The Godfather

Executive Summary: This might be one of those rare times where the movie is better than the book. As long as the movie is, the book is longer, and seems to have a tendency to go off on seemingly irrelevant tangents. I would say if you enjoyed the movie, you'd enjoy the book, but I find little reason to do so.

Audio Book: Joe Montegna does a good job reading this, doing voices for some of the characters, including a passable impersonation of Brando's Vito Corleone.

Full Review
I did the audiobook, so it's a bit hard for me to talk about the prose of the author, but while the overall story is quite excellent, I found the writing a bit lacking.

Puzo has a tendency to ramble on in great detail about things that have little to no impact on the plot. He goes into depth with minor characters in what I assume is an attempt to give them a richer back-story, only to slow down the main plots.

You do get some more insight into the mindset of the characters, which is fairly common when comparing a book to a movie, since it offers the ability for internal monologue much better. But the acting/screenplay for the movie is so well done, I don't think this makes it worth the extra time of reading the book.

Another nice addition to the book that was cut from the first movie (but included in the second) was Vito's background from Italy to his rise to Don. That makes it easier to understand some of his motivations and decisions that could otherwise seem confusing.

Overall, I found it to be a good distraction from the long car trips (6-7 hours at a time) I took this past weekend, but this isn't a book I think I would have enjoyed sitting down to read as much. I would have likely stopped reading and opted to watch the movie again instead.