book of course.

The former Soviet Union movies based on "Sherlock Holmes" are considered the best in all the adaptations of Sherlck Holmes ever made, and won the prize as such-and I totally agree. Of course they filmed just several stories but did it very well.

"Alias Grace" did a very fine job; but let me tell you the book is finer...reading it now.

Now some books are probably too much of a challenge to ever be interpreted on the screen..I haven't seen one good "Wuthering Heights"..and I really tried.

I haven't seen a "Lolita" that comes even close to the book itself. I don't think one can adapt Nabokov successfully. Too many things will go missing. His language is too good and too elusive for that.

No Dostoevsky or Tolstoy either,,of course I didn't watch all of these..but whatever I started I just turned off. Very fast.

As I was totally obsessed with "Les Miserables" since age 8 (to the point I tried to steal a little bun from a bakery-and succedeed-but that was my first and last attempt of stealing lol..more than I can handle..it was a tiny 3 kopeiks bun but nevertheless)-I tried to watch as many adaptations as possible. Some I enjoyed; but no they don't measure to the book. I couldn't appreciate long passages about monasteries, sewer, Parisian jargon, the battle of Waterloo etc when I was a little girl..but now I find these much more interesting. As it was when I read Fowles "The Magus"..at twenty I was so much into story..and the stories within the story I went through too quick..wars and all.. But now I understand these are actually the best ones there..or maybe they are to me now, since I became older.

Generally I think the more complex and well written the book is the harder it will be to translate it

I do look forward to adaptations that don't exist yet, or exist but I haven't seen them yet like Löwensköld trilogy by Selma Lagerlöf'..I think there can be a huge potential of making a great movie out of it..

Steven King is an example of an author whose books can be translated very well into visuals.

PS remembered one more adatation that was good .."The Name of the Rose". They cut a lot out of it obviously..still, a good movie

april - I saw Lolita with my parents at age 12. I thought it was so-so at the time. Later, when I read the book, I thought what were my parents thinking taking a 12 year old to see it? Now I realize they probably had no idea what the book was about let alone the movie.

Sorry runninginplace. I didn't know that was a spoiler. Hopefully you'll forget and forgive :-)

I was going to mention the HP books and films-both were great and I loved the casting for the characters in the movie.

I really dislike seeing a movie after I've read the book-it just seems to ruin it for me. I get a character in my mind and I am a stickler for details that the movie often misses due to the fact it's a movie and can't go into the depth that the novel will do. But I do like to read the books after I've seen the movie. Sometimes it helps me form a different idea of the character.

One that I thought was a horrible adaptation was The Bone Collector. The novel is fantastic, lots of twists and plot turns but that movie-ugh, it was horrific! I'm not a fan of Stephen King films, but I do think Carrie was well done. The Shining was pretty good too. I've not seen the new It movie-I saw the made for TV one, with the actor who played John-boy Walton in the lead...awful adaptation.

I think GWTW was a great movie-the novel was sooo long and so hard to get through, the movie made much more sense.

One that stands out to me is The Shining. The movie was so much better. I still get scared to death when watching that movie. Kubrick is a genius.

The Shining book really scared me. I still cannot be in a bathroom with a shower curtain pulled across a tub and I read it in 1981. The movie, to me, was not as scary but even better than the book.

aktillery, have you seen the documentary Room 237? It’s about Kubrick making the movie and the theories on the subtexts, etc. It’s interesting if you enjoyed he movie.

It's a mixed bag for me. Sometimes the movie is only loosely based on the books. One movie I thought was hideous was "Adaptation" since the movie was actually about a person trying to adapt the book "The Orchid Thief" into a movie and the whole thing was a pile of dreck if you ask me. I didn't love the book, it was OK, but the movie idea was way overdone. I think that book was best left as a book and it was pretty clear that the person who was trying to write a screenplay came to the same conclusion.

I could never make it through the Harry Potter books but I love the movies just for the great British actors' cameos.