I'm about halfway through the audiobook of JAWS, a novel I have not read since perhaps 1976. I remember finding it boring, especially when stacked against the film adaptation, and that's because the movie trims all of the unnecessary fat from the book.
The book spends a lot of time on a sub-plot about the slimy mayor wanting the beaches to remain open because he owes money to the mob and the drop in tourism caused by the closure causes tourist not to rent or but summer lodgings, and a mobster has his finger in that potential pie of profit. Much is also made of the attraction between Chief Brody's wife and marine specialist Hooper, and both sub-plots bring the narrative to a screeching halt, utterly forgetting the situation with the shark sometime for a chapter at a time. If the movie had remained fully faithful to the source novel, I kinda doubt that it would be the revered classic that it is today.
The book is a summer reading potboiler at best, and if you ask me, author Peter Benchley happened to be in the right place at the right time and with the right page-turner for the American book consumer in 1974. Worth reading for the curious and also for those who want to see what birthed the movie. For all others, you can give it a polite miss. It's not terrible, just mediocre.
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