Book better than movie

Not as easy, perhaps, as movies better than books, but still plenty. A partial list:

To Kill a Mockingbird (damn close)
East of Eden
We Were Soldiers Once ... And Young

 

Forrest Gump.

 

Wait, what? Almost every classic novel that's been adapted would qualify.

 

I think the thread title is backwards.

I have never read the short story that Shawshank Redemption is based, but it needs to be spectacular to top the movie.

 

Black Hawk Down
Deliverance
50 Shades of Grey

 

Yeah, this should be far easier. The book is better than the movie the majority of the time, at least if it was a good book.

 

I think the LOTR movies are far, FAR better than the books (and I love the books).

But so much of the books are people walking, walking, walking, walking. Did you really need 500 pages for Frodo to get from Hobbiton to Rivendell?

 

There's a lot more rape

 

Godfather I and II were way better than Puzo's book, which is a pot-boiler of massive dimensions.
Despite many tries, nobody has succeeded in making a credible movie version of "The Great Gatsby."

 

I too don't think it's rare for a book to be better than a movie. It's usually the general consensus that most books are superior to their movie adaptions.

Speaking of Gatsby, The Sun Also Rises comes to mind. I saw a 50's adaption once, and it didn't do the book justice. Hurts when you have a bunch of 40 year-olds playing 20 somethings.

 

Money Ball

 

Bonfire of the Vanities. Still a great book and Wolfe's only novel that wasn't an unwieldy mess (though I enjoyed "Man in Full" and would have liked to have seen a film version). Movie was an atrocity.