India, June 16 -- When it comes to movies vs books, the usual consensus is that "the book was better." And sure, books let you live inside a character's mind, linger over long walks through rainy moors, and enjoy the pleasure of hundreds of pages of carefully sculpted prose. But every once in a while, lightning strikes, and you get movies that were better than the book. Here is a list of 10 top movies that were better than the books they were based on.

Let's start with the gangster movie The Godfather. Mario Puzo's novel was certainly juicy, but it was also a bit pulpy, somewhere between family drama and mafia fanfiction. Then Francis Ford Coppola stepped in, pruned the excess, restructured the story, and cast Marlon Brando and Al Pacino...