The Age-Old Question: Book or Movie?

Movie adaptations of popular books have always been a Hollywood trend, and this holiday season is no exception. Here are a few titles of wildly popular books that you'll get to watch on the big screen:

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo is a classic story about love, justice, and salvation set in 19th century France. It follows Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who struggles to avoid recapture by the policeman Javert while taking care of the young Collette, the daughter of ill-fated prostitue Fantine.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy follows the titular Anna, a beautiful woman trapped in an unhappy marriage to Aleksei, a man twenty years her senior. Anna's fateful decision to relentlessly pursue an affair with Count Vronksy results in tragedy and heartbreak for nearly everyone she knows.

It's summertime and the reading is easy...and kinda sleazy

I have no problem admitting this--when the temperature reached 84 degrees inside my house, I put down the William Faulkner book I was dutifully trying to reread for the sake of my brain and reached for my latest fluff pick, Vixen by Jillian Larkin.  This book puts "historical fiction" in the camp of hot summer read!  The time is 1923, Chicago, land of flappers and mobsters, lavish parties and serious segregation, complete with flasks of whiskey in your garter and guns in your trunk.  Each chapter tells the story through alternating viewpoints of three young women; there's Gloria, the naive heiress engaged to the most sought after guy in the city, her jealous friend Lorraine, whose goal is to become the fiercest flapper around, and  "country cousin" Clara, who covers up a past more shocking than anyone could imagine.