That is a difficult question to answer. Usually I have read the book first. In fact, I can't think offhand of any movie made from a book, where I haven't read the book first. That being said, I do have high hopes for "The Secret Life Of Bees". Sue Monk Kidd is one of my favorite authors, and the story is so enchanting. There are two movies that come to mind when I think about how much I disliked the movie having read the book: "The Devil Wears Prada", and "Oil". "Prada" the book, though fluffy on the surface, had some darkness and conflict that was absent from the movie. And "Oil" bore only a passing resemblance to "There Will Be Blood". When the movie starts to mess around with the basic characters and their motivations, and completely changes or eliminates other important characters and plot twists, I'm no longer interested. One movie that I thought did well with the book-to-movie transition was "Gone With The Wind". The characters stayed true to their motivations, the plot did not vary from the book, and the missing parts were peripheral to the main events and characters in the movie. ~goatini~ Friend of a Friend of the Darien Library :-)