I read the book and saw the movie... I think that they did a really good job with the movie. Yes, they did leave out a lot of parts, but it was already over 2 hours long with the stuff that they did put in. The movie was very true to the book- no surprises (like other movies from books have been). It is always hard to put everything in from the book into a movie, and the director has to pick what he or she thinks is more important to get the story across... Sometimes it works, like in this movie, other times it doesn't and people are left really upset.
I think that the book is definitely better then the movie, but I've found to usually be the case anyway. I don't know what my favorite part of the book was.. I loved the whole thing- couldn't put it down till the last page!