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

Movie for me the only things I like to read are these boards and anything about college football.

The book is almost always better than the movie, and that’s for a reason.

Given the sorry state of adaptations today, book?

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.

When have you ever heard that the movie was better than the book?

Book.

If it's a good story, absolutely the book. If it sucks, I'd much rather only waste 2 hours than 6-8 hours.

Depends on how good the book or movie is and how close the movie follows the book.

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the movie is 2 hours and let's assume an average 300 page book, they cut about half the book out minimum.

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A lot of the imagery that is descriptive in a book can be immediately seen on screen though.

Most movies don't follow the book as closely as they should though. I think it would be beneficial if the author of the book worked closely with the director of the movie. I'm not sure how often that happens.

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