Cannonball Read 18

Sticking It to Cancer One Book at a Time

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“The great fish moved silently through the night water”

Jaws by Peter Benchley

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before – there is this village on Long Island, and it’s summer 1974, and there’s this shark and it’s killing people. Which is a problem. It’s a problem because a) dead people and b) this coastal village’s livelihood is based on tourism, namely summer tourism and now the tourists could end up as shark food. So, there is a kind of willful ignorance and pretending everything is fine on behalf of village officials because they need that summer […]

The crowning exception to “The book is always better than the movie.”

Jaws by Peter Benchley

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While I’m sure there are those who disagree, Jaws is the crowning exception to the rule “The book is always better than the movie.” In adapting the book to the script the story was transformed, made stronger and streamlined, and fixed all of the problems of the novel. To be transparent, Jaws is my all-time favorite movie. Ok, maybe the top five but that’s splitting hairs and ranking is largely dependent on which of my favorite movies I have most recently seen. I love every […]

We’re going to need a bigger boat

Jaws by Peter Benchley

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One of the reasons the 1975 film adaptation is hailed as a masterwork of suspense cinema is because the monster is rarely seen. Turns out, not having the monster be a prominent part your novel doesn’t work quite as well. The novel starts off well. The first half of the book is pretty compelling, and the movie follows the plot reasonably well. The scenes where the shark attacks its victims are pretty scary – especially the opening scene, which legitimately made me nervous about the […]

There’s nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things.

Jaws by Peter Benchley

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Ah yes, the classic book about….infidelity and the mob. So I was thinking, well it’s almost summer and there’s a new audiobook edition of Jaws available through Overdrive and it should be a fun light adventure to pass the time on a Sunday. But this book is not fun most of the time, barely about sharks when it really comes down to it, and directly and indirectly offensive throughout and in ways that not only don’t make any sense for the novel, but work directly […]

duuun dun ….. duuun dun …..

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I’m not entirely sure what Spielberg saw in this novel that made him think, “Yes, we’ll turn this into a summer blockbuster — with a brand new ending and about 2/3 of the content removed/changed”. That must have been his thought process, though, because besides the character’s names and the presence of a big ol’ shark, this book is wildly different from the movie. That being said — I love the movie, and the book was pretty damn good. “Look, Chief, you can’t go off half-cocked looking […]



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