I don't know about you, but when a movie of one of my favorite books comes out, I face it with more dread than excitement. The odds against a good movie adaptation seem so great - Howards End and The Remains of the Day are two of very few really faithful and effective adaptions I can think of (even rarer is a movie that improves on the book - other than The Godfather, I'm stymied to name one).

So I'm holding my breath over this fall's adaptation of my single favorite novel, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men.

It's so painfully perfect, so beautifully realized, so complete unto itself, that I can only imagine a movie, well, sullying it. I never saw the forties version because I didn't want to alter my mental image of the characters and settings. There are good people involved this time around - Sean Penn, Kate Winslet, Jude Law - but no one I ever pictured as the complex demogogue Governor Willie Stark (Talos in Warren's original manuscript version) or the embittered former idealist/narrator Jack Burden.

So may I invite you to visit this wonderful novel while you can still read it fresh, before the no-doubt-worthy-but-impossible-to-live-up-to-the-original film version comes out this fall? We have both the standard version and the restored manuscript version of my personal candidate for the Great American Novel. And you can buy it without the movie cover, in case you're self-conscious on the Metro.

Please feel free to tell me if you can name some decent - or for that matter strikingly horrible - film adaptations of books you've loved at adaptations@olssons.com

-Joe Murphy, Head Book Buyer