Shark Week Is for Readers, Too: 10+ Books to Read this Week

Author:
Adrienne Crezo
Publish date:
Aug 13, 2014

Each year for one week, The Discovery Channel takes over the airwaves with a seven-day onslaught of movies, documentaries, survivor tales and semi-factual mockumentaries about sharks. As fascinating as it all is, readers are left high and dry—where are all the books about sharks? I've rounded up several—some classic, some campy, some for kids, some nonfiction—for those of us who want all the thrill of Shark Week, but with somewhat less screen time. (Or supplement your Discovery marathoning. There are no rules in Shark Week.)

1. Jaws

It wouldn't be a list about shark books without the one that started it all. Peter Benchley's classic inspired Steven Spielberg's film, and 40 years later it's still deeply, relentlessly terrifying. Hank Searls' followup novelizations of Jaws 2 and Jaws: The Revenge and Benchley's The Deep are also highly encouraged reading for the week.

2. The Old Man and the Sea

Hemingway's tale of a Cuban fisherman going head-to-snout with a marlin is remembered for many reasons, none of which pertain to Shark Week. We should change that. The Nobel Prize in Literature is nice and all, but this week is a big deal right now, and an entirely unscientific survey I just conducted reveals that only one in several readers outside of high school has bothered to pick up The Old Man and the Sea, except when rearranging bookshelves. (That one is me. This book is worth reading any week of the year.)

3. The Meg series

You don't have to be an especially well-read fan of megalodon lore to enjoy Steve Alten's bestselling undersea thriller series featuring the rediscovery of the largest shark species in history. Begin at the beginning with Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, then dare yourself to tear through the next five Meg novels (The Trench, Primal Waters, Hell's Aquarium, Nightstalkers and Origins) before you have to enter a body of water larger than a bathtub.

4. In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors

Technically, Doug Stanton's harrowing story of the 317 men who survived the sinking of the USS Indianapolis isn't specifically about sharks. But it's damn good reading, and a sufficient quantity of sharks are involved in the story to include it on this list.

5. Sharks! by National Geographic Kids

Sharks are scary, but they're also super-cool. If you have a small person who enjoys reading, consider picking this title up on your next trip to the library. Or check it out for yourself—no one dislikes 32 pages of cool facts about sharks.

6. Nugget and Fang: Friends Forever--or Snack Time?

So maybe stories about vicious attacks or details about shark migration are a little too advanced for some kids. Fortunately for them, there is Tammi Sauer and Michael Slack's adorable little story about vegetarian sharks who make friends with a school of minnows.

7. Shark Girl

Kelly Bingham's debut young adult novel chronicles the life of a girl who has lost her arm to a shark attack, and then must return to high school with a prosthesis to face the potential mockery of her fellow classmates. Shark Girl is less shark-centric than, say, Meg, but more personal and introspective than most other books on this list. And as a young adult novel in verse, it's possible that Shark Girl is the only book (so far) about a shark-attack-survivor in high school that also rhymes. (Joking aside, Bingham's work here is impressive and award-winning, and worth reading even outside the brief moment that is Shark Week.)

8. Bait

If you put four drug addicts on an island, heroin on a nearby island, and a shiver of sharks between, what happens? This is the premise of J. Kent Messum's award-winning first novel, Bait. You'll have to find out for yourself what happens after that.

9. The Secret Life of Sharks

For every myth Jaws perpetuated, Pete Klimley debunked three in his celebrated collection of real facts about sharks—what they eat, when, how they raise their young, when and how they migrate. From hammerheads to great whites, there are few books as full of firsthand data on shark behavior.

10. Shark Fin Soup

There are few books more appropriate for this week than Susan Klaus' thriller about a man who avenges his wife's murder at the hands of shark finners by becoming an ecoterrorist called Captain Nemo. Nemo's methods may be suspect, but his heart is in the right place.

There's no way to include every book about sharks on this list. What are your favorites?