BUCKET LIST UPDATE No. 191: Read “Jaws” by Peter Benchley

One of the most iconic movies of all time is the 1975 thriller, “Jaws.” Directed by Stephen Spielberg, the movie’s about a giant Great White shark that terrorizes Amity Island, a vacation town that’s having its summer ruined by a man-eating shark. In steps the local police chief, a scientist and a salty, old fisherman, who hope to track down and kill this monster shark before anyone else gets killed.

What many people don’t know is that the movie “Jaws” is based a novel of the same name written by author Peter Benchley. Released in February 1974, the novel stayed on the best sellers list for nearly a year afterward. My interest in the novel really picked up when I saw that Bookmarks Magazine listed it on a “best of” list they called “101 Crackerjack Sea Books." I officially placed “Jaws” on my “bucket list” about a year ago.

You don’t run into editions of “Jaws” every day, and I happened to find an old paperback copy of the novel while browsing in a thrift store in Castleberry, Ala. in early December. Fifty cents later, I owned a 1975 Bantam paperback edition of the novel. I started reading this 309-page edition on Jan. 1 and finished reading it on Friday night.

Now that I’ve seen the movie and read the book, I have a hard time deciding which one is best. They’re both excellent for different reasons. Also, as you might have imagined, there are significant differences between the two. (Stop reading here to avoid spoilers.)

First, in the book, Hooper, the young scientist, fools around with Chief Brody’s wife. Second, the mafia plays a significant role in the novel, and so does the editor of the local Amity newspaper. Also, Hooper gets killed in the book, that is, he doesn’t survive as in the movie.

To me, the biggest difference involves the grizzled fisherman, Quint. In the movie, there’s an iconic scene, where the three shark hunters are aboard Quint’s ship, the Orca, late at night. While sitting around a galley table, Quint tells Hooper and Brody that he’s a survivor of the USS Indianapolis incident. This scene isn’t even in the book at all. In fact, they’re never even on the boat at night.

I enjoyed “Jaws,” and it left me wanting to read the rest of Benchley’s books. By my count, he’s published 14 books, including eight novels and six non-fiction books. They include, in order of publication, “Time and Ticket” (1964), “Life’s Tempo on Nantucket” (1970), “Jaws” (1974), “The Deep” (1976), “The Island” (1979), “The Girls of the Sea of Cortez” (1982), “Q Clearance” (1986), “Rummies” (1989), “Beast” (1991), “White Shark” (1994), “Ocean Planet: Writings and Images of the Sea” (1994), “Shark Trouble: True Stories About Sharks and the Sea” (2001), “Shark: True Stories and Lessons from the Deep” (2002) and “Shark Life: True Stories About Sharks and the Sea” (2005).

In the end, how many of you have ever read “Jaws”? What did you think about it? Did you like it better than the movie? Have you read any of Benchley’s other novels? Which did you like? Let us know in the comments section below.