The results are in and the winner of the gift certificate is....at the bottom of the page. :)

First, I wanted to talk about movies and books. Tonight I'm going to see New Moon (yes, I've told you, I'm a Twilight dork, so I'm braving the crowds on opening night.) But, I'm going in with relatively low expectations.

Although I am looking forward to the eye candy, I know that movies typically don't live up to experience of the book. Part of this is because movies can't really "tell" you much, they have to "show" everything which, of course, is preferable in novels as well. But it means we can't hear as much internal dialogue and voice and we have to rely on the actors to nail how we pictured the characters reacting. It's almost impossible for a movie to meet the level our imaginations can achieve when reading.

So here's my Face Off Friday question:

Should you read the book first so that you can experience the story in it's pure form before seeing the movie?

Or, should you see the movie first and enjoy it for what it is before your expectations skyrocket, then read the book and enrich the experience?

I personally am a read first, see movie second person. Although on the few occasions where I saw the movie first (John Grisham's The Firm), I liked the movie much more than I probably would have had I read the book first.

So how about you? What's your style? And have you ever found a movie that was BETTER than the book or that perfectly lived up to your expectations?

Also, just a note, but I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving week. I am hosting family for the week and am doing all the cooking for Turkey Day, so instead of new blog posts, I will be re-running some of my earlier posts that I did before I had most of you following. I will still be responding to comments and such, but I probably won't be making it to very many blogs.

Okay and finally, the winner of the certificate is....NATALIE MURPHY!!! Congrats! I'll be emailing you later today.

Thanks to all of you who entered and I loved all the blog suggestions. I will definitely be covering those in future posts! :)

Here's the random.org breakdown, which picked the winner: