The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya - Nagaru Tanigawa

To be clear, I read this only after watching the official English dub of the anime of the same name.

In general... the book is good in the sense that it's good, but it was a little disappointing in that there was nothing I hadn't already seen in the anime. Seriously, I'm pretty sure there's not a single scene that was cut or modified in the transition to anime save for a tiny bit of re-ordering to more fit episode plot arcs rather than chapters.

I also like anime!Kyon better than novel!Kyon--oh, Kyon is the viewpoint character--because while his one-line reactions to things are great, he can get a little... flowery... when describing things. Some of it is the fault of the translator, I'm sure, but with nothing to compare it to save unofficial fan translations I'm not sure how he is in the original Japanese--maybe he's less purple-prosey, maybe he's the same but it's more standard for Japanese prose, maybe he even comes off as worse. Look at this for a second:

"I found a girl with long, straight black hair decorated with a flashy hair band adorning her perfectly proportioned face as she stared back at the gawking students with unusually large, black, determined eyes adorned with long, fringed eyelashes, her soft pink lips tightly pursed."

As purple prose goes, it's hardly one of the worst cases, but... Kyon's a high school guy. A newly high school guy, in fact, so the translation makes him a freshman, though apparently in Japan high school is three years so if you want to be technical he's the equivalent of a sophomore in age. (The things you learn!) Freshman or sophomore, that's not really how you'd expect a teenaged guy to describe a girl he's really examining for the first time. I mean, at least I think so. I was kind of deprived of the chance to experience first-hand how typical high school guys react to turning around and realizing a beautiful girl sits in the seat behind them in class. 

Anyway. I also found that even his one-liners, such as they are, are better when spoken rather than read. And... I'm really listing reasons the anime is better than the novel, aren't I? Ah well. I don't really feel qualified to make such a distinction, especially considering how removed I am from the original works, so I will just state instead: I enjoyed watching the official English dub of the anime more than I enjoyed reading the official English translation of the novel. This may have been for a number of reasons, from the novel lacking the (rather awesome) music in the anime to being distraced while reading, but it's still true.