The Godfather

I took another little detour from the "Hot 100" list of books and read the source material from one of the greatest movies in history. I hadn't realized that the book came out in the late 60's and was instantly grabbed up by Paramount to be made into the movie. Puzo then adapted his book into the screenplay which earned him an Oscar. There are few differences between the plots of the book and the movie. There's even similar dialogue in both. The major difference between the 2 is in some of the background stories which adds to the richness of the overall story. Some plot points were eliminated from the final cut but were put back in for the Director's Cut. The most interesting elimination was the story about how the Don rises to power. It's really glossed over in "Godfather II" but would have been interesting to see. The book also contains a lot about Johnny Fontane who is a fictionalization of Frank Sinatra. Sinatra hated Puzo for that. Fontane has a close friend in the book named Nino who is based on Frank's buddy Dino aka Dean Martin. I can see why that plotline was cut from the screenplay, but it does add some richness to the overall story. So if you're a huge fan of the movie such as myself, give the book a read to help fill in some missing details.