As a keen reader I often find that a book I have read and enjoyed gets transferred to the big screen, then I watch the film and find it a disappointing or frustrating experience.  Chunks of plot get left out, characters are considered extraneous to the plot or sometimes merged together.  Sometimes I have thought I should give the film a swerve altogether so that my enjoyment of the book is not spoilt!

I read Beautiful Creatures just recently and absolutely loved it, so wromantic and magical - elements of voodoo,  spirit world and time-slip which ticks so many boxes for me.  I was looking forward to watching the film (now out on DVD) .... but it drove me mad!  One of my favourite characters had been spliced with another, which was a disappointment and there was none of the telepathy between the young couple which was a great element in book.

Translating the Twilight series of books into films started off badly - first film was very low budget - but the more they spent , the more accurate and true to the books the films became.  Although what they did to the ending of the very last film Breaking Dawn II made puffs of steam come out of my ears with supressed fury.  Why did they have to alter so much?

I watched an interview with Peter Jackson and he explained that the producers tried to persuade him to have less hobbits in the Lord of the Rings trilogy ... what a travesty to the books that would've been!

But to argue for the other side of the fence, when the first Harry Potter film came out I hadn't read any of the books, so I found that I could immerse myself in the story, the special effects, the mystical characters and the magic and suspense of the plot without  feeling any irritation about what they had done with JK Rowling's plot-line.  Once I had seen all the films I settled down to read the series of books and it was as if I had been given bonus scenes and added insights into the plot and characters.

Last week I watched City of Bones at the cinema - I was so nervous that a book I had loved would be ruined for me -but I loved it!!  Both my friend and I had read the novel and thought it was a very true representation.  I even found myself thinking "that's just how I imagined it!" in a couple of places.  Well done to the film makers (the director for his vision and the Producers for not asking him to dumb it down or otherwise tweak it for the silver screen) you have restored my faith!

My advice, from now on would be:  Film first, book second.  What does anyone else out there think?