A good many movies are made based on the success of a book. The Joey Wales thread got me to thinking about this. I like to read the book before I see the movie. To me, the books are better than the movie the majority of the time. Jaws is a good example of this. I read most all of Louis L'amour's books as a Teenager, and I don't know how many of them are movies now but there are a bunch of them. In almost every case, the book was better. So, do you prefer the books over the movies? Do you bother to read the book at all if you know there is a movie based on it? Or do you usually prefer the movie?

I like books. But then I get annoyed when the movie doesn't match up with how I imagined the story.

That's where the book seems better than the movie.

Read the book, skip the movie.

I much prefer the books.
Count of Monte Cristo is a favorite of mine but I've not seen a movie version that comes close.
Maybe they should do those mini-series instead of try to cram it all into two hour movies.

Lord of the Flies comes to mind also. I loved the book when I read it in school, but the movie absolutely sucked.

I cannot think of a movie that was better than the book but then again, I never read Lonesome Dove.

One of my favorite authors is Carl Hiassen. His books are absolutely hilarious. Only one was turned into a movie that I know of and that was Striptease. It bombed. When interviewed years later and asked why it was unsuccessful he said that experience taught him the importance of a narrator in his books. The narrator in a book has the ability to describe a scene or an action in a comical fashion. That narration can't be captured on camera.

Good point.

Books always contain more information, and are always better.

I can't read, that's why I like the pikchur shows.

I have read books after I saw the movie, such as Jaws. After seeing "Tombstone," I read everything I could get my hands on about the real Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday.
I like the movies though. I don't read as much as I used to and I enjoy action movies. I really like comic book movies like the Marvel movies.
My son bought "It" after seeing the movie the other day. Have y'all ever seen how thick that sucker is? I think it might stop a .22 LR and a Short for sure.

Like others, I can't think of an instance where I thought a movie was better than an original book. When I say an original book I am not referring to the times a popular movie is turned into a book.

If I like a book and they are making it into a movie I like to watch the movie to see if the characters, scenery, etc. are portrayed as I imagined.

BTW, believe it or not, the Book Lonesome Dove is superb. The series was great and did the book justice, but you ought to read the book to really appreciate the work.

Oh just to play devils advocate I can think of a few.

I'd say "The Godfather" movie was better than the book.

I like the movie version of "The Shining" better than the book by Stephen King. Although I have read that King hated Kubrick's adaptation of the book.

The movie "Bladerunner" is one of my favorite sci-fi movies and I think it is far superior to the book it's based on called "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep".

The Last of the Mohicans is a classic book but it's a slow slog of a read. I think the 1992 movie version starring Daniel Day Lewis blows the book away.

And not to keep piling on Stephen King but the movie "The Shawshank Redemption" is way better than the Novella by King. Way Better.

The books are always better than the Hollywood spin.
The books have details that are not revealed in movies.
Take for instance the movie and now series Shooter. The Stephen Hunter novel Point of Impact has Bob Lee Swagger as a Vietnam veteran and in the book Bob Lee didn't do Most of the shooting but Nicholas Memphis killed most of the bad guys in the end and he wasn't the idiot the movie made him out to be.
Louis LaMour has too many to mention and Larry McMurtry has several books that are now movies and he always has good books

Bourne movies were better to me than the books. The books were good but a lot more confusing. They throw out a lot of names and to be honest I found myself having to go back a lot to reference those names. Anyway, in instances you have a book that's better than the movie, I think it would be hard to make it as good. If you think about it, if you have a million people read a book, you're going to have a million different ideas of what the characters look like and the setting look like. Then you have a shorter time frame and the filmmaker having his own idea of what the movie should looks like.

Theres nothing wrong with making some changes when making a movie from a book but to change it so much it doesn't even resemble the book. Obviously there are time constraints and things have to be done but to change the narrative so much when you read or have already read the book it leaves a person scratching their head

I agree. I'm not necessarily a fan of it just explaining why. There's a line they follow where they use the language "based on work by Ian Fleming" for example where they follow the narrative of the book. Then there are others that are loosely based on the book or a collective group of work by an author. I use Fleming as an example because the newest films are based on his works/his character and not a book. I don't know, I just take it as is.

Read Silence of The Lambs; you will wish you never saw the movie

I agree with you metalmuncher on Jaws for the vast majority of the story, but the ending (how the shark actually dies) is way better in the movie IMO.

speaking of books... Please visit Amazon and search for my new book... *At First Light* (the one with the deer on the cover). It's a great tale of a high school senior suspected of killing three friends at a south AL deer camp.

This isn't a book vs movie deal but I'm a big John Grisham fan. One of his less popular books is The Brethren. If you like his books or books like it then I would suggest it.