I started off reading the whole series. I'm always a little wary of the movie when they come out because I found the books to be a really quick and entertaining read and the movie usually gets editorialized to make it more digestible for a wide audience and not overly offensive to anyone. But, in this case, the movie really paid homage to the book, I found no apparent disparities and what was memorable in the book was also memorable in the movie.
We'll probably definitely buy the dvd when it becomes available. This was a movie that I could easily watch many times.