This year's biggest book adaptations – and which ones are worth reading first | Books | The Guardian

Thanks to Hollywood's baffling inability to produce anything that wasn't first a book, a question that gets asked more and more these days is: "Should I read the original?" There is no default answer. Sometimes, the book is so far removed that reading it lends nothing new to the cinematic experience; sometimes "the book" is actually eight chunky volumes in an epic fantasy series, and an intimidating experience for the casual reader. Sometimes - unthinkably - the adaptation is better than the book.