Movie Review: Gone Girl

I don't usually review movies, but since I reviewed the book yesterday and said I'd be seeing the movie, I'm making an exception.

Often, when I love a book, the movie can be a disappointment. It's really hard to tell the same story from an external point of view when it was originally internal. The screenplay was written by the same author who wrote the novel and - as a writer - I was blown away that she was able to tell this story so well in both mediums.

There are a few minor changes to condense the story, but fans of the book will find all the things that were great about the read have been translated into the film. We watched the movie with a couple who hadn't read the book and they enjoyed it too.

Book Review: Gone Girl

This is a difficult book to review without giving anything away. It's about a marriage that has begun to fall apart when the wife goes missing. Did the husband do it?

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. It's told in alternating narrative and both main characters are writers. It's so well-written with such intricate details and insight into relationships between men and women and real characters with inside jokes. Halfway through the book, I was already looking forward to rereading it, and by Part Two I had forced my boyfriend to start reading it. He got custody of the book when I fell asleep and stayed up until 2am to finish it.

Gone Girl is clever, fun, edge of your seat reading. Tonight, we're going to see the movie and can't imagine how they'll translate it for the screen.

New Gig

I've just started writing for the Today's Author blog, which is a great site for writers to interact with other writers and get inspiration. I just wrote my first blog for them about NaNoWriMo, the writing challenge in November when all your writer nerd friends try to write 50,000 words in thirty days. Here's my take on it.

I'll still be updating this blog with my book projects, my house projects and my book reviews. But I'll probably be shifting writing focused posts to Today's Author.

Partial Book Review: The Light Between Oceans

I'm usually much more careful when I pick a book to read. When it isn't the newest book written by an author I already love, I'll start with a friend's recommendation, read lots of Amazon reviews and check out the first few pages before buying. Every time I skip this process, I regret it. You'd think I'd learn.

I bought The Light Between Oceans on a whim. The premise is killer and the novel starts with a couple of lighthouse keepers finding a live baby and a dead man when a boat washes on shore. Instead of following that thread, the book then backtracks to explain how the couple met and fell in love . . . for the next eighty pages or so. When we finally get back to the point - do they keep the baby? is she really an orphan? - we are subjected to pages of supposedly adorable moments of baby-talk and the joys of parenthood. If you removed all the scenes where nothing happens to move the story forward, this book might be thirty pages long.

I made it more than  halfway, but I give up. Life is too short and my copy of Gone Girl arrived today. I did follow my strict rules on book finding for that one so my expectations are high.

Book Review: Watch

A little over a year ago, I wrote a review for Cass McMain's first book, Sunflower. Her second book, Watch, seems like a departure, plot-wise. It certainly is a bit darker. But, readers will be treated to the relatable characters and amazing dialogue that are McMain's specialty. She is even able to write interesting conversations between children, without ever making it feel like you're reading YA.

Watch opens on a realistic family drama: Corky visits her dying uncle who is sharing family secrets before he goes. It's hard for her to make sense of his ramblings, which she first dismisses as a product of dementia. After his death, she reads his journal and is forced to confront what seems impossible: he believed her father was a vampire. Was he simply mentally ill or could there be some shred of truth there?

As Corky delves deeper into this mystery, she encounters an underground society of "Sanguinarians" who appear to be normal human beings whose fascination with vampires leads them to act out a sort of vampire culture. In an attempt to make sense of her family history, Corky is exposed to a part of the world she never knew existed and she learns that it's impossible to know a person's secrets by looking at them from the outside.

The ending felt a bit abrupt to me, but as the writer says: "it's all going in circles, so there is no end really."

Book Review: The Storied Life of A.J Fikry

This book was loaned to me by a friend. I never would have picked it up myself- the hokey title, the old fashioned cover that makes it look like a children's book - but I loved it. In retrospect, I wonder why my friend was not more confident in her pitch. This book is a book nerd's dream.

Each chapter starts with the main character giving his take on a well known short story. He owns a book store so the conversations in the novel are naturally bookish. They discuss literary technique and debate whether e-readers signal the ruin of publishing. In a writing class, one character complains about stories written in omniscient, present tense- like this book is. It could have come off as annoyingly self-conscious; I thought it was charming.

The characters talk about the value of ambiguous endings, how to build to a plot twist, and the age old advice that when there's a gun in the first act, it had better go off by the third. These ideas are played out within the story, which could have been simplistic lesson teaching, but was so much deeper because the story itself is lovely.

A.J. starts the story as a widower in his thirties who thinks his life is over. The next fifteen years prove him wrong.

Here's my favorite bit of bookish dialogue:

"'Show, don't tell' is a complete crock of shit," Daniel lectures her. "It comes from Syd Field's screenplay books, but it doesn't have a thing to do with novel writing. Novels are all tell. The best ones at least. Novels aren't meant to be imitation screenplays."

Now, if you have an opinion about that, you're a book nerd. Or a writer. Either way, read this book.

Book Review: The Arsonist

I lovelovelove Sue Miller and her latest book, The Arsonist, lived up to my expectations. The plot, an arsonist terrorizes a small town in New Hampshire, is juicy enough. But it's Millers characters that make her a super-star.

Frankie returns from Africa to her parents' summer home where they have just retired. As she considers her next professional move and gets involved with the local reporter, her mother struggles to come to terms with her husband's Alzheimer's diagnosis.

Both women contemplate love and the future while ruminating on the lessons of the past. How does Frankie make room for another person in her life without sacrificing her need to find meaningful work? How does Sylvia continue to care for a husband she doesn't love without giving up her own identity? The mysterious fires that begin to divide the town are a backdrop to this very human story.

I enjoyed every moment of the read, but found the ending a bit of a disappointment. I do not require tidy happy endings in fiction, but this one includes a paragraph that takes all the hope out of any idea that things might work out eventually. Edit that paragraph out in your mind, like I did, and the ending is satisfying.