It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #100

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey meant to highlight books you read in the past week, and what you’re planning on reading this week.

So, my plan to get back to blogging regularly hasn’t been going so well. I had a lot of internet issues this past week, and have just been too busy this weekend. Hopefully I’ll get some reviews up in the week to come. This year seems like it’s flying by. Doesn’t anyone else feel like time is just speeding up for them? I blink and a week is gone.

I also saw the movie The Conjuring today. Lots of fun, and pleasantly scary. My boyfriend proclaimed it his new favorite scary movie.

Finished:
More Bones by Arielle North Olson and Howard Schwartz
The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.B. Hudspeth
Defy the Dark edited by Saundra Mitchell

Continuing to read:
The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman
The Outside by Laura Bickle

Hoping to finish:
The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
Blood of the Lamb by Sam Cabot

What are you reading this week?

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It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? #99

It’s Monday! What Are You Reading? is a weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey meant to highlight books you read in the past week, and what you’re planning on reading this week.

Life has been crazy hectic the last couple of months, so I’m now trying to ease myself back into blogging. Since the last one of these posts I did, I went to ALA Annual, moved apartments, had my boyfriend’s mom over for a week, and have played maybe around 10 concerts. In fact, I just finished playing a gig tonight. Phew! But now that the summer is winding down, I’m going to try to recommit myself.

The books I’m listing as finished are since the last time I posted one of these, so a while ago. *I did not read all of these in a week.*

Finished:
The Rules by Stacey Kade
The Dinner by Hermann Koch (audiobook)
American Savage: Insights, Slights, and Fights on Faith, Sex, Love, and Politics by Dan Savage
The Orphan of Awkward Falls by Keith Graves
In the After by Demitria Lunetta
Tampa by Alissa Nutting
The Storm Makers by Jennifer E. Smith
Magisterium by Jeff Hirsch
The Hallowed Ones by Laura Bickle
Parasite by Mira Grant
Star Cursed by Jessica Spotswood
My Week with Marilyn by Colin Clark
Nine Years Under: Coming of Age in an Inner-City Funeral Home by Sheri Booker
The Eleventh Plague by Jeff Hirsch
The Ghosts of Chicago: The Windy City’s Most Famous Haunts by Adam Selzer
Liesl and Po by Lauren Oliver
Joyland by Stephen King
Night Film by Marisha Pessl
Talking Pictures: Images and Messages Rescued from the Past by Ransom Riggs

Continuing to read:
The Dream Thieves by Maggie Stiefvater
The Waking Dark by Robin Wasserman
The Outside by Laura Bickle

Hoping to finish:
More Bones by Arielle North Olson and Howard Schwartz
The Resurrectionist: The Lost Work of Dr. Spencer Black by E.B. Hudspeth

Reviews posted:
Tampa by Alissa Nutting
Night Film by Marisha Pessl

What are you reading this week?

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Review: Night Film by Marisha Pessl

nightfilmPublished by Random House
Released August 20, 2013
624 pages
Where I got it: ARC received from publisher at ALA Annual 2013
Rating: ★★★★★

Description (from Goodreads):

On a damp October night, the body of young, beautiful Ashley Cordova is found in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. By all appearances her death is a suicide–but investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. Though much has been written about the dark and unsettling films of Ashley’s father, Stanislas Cordova, very little is known about the man himself. As McGrath pieces together the mystery of Ashley’s death, he is drawn deeper and deeper into the dark underbelly of New York City and the twisted world of Stanislas Cordova, and he begins to wonder–is he the next victim? In this novel, the dazzlingly inventive writer Marisha Pessl offers a breathtaking mystery that will hold you in suspense until the last page is turned.

Night Film was an absolute treat of a read for me. It started off a bit slowly, and I did roll my eyes at the setup and stereotypical detective noir elements Pessl uses to set the mood, but as I continued to read I became utterly engrossed. Just the like the main character, McGrath, gets sucked deeper and deeper into the world of dark filmmaker Cordova the longer he investigates, the stronger the pull of this book as I read layer after layer. The plot twists and turns in a really fun way, until you find yourself questioning everything about the story.

It opens with the introduction of Scott McGrath, a once A-list journalist whose ill-fated investigation of cult auteur Stanislas Cordova has ruined is career. McGrath lost everything–his job, his wife, custody of his daughter, and his own self-respect. The last thing he should do is pursue Cordova again, but after he sees fleeing beautiful woman desperate for help, then learns it was Cordova’s daughter who later jumped to her death that night, McGrath can’t turn away from the scent.

Despite warnings from all sides that following Cordova will only lead him into the darkest places of the human psyche, from which he may never return, McGrath attacks the case with a vigor he hasn’t felt in years. But just what is he investigating? Did Ashley Cordova truly commit suicide, or was something more sinister at work? Are Cordova’s films simply movies, or film documentary evidence of the depravity of their creator and his followers? Is the devil involved, with magic so black that it will destroy everybody who comes into contact with it?

Night Film is a doorstopper of a book, but I found that I didn’t mind. Everytime I thought the story was wrapping up, it just went deeper. Pessl supports the plot with McGrath’s own case files, so we can read the articles, police reports, and see the photographs that McGrath has collected. It was fascinating to have faces to put with the names in the story, and to feel like I was following along on the investigation as well.

I’m really happy that I was able to read Night Film–it’s one that will stick with me for a long time. It’s pleasantly grim, with characters that are at once attractive and repulsive. Night Film got under my skin.

Buy it on Amazon
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Review: Tampa by Alissa Nutting

tampaPublished by Ecco
Released July 2, 2013
272 pages
Where I got it: ARC received from publisher
Rating: ★★★★★

Description (from Goodreads):

Celeste Price is an eighth-grade English teacher in suburban Tampa. She’s undeniably attractive. She drives a red Corvette with tinted windows. Her husband, Ford, is rich, square-jawed, and devoted to her.

But Celeste’s devotion lies elsewhere. She has a singular sexual obsession—fourteen-year-old boys. Celeste pursues her craving with sociopathic meticulousness and forethought; her sole purpose in becoming a teacher is to fulfill her passion and provide her access to her compulsion. As the novel opens, fall semester at Jefferson Jr. High is beginning.

In mere weeks, Celeste has chosen and lured the lusciously naive Jack Patrick into her web. Jack is enthralled and in awe of his teacher, and, most important, willing to accept Celeste’s terms for a secret relationship—car rides after school; rendezvous at Jack’s house while his single father works late; body-slamming encounters in Celeste’s empty classroom between periods.

Ever mindful of the danger—the perpetual risk of exposure, Jack’s father’s own attraction to her, and the ticking clock as Jack leaves innocent boyhood behind—the hyperbolically insatiable Celeste bypasses each hurdle with swift thinking and shameless determination, even when the solutions involve greater misdeeds than the affair itself. In slaking her sexual thirst, Celeste Price is remorseless and deviously free of hesitation, a monstress driven by pure motivation. She deceives everyone, and cares nothing for anyone or anything but her own pleasure.

When I first heard about Tampa, I knew I absolutely had to read it. I stay away from erotica and romance fiction, but I love a good, dark story involving psychopaths. Despite the explicit sex throughout the novel (there’s a ton of it), I was totally enthralled by the story. Don’t get me wrong: I felt a bit unclean just by reading this book. Especially because I was usually reading it on a very crowded train, and started to feel like everyone around me could read my mind and tell what I just read.

Celeste is a fascinating character, and it was an eye-opening experience to live in her head during these pages. She really has only one goal in life: to have sexual encounters with fourteen-year-old boys. Every move she makes in her life is carefully planned and executed toward this goal. For a woman driven by her passions, she’s very methodical and calculating. She’s also a monster. She knows full well that what she is doing will probably greatly damage the boys, and this adds to her satisfaction. Celeste is a true predator: she’s beautiful, but cunning and ruthless, singling out the weakest boy from the crowd to take advantage of him.

I was really impressed with Nutting’s writing. It’s the kind of prose that really pops and hooks the reader. I would have run out of words to describe the sex acts, but Nutting’s vocabulary for that sort of thing runs deep. She never lets it get sexy, though. Really, the book walks that fine line of out and out condemnation of Celeste and making Celeste’s exploits seem attractive.

I want to recommend Tampa to my friends, because I think it’s a really strong book. I just don’t feel like I can though, except in the vaguest terms. I don’t want to tell my mom, “Hey, you should read this book, it’s really good,” and then have her know what I myself just read. But you, faceless readers of this review, you should read this. But only if you can handle page after page of statutory rape. If not, you should probably skip this one.

Buy it on Amazon

Add it on Goodreads

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I’m still here!

I’ve been very MIA for about a month, and I’m sorry guys. Life has been frenetic and I’m just trying to keep up.

I went to ALA Annual and picked up some great new books. I’ll post some of my favorites in the near future, or you can see my Goodreads shelf: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/267866?shelf=ala13

The day I got back from ALA I had enough time to sleep a few hours, then wake up and drive into Boston to pick up the keys to my new apartment. I’m actually still finishing up the move two weeks later. We’ll be entirely out tomorrow. However, I didn’t have any internet at the new place until earlier this week because of Comcast being dumb and the holiday.

And I’m playing a couple of summer concerts per week on top of all that. And Monday my boyfriend’s mom arrives for a week. Phew!

I promise that I shall return when life allows it. Thanks for listening!

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