BTT: Playing Editor

From Booking Through Thursday:

How about a chance to play editor-in-chief? Fill in the blanks:

__________ would have been a much better book if ______________________.

I had to think about this a bit, but then I came up with a perfect case. Frank Schätzing's The Swarm could've been an excellent book, but wasn't.

I'm fairly sure my wife wasn't the only one to give up with the book. She made it through 200-300 pages, then got tired of nothing happening - just before the first major eco catastrophe in the book. I made it through the whole 900-page book, but in the end it felt like a total waste of time.

So, had I been the editor of the book, I would've pushed Schätzing to make it at least 200-300 pages shorter. I'm fairly sure that would've been feasible, and I believe the result would've been a better book.

If there's ever a movie made of this book (and I think it's likely), they'll have to use scissors a lot, and that'll hopefully make a good movie out of a boring book.