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This is a topic that has always interested me, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents for some recent adaptations.

Films that were better than the book:
Drive – A very close call on this one, but ultimately the decision to cut out the Driver’s backstory and strip the film to its bare essentials in regards to dialogue, story, and character was a very smart move on Refn’s part as it further added to that heavy mood and eerie silence that Gosling and the film captures so perfectly. The novel also comes off as study into violence, whereas the film plays with the concept of redemption through violence, making it so that when something bloody does happen, I, as a viewer, wanted more of it, rather than simply turning the page, wondering who the Driver was going to assault next for some miniscule reason. [spoiler](Spoiler) – the kid and the woman also die somewhat early on in the book, and developing Driver’s relationship with them both added the much needed dramatic emotion that the novel lacked.[/spoiler]
No Country for Old Men – Currently on my third re-read of McCarthy’s novel, which is still fantastic, but doesn’t quite have the “it” factor that Javier Bardem pulls off when portraying Anton Chigurh. McCarthy doesn’t quite capture the American southwest like he does with his other works, something the film did exquisitely. The Coen brothers also managed to tighten the story and focus more so on the pure action sequences rather than bringing in Sheriff Bell’s personal demons, which read as McCarthy trying to send a cluttered message to his audience.

Books that were better than the film:
Brokeback Mountain – Despite it only being a short piece (running just around 12,000 words), Annie Proulx manages to capture the spirit of a romantic tragedy within the Old West in a rather contemporary story that the movie just could not live up to. The filmmakers managed to drag two and half hours out of this framework, making a lot of interactions between characters feel like filler in an otherwise very focused story. Jake Gyllenhaal’s character (Jack Twist) missed the mark completely for me (regardless of the Oscar nomination); his acting felt bland and lifeless, whereas the fictional Jack Twist is animated and informative of his tragic situation. I basically never got past the fact that I’m watching Gyllenhaal try to play a repressed homosexual cowboy, rather than fully becoming one.

The 25th Hour – Adapted by Spike Lee and starring a couple of my all-time favorite actors in Ed Norton and Philip Seymour Hoffman, the film still can’t live up to Benioff’s (relatively unknown) debut novel. The characters are younger in the book and the sense of nostalgia for what could have been far outweighs how any of that was conveyed in the film. Plus Benioff’s prose is just pure magic; as powerful and as exciting as the ending was in the film, it still doesn’t compare the novel’s final pages.