Don_, thank you for this information.This wil fill some of my time also on a cold day with my cup of tea.***Suzanne

PS-I have confirmed that my recollections were correct. Someone at a newsgroup answered my question.

Vee, thanks for the link to the Gallup poll. Whew! It will take me a while to assimilate it. As for "the sad state of affairs": I understand now. I tied it to the wrong paragraph. :-) Woodnymph, yeah, I realize that I'm in the minority about the film of To Kill a Mockingbird. I figure my love of the whole book makes me too critical of the adaptation, which picks out and gives emphasis to a particular part. Which reminds me: June, if you watch the Olivier/Oberon Wuthering Heights, don't expect to see the whole story -- you will only get part of it. Otherwise, it's a quite fascinating interpretation: telling, I think, of what adaptors of the 1930s thought was important and what subsequent audiences have taken in. Woodnymph, I saw The English Patient film first, and then read the book. While the "essence" of the book might have been captured in the film, the two are so different! I like the film better. Another essence capturer, I think, is The French Lieutenant's Woman. Oh gosh, yes, the Polanski-directed Tess is superb, I think, and very faithful. Actually I like nearly all of the film versions of Hardy's books, particularly Tess and Far from the Madding Crowd -- Alan Bates will always be my Gabriel Oak. I also liked most of the Merchant-Ivory productions. I certainly like their adaptations of Forster, though I find Forster's writing insufferably Edwardian. I do like some Edwardian writing but Forster's was even more uptight than most. Knowing his bio and the times, I can understand why he wrote the way he did but the priggishness still exasperates me. Speaking of another Forster -- Margaret Forster, that is -- and Alan Bates: I adore the 1966 adaptation of Forster's Georgy Girl. I loved that book so much as a teenager that I determined I was to live in London. When this subject comes up, I always have to mention two of my favorite short story adaptations: John Huston's "The Dead" (from Joyce's Dubliners) and "Babette's Feast" (from Dinesen's Anecdotes of Destiny). June, you're right: there are so many good films that owe their genesis to a book.

In a long flight on the weekend, I watched Where'd You Go, Bernadette? It was pretty close to the book. Something that I didn't like in the book (an unnecessary complication in the husband's life), was omitted in the movie. In that sense, I liked the movie better. The visuals at the end of the movie (a building being built), give a much better idea than the book does. Most of it was filmed in Pittsburgh, a couple of scenes in Seattle, and some scenes in Antarctica. IMO, for those of you who have read the book, it is worth watching the movie. But it will not show you the Seattle five-way intersections that Bernadette hated.