Editor’s Note: Roxanne J. Coady founded R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, CT, in 1989 after leaving her job as national tax director at a New York-based international accounting firm. Roxanne is the co-editor, with Joy Johannessen, of The Book That Changed My Life. Visit R.J. Julia at www.rjjulia.com.

There are three new movies that are just out and based on books that I adore. I’m often disappointed with film adaptations but I always love seeing how the director and actors interpret the characters I feel I know so well.

But before I talk about these new releases, let’s  address the critical question: If you’re a book lover, should you go ahead and see the movie before you’ve read the book? My opinion: Always read the book first. Because a film director takes just a piece of a book and goes with it. Of course it’s a fascinating thing to discover – which aspect he or she decided was most essential and rich – and it’s one of the reasons that watching movie adaptations can be so interesting: to see how “Hollywood-ized” the story became in the hands of the producers, or, on the contrary, how beautifully and brilliantly they interpreted the book in such a different medium. But the book offers everything: all the texture and meaning that the author intended.

So, to the movies….

Just out with Keira Knightley is “The Duchess,” based on the 1998 bestselling biography by Amanda Foreman, Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire. Ms Foreman’s book is fabulous: rich in historic detail, gossip and intrigue and she’s a wonderful writer. For background: The Duchess of Devonshire was a member of the aristocratic Spencer family. Hint hint … an ancestor of Diana, Princess of Wales. From there the parallels are uncanny. The movie only covers ten years of the Duchess’s life and the book tells the whole delicious story. Click here to see the trailer.

One of my top 20 books is Blindness by Nobel Award-winning novelist José Saramago. I am always wary about putting this book in a readers’ hand because it is unrelentingly filled with despair, it has long, long sentences and endless chapters. So why do I love it? Because it brilliantly explains man’s capacity for evil and sacrifice. (I happen to be fascinated by books that explore this subject. One of my favorite quotes about evil comes from the memoir Stet by Diana Athill: “Everything that makes life worth living is the result of humankind’s impulse to fight the darkness in itself, and attempting to understand evil is part of that fight.”) If I haven’t scared you off of Blindness you will be well rewarded with this philosophically riveting novel. Now it is coming out as a movie staring Julianne Moore. I cannot wait to see how they interpret this one. Click here to see the trailer.

Last is the bestselling and beloved book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Even by just reading this book you can imagine the film. And just as the book did, this movie is bound to make lots of people happy. For me, anything with Queen Latifah in it is worth going to see; now add Alicia Keys and I am so there. Click here to see the trailer.

Happy reading!

Roxanne