I could resist the temptation no longer. After I watched the movie trailer for the upcoming film adaptation of Winifred Watson's Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day I had to pull it out and start reading (which I did last night). The film looks so charming and funny, surely the book will be even better. It has been ages since I have seen a movie in the theater, but I would love to see several new ones that are due to be released soon, including Miss Pettigrew.
The novel is set during one day beginning at 10:15 a.m. when Miss Pettigrew, a 
penniless gentlewoman, is sent on a job interview for a nursery governess for a one Miss LaFosse and ending somewhere in the wee hours of the next morning. Miss LaFosse is gorgeously elegant like one of the "beauties of the screen". Miss Pettigrew seems rather frumpy. In the preface the book was likened to a Fred Astaire film with its "light-heartedness and enchanting fantasy of an hour-by-hour plot". I'm in no hurry to get this one read, but as it is a slim novel, I have a feeling it won't take me long to get through it. It has wonderful illustrations by Mary Thomson by the way.
Another book I want to read and movie I want to see is Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl. You can see the movie trailer here. So many people have told me that this novel is immensely readable--a pager turner of a book. I don't know why I haven't gotten around to reading it, as I've had a copy for ages. I'm not entirely sure how historically accurate it is, but from the sound of things it is nothing if not entertaining. The movie looks lush and lavish, too.
A book I have not been quite as compelled to read, though I know I probably should is Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner. Am I the last person left who has not yet read this novel? As strange as it sounds I sometimes have a hard time reading about events that are fairly fresh still. There might be new things to learn about in a novel with a Medieval setting, but more or less you know how things end in terms of historical events. They are long done and over with. What Hosseini is writing about is like a new wound, not quite scabbed over. You just have to watch the news or read the international section of the newspaper to see what's happening in Afghanistan, and usually the news is not happy. Anyway, you can see the movie trailer here. Perhaps I read the book first, and wait for the DVD in this instance.
I'd also like to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age, and Stardust, which I will most likely now just wait and watch the DVD. What other good movies am I missing? If I read the book, I usually have to see the movie if there is one (though not in every case!). And, though I have gotten lax about this lately, nearly always I have to read the book first, because the book is almost always better than the movie!