Review Wednesday: Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Rating: 4.5 stars



Okay, so I can't really write a book review for this book without spoilers, and I've just finished so I might ramble more than usual since I haven't had time to organize thoughts. But these are my first impressions.

First of all, I'd already seen the movie. So I knew the whole ending, etc, as well as what happened in the book. It's been a year or so since I've seen the movie, but it seems like it followed the book pretty closely. Since I already knew Teddy was crazy, it was hard not to get sucked into his paranoia and believe him! It was just about impossible. The only thing I can compare it to is reading Lolita, where the narrator is so charming and convincing you have to keep reminding yourself that you can't believe a word he says. Especially as I got sucked into this one and got all involved in the story, the mystery, the conspiracy... It was really exciting!

As the story went along and Teddy and Chuck were discovering all about the island and the mental institution, I kept thinking about 1984. There was definitely that feeling of 'big brother is watching.' And everything on the island was like a little dystopian world, with the patients and orderlies, and people guiding them, friends who turned out to be enemies, etc. It was all very Orwellian. The island was like a character itself, which I lovelovelove in a book--when the setting is one of the characters it's so real. All the mental patients were great, too.

And the love story--how can I not mention the love story? That's the one thing in the book that I don't think a movie could ever do justice to. Not just because of the graphic sexual stuff, but because Lehane had a way of describing obsessive, consuming love that could not translate to screen. And of course I already knew he'd kill the woman so it was like a...well, a shot in the gut to read about their love. Of course, you wonder how much Teddy embellished the love to justify what he did, out of guilt, etc. But I haven't read a love story with such intensity since maybe Brokeback Mountain, which is hands down my favorite love story of all time.

Lastly, this is a very 'guy book.' That's the only way I can describe it. I used to love that kind of book, crime novels with cops and cases and time's always a-tickin. Something like Presumed Innocent or one of those books I loved so much as a teenager, with that tough-guy voice and the funny sidekick. Something about it is so just plain classic. Add to all that the social commentary about psychosis and its treatment, and you've got one hell of a complex cop story.



Okay. So I just went on a long ramble, but I think I've covered all the main points. This was a very absorbing novel that I would recommend to anyone who likes any of the books I've listed in this review, and to anyone who wants to read a book that's like losing one's mind while reading Lolita with tough-guy cops on Brokeback Mountain while big brother watches.



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Ten Things I Love About You

Okay, so...It's fall, officially and in every other sense. And everyone knows fall is the best season. Obviously.

In honor of my favorite season, and my favorite month, I've made a list to prove why fall is once and for all the best season ever.

1. Jeans, glorious Jeans!

2. Not one, but two, holidays. One for family (Thanksgiving) and one for troublemaking wholesome fun with friends.

3. That would be Halloween, if you hadn't figured that out. Actually, number 3 is an extension of number 2, but come on, Halloween deserves its own number. Candy, Costumes, Carving.

4. Pumpkin patches. No matter how old you are, these things are fun. And local. And you get to pick a pumpkin for that carving I mentioned above, and support your local growers (unless your patch gets their pumpkins from Mexico, and then you can support growers in another country).

5. Um, leaves. Hello, what fun would it be if you had to call it autumn all the time and not fall? Falling leaves make fall.

6. Lighting the fire again. My house smells like wood smoke again...yay! Bonfires outside are good, too. Just don't let your costume catch on fire. Those synthetics go fast. You don't want to be the naked guy (or girl) with a scorched bum. And frankly, probably no one else wants you to be either.

7. The end of the heat-wave we call summer down here in the South. That's right, South with a capital S. When the summer temps are over 110 degrees for a week straight, you have one thing to look forward to. Fall. Unless you have a pool, and then you probably don't care. And also, you should invite me over.

8. Goodbye, bugs. Now I know lots of people who don't know the irritation of a mosquito hovering next to your ear for months at a time, but it's really annoying. Just trust me on that. And we won't even get into the other friendly neighborhood bugs who think they'll try out being little itchy Draculas for half the year. And how do we deal with bloodsuckers?

9. Changing my wardrobe. Even if I only buy one new sweater, it's worth it. I'm tired of all my summer clothes by now...ready to switch back into cozy winter mode.

10. What's number 10? Football? New Sam Adam's seasonal flavor? Halloween again? Rocky Horror Picture Show? Thriller playing on the radio? Octoberfest? Haunted Houses? Austin City Limits? I can't pick just one. And I'm sure I've left out about 10 more reasons why this month and this season 'totally rock, dude!' Oh, yeah, that was in honor of all the college students swarming back into town. Yep. That's good, too.

Review Wedneday: Stephen King's The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon by Stephen King

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I very much enjoyed this story about a nine 'but big for her age' year-old girl who gets lost in the Maine wilderness. For the most part. So let's get down to it.



What I liked: The girl who loved baseball. Yep, that pretty much sums up why I loved this book. I mean, how can you not love a nine-year-old who loves baseball, in large part because she shared it with her absent-through-divorce father. And maybe I'm a little biased because I was a kid who loved basketball, and then baseball, and then football. Yep, I had favorite players, I could recount their stats. I knew who they pitched against, if they had trademark moves, etc. And for sure I could understand why and how baseball was her link to the world, how she listened to the games for solace and sanity and hope, for escape and, well, everything we love about sports as children or adults. And the girl was tough-as-nails but not unrealistically so. I didn't even mind that she cried ALL the time. I mean, not only was it realistic, but it didn't annoy me how, say, reading YA books about girls crying all the time makes me want to throw the book against the wall. No, when Trisha cried, it fit into the story and didn't make her seem like a spoiled whiny brat (sorry, I have a thing against girls who cry a lot in books). Instead of giving up and feeling sorry for herself, our plucky little heroine gets her resourceful butt up and goes on.



Which, incidentally, brings me to the next part of my review: what I didn't like so much. First of all...I may have read this wrong, but I'm pretty sure this is how it happens. Girl hiking in woods with family. Girl comes to fork in the road, goes off in the MIDDLE to pee, and gets lost. She tries to slant off to one side to catch up with her family on the trail, taking the short cut. Okay, so maybe the trail winds away somewhere and she wouldn't intersect it that way. So what does she do? She keeps walking. FOR NINE DAYS!!!!! Hello, why not just turn around? She's in the middle of a fork. When she realizes she's lost, if she'd turned around and gone back, she'd have to either run into one of the two trails or come back to the intersection. It's geographically not possible that she wouldn't. Draw a picture if you don't believe me. For such a smart, resourceful kid to not think of something so simple...I don't believe it for a minute. Not for a kid who knows what to eat in the woods better than I do, and I'm an adult who happened to grow up, that's right, IN THE WOODS!

The next thing that sort of bothered me was how she got sick from drinking clear pure stream water. That's pretty much a myth. If you drink stream/river water that comes out of a farm where there's runoff from animal dung, maybe. In the middle of a pristine forest? Not so much. I'd buy it if the swamp water, or the puddle water, made her violently ill ie food poisoning, but not the clean water. And the last thing. Yeah, I know, SK points out that this was her first bad decision, to go north towards Canada instead of south when she got to almost civilization. I could see how she'd miss when she was so close. I could see how she didn't hear the town. But who goes north? Come on, she's seen maps, right? She lives in Maine, right? Can anyone name a town north of Maine besides, um, Canada? Can anyone name a town south of Maine? Yeah, that's what I thought. This girl was way too smart to make those mistakes. If she'd been an idiot, I'd buy it. But then, she wouldn't have lived.



So I guess my final word would be this: come on, Mr. King. Don't fall back on the same lame old lost-in-the-woods cliches. Your fans expect more.



Also, like most of King's almost could-happen books, I didn't need the supernatural stuff. It was hokey. There's plenty of horror in real life, plenty of scary situations for a girl lost in the woods. We really don't need wasp-gods to know it's scary. Really. I like King's supernatural books fine, but some of them, I always think, are more plausible (aka scary) without it. Those elements just ruin the spine tingling "this could REALLY happen" vibe and distract/detract from the suspense. Maybe he just adds it bc he thinks the fans like that? I know I don't need it in every book. Not. At. All.



I definitely fell in love with the character in this book, which is one of the things that Stephen King does SO well. I just didn't buy all the circumstances. But overall, it was a satisfying, if not exactly terrifying, story.



I'd recommend to younger King fans or those just getting into his work. And YA readers. And people who have gotten or would like to get lost in the woods.



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Guest Author: Mona Ingram

Hey guys! Please welcome guest author Mona Ingram today. Find her post below and enjoy! And make sure to check out all her info below the post.

Take it away, Mona!

Dear Writing:
I miss you. I miss the touch of my fingers on the keyboard, I miss the sound the keys make as the words spill out onto the screen. And yes, I miss the sense of accomplishment at the end of a long day, when I’ve reached my word count goal.
My eyes are misting over as I write this. I know I told you I’d be seeing you again in a week, but the news is not good. I’ll be away from you for another week.
No, I’m not cheating on you. Well, maybe in a way. I didn’t tell you where I was going or who I’d be with for this very reason. I didn’t want you to be jealous. But please don’t be sad as I develop these other relationships...I’ll always come back to you.
What’s that? You’ll leave me if I don’t tell you right now what I’ve been doing?
Okay, I suppose that’s only fair, but let me start by saying it’s not you, it’s me. Heard that one before, have you? Yeah, but this time it’s true.
You see, my friends and colleagues have been telling me for a year now that I have to expand my horizons, as it were. Get out there and flirt – or at least make myself available for some new relationships. It’s hard for me – damned hard, because you know how private I’ve always been. But I eventually realized that they were right. And in the end it will only make our relationship stronger. This may be difficult for you to hear, but I’ll still be interacting with these new contacts, and I intend to do it on a daily basis.
But there’s an upside to this, writing. You’ll be the star in this expanded circle. I want to introduce you to more people so they can see how great you are. That’s why I’ve taken this time away from you.
You see, I’ve been learning about Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. It’s taken me a while to accept the obvious, but if I want people to read you, then I have to let them know you exist, and what better way than using the best social media tools out there? And when I have those three figured out, I’m going to establish a blog, which I’ll probably link with Goodreads.
Perhaps this break away from you has been for the best. Remember that new novel we chatted about? New ideas have been scrolling through on that screen that runs constantly at the back of my consciousness. Great ideas that’ll make that next book even better.
So please wait for me. I’ll be back soon, and we can take up where we left off.


Website: http://monaingram.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Mona-Ingra...
Twitter: @MonaIngram1
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/107...

Coffin Hop!

Hey all!

As many of you know, my favorite month is coming up tomorrow!

In honor of Halloween month, I'm participating in a Halloween Blog Hop.
Details below. It will run October 24-31.

Also, all of my book reviews for October will be for horror/thriller novels. As an extra special bonus, I am posting a blog every day of Halloween week--my Hallo-week book reviews! I will post twice about the Coffin Hop that week and the other 5 days will feature horror book reviews. Oh yeah, did I mention I love October?

I will let you know about the giveaway as the blog hop approaches! Feel free to check out the website ahead of time, and spread the news!

Review Wednesday: How to Save a Life, by Sara Zarr

How to Save a Life by Sara Zarr

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Okay. I've calmed down from my disappointment at the ending, and I am ready to give my review. First, though--when did they put a girl on the cover? In my ARC copy, the benches are empty!



My review...well, I read Story of a Girl a while back and just fell in swooning love with it, and consequently, its author. But...I was so bummed that this one wasn't as good!



I love the author because she is very simple in her writing style. That's still here in this book. So are the FOR REAL characters. You feel like you know them. They are awesome. They are your friends. They talk like real people, act like real people, are screwed up. They've got issues. I like reading about issues. In this book, one of the issues is something that's on my gag list--child molesting. So that was a little ick for me. It's not very graphic, though, unlike some other YA books that are just too much for me. I put the book aside for a few days once I got some pretty strong hints about that aspect, but I picked it back up and finished most of it in a day. It's a quick read, and the heavy issues are there, but they aren't rammed down your throat in a vomit-inducing kind of way. I like that. Subtle is the name of the game in good YA. YA that is graphic just for the shock factor really makes me mad. It's almost like the authors are just trying to get on a banned-books list, or to shock kids by telling them in graphic detail about stuff that, honestly, kids should not know about. Not in that much detail. ANYWAY, sorry for the rant. The point is, this book sidesteps the graphic while giving you all the impact of the issue.

The next thing I just loved about this book was the relationship between Jill and her father. So wonderful, and real, and OMG--he didn't even molest her! Sometimes I think YA authors want us to think that all fathers are secretly pedophiles. Jill's father is dead, but awesome. However, Mandy's stepfather is...something. Not a pedophile exactly, since she's 17 or 18 when the abuse takes place. And she has mixed feelings about it, so...anyway. Her mom's boyfriend molests her, and she takes it because she never gets attention from her mom or anyone else. Mandy is...psychotic. Like, hilariously crazy. That made it a little more bearable to read, because there was some relief from the squig factor.

I read a few reviews that said they didn't like either of the narrators. I loved Jill. She was so real, so pissed, so flawed. It was harder for me to like Mandy. She was sort of...bland. And the way they suddenly became friends seemed, well, sudden. The guys--I think I have a book-crush on Dylan. I LOVED him. Why didn't HE get a happy ending?

What I didn't like about this book: the ending. Predictable, and kind of lame. Honestly, I'm severely disappointed. Sara Zarr is an author who tackles real subjects with bravery and delicacy. I expect so much more than the ending I got. It was completely unrealistic, and way too happy. I'm all for a happy ending, but not if it doesn't fit the material. That's how this one seemed. Sure, I'd like everything to end up shiny happy in real life. But the point is, it doesn't. Mandy never had to pay for any of her mistakes. Sometimes that happens. But not in the way it happens in this book. I just got to the end and said, "WHATEVER! That would NEVER happen." It was a major letdown.



character: yay! plot: meh. ending: boo.



Recommended for YA readers who like lots of character development and not a lot of action.



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Inspiration

Finding inspiration

One question that readers often ask authors is where they get their inspiration. I think it’s one of the hardest questions to answer, which is why everyone wants to know. The truth is, everyone finds inspiration in something different. Maybe the beauty of nature, or a book that particularly touched something inside and made an engineer want to pick up a pen (or log on to a laptop) and write. Or maybe it’s something completely banal, like a twirling strip of flypaper or the fly that got stuck to it and is still trying to buzz its way free.

I can’t shed any insight on the writing process of bestselling authors, or tell you what inspired Stephen King or Stephanie Meyer. If you want to know that, I’m sure both have written enough explanations that you can find it in a Google search. All I can tell you is what inspires one indie writer. I doubt that even those mega-gazillion-times-over bestselling authors can tell what inspires another writer.

I can’t even say for sure what inspired me. The first time I wrote a novel, I was motivated by the slowness of my son’s eating. I had to find something to do or go crazy with boredom for the three hour-long table sessions each day. But I’m not sure what inspired me. I started out with a life experience I had, changed it up a little, decided it would actually be the end of the novel, and went back to the beginning to map out how the characters ended up at the end. The next series I wrote was inspired by a discussion with my family. The next was inspired by a friend of mine who said, “What happened to the days when bad guys were bad?”

That’s what’s so great about finding inspiration. It’s everywhere, in everything. There are as many sources of inspiration as there are writers and books and stories combined. And still more waiting to be discovered and to inspire one more shoemaker/bus boy/car salesman to write a novel.

Not to sound too super-cheese, but there is no end to inspiration. It is all around us, and most of all, inside us. So next time something inspires you, sit down and write about it. A phrase, a sentence, a page. From James Patterson to the mailman, all writers start there, at the very beginning, with an inspiration.


(This post originally appeared as part of The Superiors Blog Tour on Benjamin Wallace's blog. To see more of his blog, click here.)