Top 5 Tuesday: Books I’d rewrite

Hey, guys!
It’s Tuesday, that means it’s time for a bookish favorites posts. Top 5 Tuesday is hosted by Shanah Bionic Book Worm and is quite simple: check out the topic and write a post with your picks.
This week Shanah asked us about books we’d like to rewrite. I’m keeping everything spoiler-free here so this post will be a little vague. 😉

#1 Southern Reach Trilogy

I finally finished reading all three Southern Reach books (reviews coming at the end of the week). Well, I honestly don’t know why there were three of them. I didn’t exactly love books 1 and 2 but the third one was decent. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that you could easily edit all of the stories into one book with no more than 350 pages and I would be more entertaining and less annoying.

Annihilation on Goodreads

#2 DC Icons

I was so excited about the DC Icons books! We have four famous authors who take a shot at even more famous superheroes. Well, the outcome was not exactly impressive. The detailed reviews will be posted soon but in the meantime, let me tell you what the problem was.
With all of the books (maybe not that much with the one by Leigh Bardugo, but I still wasn’t over the moon) the stories felt extremely mediocre. Like you’re watching one of those TV series about the superhero in question and it’s episode 275 of uninspired content. Apart from the underwhelming ideas, I was extremely irritated that for about 180 of ca 215 pages just about nothing happened only to cram the actual story into the last couple of pages, thus rushing everything and making me feel irritated. I feel like the idea behind the DC Icons books was so promising, I’m sure the books would be salvageable with some work.

DC Icons on Goodreads

#3 The Princess Diaries

Oh, how I hated this one. I only read the first book in the series but that was enough for me. We all know the famous Anne Hathaway movie so the story definitely has the potential to be charming and cute. However, the is annoying and had me rolling my eyes at every other page. Somebody, please rewrite this to give it the same vibe as the film had!

The Princess Diaries on Goodreads

#4 American Pastoral

I know this is a famous novel for which Philip Roth received numerous awards. That didn’t stop me from wanting to throw this out the window. Not even the movie adaptation was good. And you know things are really bad when not even Ewan McGregor can save the day.
The premise is actually fascinating but the book just seems to drag on and describe extremely uninteresting things with great detail. I still can’t fathom how such a seemingly interesting story could turn out this boring. However, I still feel that we a little (or a lot) of rewriting, I’d love this book.

American Pastoral on Goodreads

#5 Stranger in a Strange Land

Whereas the other books mainly bored me, this one made me angry. The story is about a human who was born and raised on Mars but who is now back on Earth. For about half the book I was really digging it but then Heinlein really went over the edge. At some point, it becomes super weird and very misogynistic. I know it was published in 1961, so “different times, blablabla”. However, this is a sci-fi futuristic story, so you could have hoped for some improvement.
The story started out so well, I’d love to erase and rewrite the rest to finish it off just as well.

Stranger in a Strange Land on Goodreads

Which book do you want to rewrite? Let me know in the comments!

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