EDIT: Supposedly the best film adaption in the world, Greed, had every single scene from the book it was adapted from (which was no small book), and the final product ended up being nine hours long. Unfortunately, about seven of those hours were destroyed to make the movie suitable for a cinema release, and totally destroyed the enjoyability of the work.

Anyways, back to my original post:

Some of my favorite movies are adaptations of books.

I don't really mind if things get changed from the book to the movie. Some things--especially dialogue--doesn't translate well to film. And in some cases, the book is a flawed product to begin with.

I do hate it when things get removed so the movie can be "child friendly," though. So it's okay if children and teenagers imagine it in their heads, but it's not okay on the screen? Yeah, whatever.