A fun scary book. ( )

My brother told me he read this book in high school (30 years ago) so I decided to pick it up, especially since I L-O-V-E the movie!! This is one of the few books where I liked the movie better than the book. Chief Brody's mind is just dirty, dirty, dirty. He treats his wife like crap so she has an affair with Hooper!! UGH. ( )

Book 187 - Peter Benchley - Jaws

You know the 1975 movie…directed by Steven Spielberg…starring John Schneider…Richard Dreyfuss and Robert Shaw based on the book that had only come out the previous year. Devastatingly brilliant…terrifying…until you see the shark and the ultimate ‘buddy’ movie. The book is similar in many ways but also…oh so different.

I love the movie…the fact that it splits so well into two parts…how Amity is affected…leading to the isolation and brilliance of the closing acts…all whilst that music permeates the whole movie. It is almost perfect.

But…and it is a huge but…much like the the novel ‘The Firm’…this is one of those times that the movie is so much better. I was stunned that a subplot…thankfully completely ignored by Spielberg…has Chief Brody’s wife, superbly portrayed in the movie by Lorraine Gray, having a fling with Hooper…in the book, the character that comes across as a young lothario who chases…catches and has a sexual exploration that is so out of place I had the feeling…Benchley needed to pad out the plot.

This middle third and Chief Brody’s suspicions means the coming together of the three characters, Brody, Hooper and Quint, as they chase down the killer Great White, is done in the midst of antagonism and recriminations.

A shocking ending means there isn’t the ‘punch-the-air’ moment that the movie gives us…and indeed a further subplot implying a mafia type group have forced the beaches to stay open means the book is a bit of a mess…with few likeable characters…

The fact the movie is so good is all the more shocking since Benchley wrote the screenplay…astonishing.

Very disappointing…my advice? Stick to the movie and a huge thank you Mr Spielberg. ( )

Book source ~ Purchased at Chirp

Everyone in this book is an asshole. The End.

Just kidding. Although, not really. Chief Brody isn’t quite as bad as everyone else, but he’s still an uptight jerk most of the time. I like the movie people a bit better, especially Roy Scheider’s portrayal of the Chief. Robert Shaw got Quint’s character exactly right. Kudos!

There’s a whole backstory about why the Mayor is an ass about closing the beaches and it’s not solely because the island depends on the Summer visitors to spend money so the islanders can live through the winter without having to go on welfare. There’s more to why the newspaper editor kept the first death quiet. But then again, most books are more in-depth than a movie could possibly get. Having said that, I much prefer the movie over the book. Jaws is such a Horror Classic and Steven Spielberg masterfully put together a movie that pays homage to the book without getting bogged down in everyday life on the island, including the whiny cheating ass, Ellen Brody. I’ve watched it many times and I put it on again after I finished the audiobook. If you haven’t seen it yet, you really should. If you’re not a fan of gore (it’s not as bad as you might think) then pick up the book. ( )

I have read this book many times! The paperback copy completely fell apart. I most recently listened to it on audio. A great read! ( )

My thoughts about this book are on Booklikes at http://sheric.booklikes.com/post/800964/jaws-
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Upon a second read I have to change my rating to three stars. It's not that it isn't a good book. It is and I will still recommend it to anyone that has seen the movie but it just doesn't hold up in my opinion to the first reading. ( )

What if Jaws was more about Brody's wife's infidelity than shark attacks? What if Brody was a borderline insane person with a hair trigger? What if everyone were incredibly unlikable?
Quint: "What a pair of assholes." ( )

This wasn’t my favorite. There were a lot of things that made me feel icky and not in a good way. ( )

Rarely do books and movies based on those books run neck in neck for being so good. But, this is an example. The movie ran pretty much parallel to the book, with a few things changed. The book was also a wonderful experience. It went more in-depth into relationships and plot lines (as the books often do). To get the full range of the movie, it is a good idea to indulge in the book. I listened to this on audio, read by Erik Steele. It was a wonderful read/listen and I recommend it to any and everyone that loves horror and/or loved the movie. ( )

Not what I was expecting after seeing the movie first, but then again, what book and movie are the same. ( )

I have yet to watch "Jaws" the movie. I saw the opening scene was I was young and was terrified ever since. However, after reading this book, I immediately texted my friend and podcast co-host saying, "There is no way the movie can be as bad as this book."

Spoilers.(?)

Racism. Homophobia. Talk of r*pe as a fantasy (not trying to k*nk shame but jesus christ).

Ellen's extramarital affair is boring. Her reason for having the affair with Hooper is lame, their conversation starting the affair is also irritating, and the fact that her reason to "accept her fate and be happy with the life she has" (um, she's 36? why are we acting like her life is over?) is also VERY lame. Maybe it was 1971, but come on.

Hooper definitely wanted to f*ck the shark.

Having Brody as the point of view was also insanely boring. Ellen's depiction of him as being very simple and boring was rude, but apt. Not that she had anything interesting about her either.

For a book boasting a massive, intelligent shark, I cannot get over how DULL the entire thing was. We'll watch the movie sometime soon, but I truly hope it's better than this. ( )

On June 20th 1975 the movie Jaws came out and swimming in the ocean has never been the same since. 40 years later I decided to read the book for a second time, and while the book is good it is one of the only times that the movie was so much better.
Enjoy your swim at the beach this summer. ( )

This book was disturbingly terrifying - especially after having seen the movie, which was a rather solid adaptation. In some ways, the book was far bloodier though, which is rather understandable. Overall, a solid narrative, with a quite capable narrator in audio form. ( )

The shark isn't as mystified as in the film and there is a greater focus on domestic drama between the characters, but Jaws the book still holds up as a perfectly thrilling summer read. ( )

I was seven when the movie version of Jaws came out. My parents, not having any clue as to what was appropriate for a small child, took me along with them to the drive-in. I was terrified to take a bath for years afterward.

I figured the book would be pretty fun and since it's offered for free to Amazon Prime members through Audible Channels, I decided to take the plunge. I mostly wish I'd skipped it.

While I absolutely loved all the parts that had the shark involved in the scene, everything else was pretty bad. Well, maybe it wasn't bad in the early 1970s but yeah, plenty of casual racism and sexism. The biggest thing that made me want to quit mid-way was how much time was devoted to Brody's wife. I didn't care about character development, especially not a character who has nothing to do with the shark. But there you go. It was there and I got through it with some eye rolling and grimacing.

Luckily, there was plenty of shark-related carnage at the end that made it mostly worth the time. ( )

It is easy to understand how this can be terrifying. Much of the 70s were riddled with "Nature fights back" stories. From ants, spiders, frogs to fog and rabbits. But upon closer inspection it is also easy to see that people get eaten by sharks because they do stupid things in presence of said sharks.

Who doesn't know the famous Spielberg movie with a shark as the big bad guy who wreaks terror on an entire town, with three men going on a mission to kill the shark before he kills even more people?



Just one year before the release of the movie, Peter Benchley's novel Jaws was published which the movie was adapted from. (Personal confession here: I never watched the movie, so there was nothing I could compare the events in the novel with. I practically went into it blank apart from the knowledge of a shark being around in this tale.) It's fairly easy to summarize this book: There is no heavy or particularly complex plot; you get to see the shark early on, then you are introduced to some of the main characters who live in the town the shark has focused his attention on, then the shark reappears one hundred pages later, we have a dozen unnecessary subplots again which, of course, deserve no conclusion, then the shark stops by for a few pages again and the author cuts his own book off in the middle of a scene, leaving his reader hanging in the air.

Benchley started out on a very strong premise, delving into the shark's POV and making his reader believe that the shark is actually allowed to be one of the main characters. But after the second page, we would only meet him again through the eyes of other characters - and apart from that, it all went downhill pretty fast. The author did, however, succeed at drawing a picture of society in a small town by outlining how almost everyone in this town beared prejudices towards other people and acted in a judgmental way (with the one single exception being the shark who killed without making a difference between whether his victim is old or young, black or white, rich or poor). So at least you can say one good thing about sharks: they treat human beings equally.

The novel is more about the decline of a marriage than anything else, yet it was a shark which was originally promised in the blurb, and we didn't get to see that shark for major parts of the book. I know I'm probably in the minority with my opinion, but I didn't give a damn about Matt Hooper or Ellen or Chief Brody or who they had flings with and why they betrayed each other. Benchley didn't allow his characters any depth; he just created one-dimensional, unlikeable beings which happened to be present when a shark attacked at the shore of the smalltown. What's perhaps even worse: Benchley gave the villain role to the shark, made us want to see the shark get killed, but after the first half of the book, I found myself rooting for nobody but the shark. Remember: the book is called Jaws, the cover features a shark, the premise of the novel consists of a shark attack, and yet more than half of the book is about the police chief's frustrated wife who has nothing to do at all with the shark. This basically results in the book bearing the terror of a shark attack in the 10% of the novel when the animal is actually present, and being incredibly boring and suspenseless in the other 90%.

I did manage to finish the book in the course of a few hours, but that didn't mean I liked it at all. Sometimes a premise can be as promising as this one, but if the characters don't work and the dialogue is horrible ... then there is nothing to redeem that book. Which, of course, doesn't mean that other readers might not look at this book as an amazing piece of writing. The blurb of my copy promises that "the novel reaches a climax without having a rival when it comes to tension and drama". I'll say only one thing about this: Don't believe that blurb. ( )

Engaging, an interesting commentary on greed, but kind of grossly sexual and lots of swearing ( )

What's not to like about this book? By any standards, it is a classic in the horror/thriller genre. I was surprised how well the book held up over time. A clear and simple writing style moves quickly, and finds just the right mix of characters and setting to frame the main narrative about the actual shark.

As always, the book is far better than the movie- although both were excellent. This is simply a classic modern work that should not be missed. ( )

If Moby-Dick and Deliverance had a love child, it would be Jaws. This is like a more entertaining (and much shorter!) Moby-Dick, but a less riveting Deliverance. I'm glad I finally read the book behind the movie, but I think in this case the movie is actually better than the book. I did enjoy reading it though. ( )

“There's nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That's their instinct. But this fish doesn't run from anything. He doesn't fear.”
― Peter Benchley, Jaws

I am not going to do a full review on such a great classic like this. But a few thoughts:

When this first came out I was but a slip of a tiny child and already reading. Jaws was huge around town. Everyone wanted to read it. My mom would not let me have a copy of it. I could not understand why. I BEGGED her. Eventually we came to a compromise. She would read it to me so it would be less scary and I would get it in small doses.

Umm..then she started reading it. And it scared her! And yes me as well.

Not as bad as some people. It never did keep me out of the water though we had a friend who became phobic and refused to ever go into the ocean again. I wonder if he ever did..

Now I loved the film too but recently I had the chance to see parts of it again and was shocked at just how fake the shark looked. I mean..really fake. I started to laugh. It makes me wonder if I read this again if I would even blink. The things that scare us when we're young...

Although that creepy music still does it every time.

Anyway..I love this book. End of review. ( )

First I want to thank Steven Spielberg for ruining the fun with swimming in lakes as a child. because of course there could be sharks in lakes...in Sweden. Second, I want to thank him for letting Ellen Brody be a background character in the movie so the movie wasn't ruined by that F*****g bitch.

Jaws is one of my favorite movies. So it's kind of strange it has taken me this long to read the book. I remember that my brother had the book and I was curious about it, but I just never read it. I remember checking the beginning of the book to see if the beginning was just like the first scene from the movie. But I just never bothered reading it.

My eyes caught the cover of this book among my Ebooks when it was time to pick a book a couple of days ago and I thought, "what the heck, let's skip all the ARC's for now and read a book I have bought".

I enjoyed the book it was good. Well, most of it. I came to enjoy the mafia angle that the movie didn't have and it was interesting to get a deeper understanding of the economic consequences of closing the beaches. What I didn't like was the Ellen Brody drama. She has a great marriage, a loving husband, and three great sons, but she is still unhappy. And, then Matt Hopper arrives at the island. Not to spoil the book. But God dammit. That part of the book made me angry. So angry that I wished she had been on the damn boat at the end with Brody, Quint, and Hopper.

Despite being a good book can't I help to think that the movie is just so much better. It's not that long ago that I watched it, but I do feel like watching it again.

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8422605368

I was unaware that this was a book before it was a movie. And I like the movie, and books are better than the movies, right? Let's read this!

**I tried to cover all the big spoilers, but beware. Even if you've seen the movie, they don't align perfectly.**

I'm not saying I'm super keen on reading about people getting attacked by sharks (especially a six year-old boy), but I thought the beginning was written well enough that this would end up as a four-star book, at least. (I do all my reading in terms of Goodreads rankings now, it seems.) The tension! The terror! The nostalgia for such an iconic movie! It's hard to start off with any hate toward the book. There was a lot more political and economic drama surrounding the town, but I guess the author needed something else to fill a 300 page book.

And then. Chief Brody’s wife has an affair with Hooper. Say whaaaat? I probably could have dealt with the infidelity, but the way that was done seemed to really kill the mood of the book. (To... jump the shark? Nevermind.) There’s a lot directly from Helen’s (Brody's wife’s) perspective, and it becomes WAY too much. They go to lunch and start talking about fantasies in a way where it gets dirty. Rape fantasies, and orgies, and threesomes. And there’s repeated mentions of Helen’s underwear. What book IS this? I am reading [b:Jaws|126232|Jaws (Jaws #1)|Peter Benchley|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1171911777l/126232._SY75_.jpg|2318370], yes?? I didn’t care for that detour at all. I suppose it was there to create tension between Brody and Hooper, but I feel that could have been done a lot better. AND there’s never any real resolution there. Hooper gets eaten (which actually really surprised me, since he survived in the movie), and we have no idea if Brody ever really knows about his wife, or if their marriage survives. If Hooper had survived, what would Helen have done? It was a really irritating side plot.

So, I was SUPER annoyed with that, but we did get back to the shark, and I was trying to forgive the author. I REALLY liked Quint, and I was "on board" (sorry) with how the story was progressing. Maaaaybe the story could get back to four stars? And gosh, since Hooper died, maaaaybe Quint could live! (I can vaguely remember watching the movie for the first time in middle school, and being HORRIFIED when Quint was eaten. I really liked his character in the movie, too.) But, no. While reading, I wasn’t even entirely sure how he’d died, and I had to go back and re-read the passage to make sure I’d really gotten that right. He… got his foot caught in a rope, and…drowned? Because Brody couldn’t get him a knife? Wtf, mate? That’s an AWFUL way to kill him. Then Brody is about to get eaten by the shark, but the shark very thoughtfully chooses that exact moment to succumb to his wounds. C’mon! Peter Benchley, I'm gonna need you to be a LITTLE more creative here.

So. (1) I was very displeased with the ending. (2) The whole Hooper affair felt really stupid. I did, for the most part, enjoy the rest. Sadly, those two things turn a strong four-star book into a pretty weak three-star book. I wouldn’t recommend it and I don’t feel like I trust the author’s judgment. A pity.

Thus, the true horror is this: The movie is better than the book. ( )