re: Would you rather read a book or watch a 2 hour movie that the book is about?

As a general rule I'll pick the book 9.5 times out of 10, but then it depends on the author, the topic, and the film maker. For example, I tried reading the Lord of the Rings books back in high school and just couldn't get into them. But the Peter Jackson movies are excellent. How they differ from the books I cannot say.

It's well known that movies cannot capture all that's in the book and all too often the films take too much liberty. The one that always stood out to me though was the mini-series Shogun from 1980. I read the book by James Clavell after watching the mini-series and it was very, very close to the same. I haven't made up my mind yet about watching the remake.