The movie was better than the novel

And I say that as a fan of Carl Sagan. I've read most of his books and liked Contact the most out of them (the rest being NF).

The movie removed a lot of fluff from the novel - her continual guilt over the relationship with her mother, her being at odds with her stepfather, the other candidates who travel with her and their background info (not a lot of it in the first place, but the conversations were good tho), her finding the perfect circle deep down in Pi, Hadden being on Mir and talking to her briefly via satellite link rather than her visiting him in the space station and all the pages of stuff on the trip...

I liked that she was the only one who traveled in the machine, that Matthew M was her love interest rather than a friend as he was in the novel (her novel love interest was blandly written and not fleshed out) and also that they left out the part where her mom's letter tells her in the end that her stepdad is her real father.

Would've been great if they'd expanded the alien conversation and included him telling her about their building project in Cygnus, but the whole wormhole sequence and beach interaction (which was modeled after her drawing of Pensacola as a girl) were great, as were the moments when she discovers the broadcast and Drumlin dying from the sabotage.

Anyone like the novel more than the movie?