I hate it when people do this.

I usually state everywhere that my favorite book is Mario Puzo's The Godfather, because I'm a sucker for dark stories and The Godfather has to be the father of dark stories.

I'm currently on my third re-read of the book and, of course, I read it when I have spare time to do so on class. Naturally, my classmates have to comment on my reading choices because I'm known to really hate Twilight.

I've heard people say a mixture of things.

"You only read it for the sex!"
"You only read it for the violence!"
"You only read it for the cussing!"
"Ew, I hate that movie!" (yes, a Twitard said that)

I DO NOT READ THE GODFATHER JUST FOR THE EXPLICIT CONTENT.

Because that's not all The Godfather is. Yeah, The Godfather has a lot of sex and violence, but it's not ALL sex and violence - otherwise I would have stopped reading when Santino Corleone had his affair with Lucy Mancini or when Jack Woltz woke up with the horse head in his bed.

The Godfather is based off of the mafia. The Mafia is organized crime. Organized crime is more than just raping someone, more than just stealing, and so on. The families usually controlled businesses and the businesses would compete for power and money - the Corleone family owned olive oil importing and gambling while the Tattaglia family controlled prostitution, etc. This was the cause of all the organized crime - this competition.

And it was more than just killing/raping people. It was implied that they also bribed politicians to get bills passed and judges and lawyers bribed, as well - like, when Nazorine the Baker came to Don Corleone to keep Enzo in America because Enzo fell in love with his daughter and he wanted his daughter to have a husband, so on.

So, before you tell me I'm reading something just because it's infamous for explicit content, shut the fuck up and read it before you say anything about it.

Oh, and that leads me to say some of the reasons I dislike the movie.

Don't get me wrong - the movie was awesome, but I could nitpick it to death because of the book. I didn't like how the movie practically ignored Johnny Fontane after Tom Hagen's ordeal with Jack Woltz - and how it basically ignored Mama Corleone. It also screwed up the ending. In the book, it has Kay praying in the church for the soul of Michael, but in the movie, it just has her staring into Michael's office. (Sometimes, I refuse to believe that Mario Puzo helped write the script to the movie). The movie left out a lot of the important negotiation scenes and so on and focused more on the violence and the sex. That bugs me.

So, again: before you tell me I'm reading something just because it's infamous for explicit content, shut the fuck up and read it before you say anything about it.

Also, I love it for the characters, too. Santino was my favorite and I cried when he died :C I think his death was extremely powerful in the book - "I don't want his mother to see him like this." before it goes back and explains how he died.