Book Reviews by a Chick Who Reads Everything
I read every kind of book from the absolute serious to the downright silly.
Hi Everybody!
I launched the Adapt Me Podcast this week! It’s available on Spotify and Amazon Music as of now. It’ll be on more in the coming future. I plan on releasing episodes on a monthly basis.
If you want to be a guest, feel free to email me here!
Hi Everyone,
Something very special happened to me about two weeks ago. I got promoted to being an archivist, a position that I’ve wanted to be for a very long time. I’m slowly transitioning into that role as of now.
In the meantime, I’ve reading lots of books to keep myself from stressing out from the new job. I’m almost done with I Let You Fall: A Romantic Drama by Sara Downing, and I started two new titles that I’d love to show right now!
Let’s begin!
Greetings From Nowhere by Barbara O’Connor is about finding friends even in the most remote of places. Ever since her husband Harold died, Aggie has been all alone with her cat, Ugly, and keeping up with bills and repairs at the Sleepy Time Motel in the Great Smoky Mountains have become next to impossible. On top of that, no one has stayed there in nearly three months. When Aggie reluctantly places a For Sale ad in the newspaper, she doesn’t know that a few families will come her way. These include Kirby and his mom, who need a room when their car breaks down on the way to reform school; Loretta and her parents, who are on a trip to honor Loretta’s birth mother; and Willow and her dad, who wanted to move into the motel to replace the life that was shattered when Willow’s mom left. Above all, Aggie and her guests eventually find the friends that they needed the most.
I like this book so far. It clearly spells out each of the character’s motivations, especially why they go to the motel. Each of the chapters focuses on Aggie, Kirby, Loretta, or Willow, but it doesn’t feel abrupt. Like with Salt to the Sea, they constantly interact with one another. As a result, readers get to see multiple viewpoints of the same incident and what the other characters are doing while the novel highlights a certain person. I look forward to seeing how they all become friends.
And now, let’s look at the second and final book!
Valley of Shadows by Rudy Ruiz is a visionary neo-Western blend of magical realism, mystery, and horror, and it explores the dark past of injustice, isolation, and suffering along the US-Mexico border. In 1883 West Texas, the Mexican city of Olvido is stranded on the northern side of the new border between the US and Mexico after the Rio Grande shifts course. When a series of mysterious and horrific crimes occur in the divided town, a retired Mexican lawman is lured out of retirement to restore order and to save the lives of abducted children. In the face of skeptics and hostile Anglo settlers, Solitario Cisneros struggles to overcome not only the evil forces in the area, but also his own inner demons. He is burdened by a mystical curse that has guided his lonely destiny, until Onawa, a gifted and beautiful Apache-Mexican seer, joins his mission and dares him to change the course of both their lives.
This book is not out until September 20, but I got an advanced reader’s copy from Books Forward. It’s a good novel so far. I like Solitario as a character, for he’s smart and good at what he does. Readers can easily see why he’s so reluctant to assist the town with solving the crimes as well as empathize with his personal demons. In addition, it does an effective job with addressing discrimination and injustice in this time period. This is especially true when Onawa acknowledges how if Solitario as the new sheriff arrests a white person for a crime, then he would be considered racist by the Anglo settlers, but if he apprehends a Mexican person, then other Mexicans would assume that he’s selling out his own ethnicity.
One thing that I noticed while reading it is that it seems to fit with Hero’s Journey template popularized by Joseph Campbell almost perfectly. Solitario (good name for a guy who wants to be alone) gets the call to help the town to solve the crimes as the new sheriff, but he refuses it outright. However, he ends up searching for the abducted children with assistance from Onawa, who has supernatural abilities. At this point, the novel is roughly at The Crossing of the Threshold phase. I’ll discuss the Hero’s Journey more when I get into the full review.
Finally, I want to point out that this might not be for everybody. Its opening scene contains the first Olvido sheriff, his wife, and their eldest son getting murdered, and it’s pretty gory. Even I got squeamish at times. Additionally, some people might not like the talk about injustice, thinking that’s too contemporary. I think it’s necessary because it feels natural to the story. Solitario has many reasons why he doesn’t want to assist with the case, including how Anglo settlers might perceive him (think Bart the black sheriff from Blazing Saddles).
Overall, I’m excited to see what’s to come in this tale.
We have now come to the end of the thirty-seventh chapter of “What Am I Reading?”
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We have our classics, and today, people debate about what should be regarded as a modern classic, as in something that should be remembered that came out recently. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers is one such book that some people have bestowed that title on. It’s a memoir that details the author’s time raising his little brother after their parents’ deaths. Its innovative ways definitely shook up that genre, but it got on my nerves at times.
Published in 2000, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius is Eggers’s extraordinary memoir. At age 21, both of his parents died within five weeks of each other, and he became the legal guardian of his 8-year-old brother Toph. Along with their older siblings, Dave and Toph move to California, and they get an apartment. This is the story of how he raised his brother and of the love that held his family together.
Why do people consider it a modern classic? Well, it’s all in the writing style. It contains a stream-of-consciousness type, in which Eggers rambles on a variety of topics and seamlessly switches from one to another. I don’t know if another book contains this kind of style prior, but I’m certain that there have been novels that have followed suit. In a way, it’s the book version of Monty Python’s Flying Circus. Some readers may find this refreshing from other memoirs, while others might get irritated by the digressions. Since the situation that he was in happened so fast, it makes sense that his thoughts could be scattered to display how confused he was. Even though I understood why, I started to become annoyed after a few too many ramblings.
I was also prepared for some sadness with this book. It’s heartbreaking to know that Eggers and siblings went through this tough time in their lives, and somehow, they made it work. In addition, he can also be pretty vulnerable. He expresses plenty of self-doubt, especially if he’s being the best parent he could possibly be to Toph. Eggers also writes with sincerity about his family, especially his parents. It’s clear that he loves them despite their flawed natures, especially his dad (part of it involves a broken door). On the other hand, he can come off like an egotist in the most Gen X way at times. This is most apparent when he and his co-workers at the Might magazine bash on The Real World, yet he ends up auditioning for the show. At least he gets called out for his egotism by various people including Toph.
In the meantime, I wasn’t expecting the funny bits. I loved the running gags of Eggers telling Toph to clean his hat because it smelled like urine and to stop saying certain words. Moreover, I enjoyed reading about his fantasies. These included how he would murder all of his enemies, how he would rescue Toph if the latter was every put in foster care, and what would happen to his little brother when he left him with the babysitter. They were all surprisingly hilarious.
This was mainly because of the audiobook narrator Dion Graham. There’s a reason why Graham is one of the most prolific ones around. He’s gotten a lot of accolades for his works, and he’s pretty versatile. He has recorded audiobooks for young adult novels like Concrete Rose by Angie Thomas to Death by Black Hole by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Graham has also worked on audiobooks by authors like Dave Eggers, and I can see why. He embodies whatever he’s saying. Even when Eggers digresses (he tends to do this a lot), Graham gives a reason to why those happen with appropriate tones. Also, his choking sounds left me in pieces. When Eggers becomes filled with self-doubt or narcissism, Graham vocalizes those. However, I wasn’t able to listen to the rest of the audiobook due to issues with some of the cds from that audiobook.
The only thing I wish the audiobook would have done was include the preface, the acknowledgements, and the ways to enjoy the book all written by Eggers himself. They really set up the memoir’s tone and the awareness that not everybody will read all of it. I’m going to be very honest. I didn’t know about those aspects until I cracked open a physical copy of A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. At the same time, when I read the book, I still had Dion Graham’s voice stuck in my head. That’s the power of a great audiobook narrator.
Overall, there’s no book like A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers, yet it can get on people’s nerves if they don’t know what they’re getting into. It’s filled with humor, sadness, and sincerity. However, it’s also filled up with pages of rambling that can either delight or annoy people after a while. At the end of the day, it all depends on what the reader can tolerate. I would recommend it to those who want something different in their memoirs and are fans of Eggers’s other works. It’s up to the reader to read the physical copy, listen to the audiobook, or both. Even though it rubbed me the wrong way at times, I can see why people view it as a modern classic.
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Hi Everyone,
It’s been awhile since the last chapter, but I’ve been reading plenty of books. Recently, I finished No-Mod: Book 1 of the Mute-Cat Chronicles by Derek Porterfield and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand from two chapters ago. With the latter, if you betted that I wouldn’t finish it, you lost.
I’m currently reading I Let You Fall: A Romantic Drama by Sara Downing and Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline from the last chapter as well as an audiobook that I just picked up this past week.
Let’s take a look at it!
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is about the identical Vignes twin sisters. They would always be identical with their looks. But after growing up in Mallard – a small, southern black community – and running away at age 16, their lives as adults become different with their families, communities, and racial identities. Many years later, one sister with her black daughter returns to the place she once tried to escape from. The other passes as white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Despite their separation, their lives remain intwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ storylines intersect?
I’m about halfway through the novel, and I like it despite how much a slow-burner it is. I don’t mean this as an insult. I only notice that it takes its time with getting from one place to another. It sometimes goes back and forth between time in order to do so. I had to really pay attention whenever the third-person narrator recalls an event happening to one character in plenty of detail as that person has a conversation with another.
Some readers might be frustrated by the pacing, but it doesn’t bother me all that much because it’s a very interesting character study about a pair of light-skinned twins and how they chose to deal with the various aspects of colorism. Even though both Desiree and Stella appear white, they know, especially the former, that they will be still be black in the eyes of the white community ever since they witnessed their father getting murdered by a white mob. Years later, Desiree returns to Mallard to escape her abusive marriage, and her black daughter Jude experiences a lot of colorism in that community to the point that she leaves it for California to attend college. As for Stella, she pretends to be white so much that she demonstrates anti-blackness towards a black person who wanted to move in the white neighborhood.
This isn’t my first time reading about colorism and passing as I had read The Personal Librarian by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray in the past. Unlike that novel, The Vanishing Half shows that both aspects are still very much present in today’s society, still impact how certain people are perceived, and still can be passed down from one generation to the next. The town itself demonstrates this with how everyone is so light-skinned that they can pass off as white. At the same time, they exhibit a lot of anti-blackness, especially how the twins’ mom tells them to stay away from dark men. Only one of them listened.
As mentioned earlier, I’m listening to the audiobook now, and Shayna Small narrates it. Small has narrated several audiobooks like Red to the Bone by Jacqueline Woodson, Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi, and Sunflower Sisters by Martha Hall Kelly. Small gives subtle, but distinct voices to her characters. For instance, she gives Desiree an assertive and defying tone, while she portrays Stella as more quiet and delicate. The men she depicts have their distinctions too. For example, Desiree’s boyfriend Early talks with a relaxed, independent, and kind tone. This is in contrast to Desiree’s ex-husband Sam, who speaks more quickly and aggressively.
Overall, even though it can be slow and jumps timelines a lot, I find the characters to be pretty nuanced. I’m definitely rooting for the twins to be reunited if they ever are.
We have now come to the end of the thirty-sixth chapter of “What Am I Reading?”
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Full disclosure: The author of the book that I am about to review is a patron at a library that I work at. All of the opinions stated in this review are solely mine.
When I read Buy My Book, Not Because You Should, But Because I’d Like Some Money by John Marszalkowski about two years ago, it blew my mind because a. It was a memoir that was written by a “non-celebrity” and b. It was written in a non-linear structure to reveal his ADHD mindset and to give it more personality. I thought about this book recently when I read another book called A Life Well Bred, A Life Well Led: A Personal Memoir in Eight Psychosocial Development Stages by Robert Jones – author of the Richville series. That too was about an average person’s life, but it was told in a linear and predictable way even though it had a unique framework. There’s nothing wrong with these narratives, yet some things prevented me from connecting to it.
The title A Life Well Bred, A Life Well Led: A Personal Memoir in Eight Psychosocial Development Stages describes what readers need to know about the book. Specifically, Jones looks at his life through the lense of Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development. This theory asserts that personality “develops in a predetermined order through eight stages of psychosocial development, from infancy to adulthood. During each stage, the person experiences a psychosocial crisis which could have a positive or negative outcome for personality development.”
The reason why I included the information about the theory itself is that Jones doesn’t. It’s even weirder that the second chapter has the title “Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development – Explanation” and that most of the chapter titles are the said stages.
Before I dive too deep into what bothered me, I will go over what I liked about the memoir first. I really liked the parts where Jones includes his articles from the “Senior Living” section of the Macomb Daily. With these, he goes into detail about his life, and it also promotes his work as a writer. My favorite is when he talks about his first date with his now wife of 50 years. He sets it to the tune of “I Remember It Well” from the movie Gigi. I can easily imagine Jones being Maurice Chevalier in that scene. Also, lots of autobiographies and memoirs include pictures and other visual content, but not as extensively as Jones does here. It feels like a scrapbook at times. Imagine if it was one. In addition, it was nice to read about his impact on his community. For example, he initiated a summer recreation program for special needs students. It really showed how much he cares about other people.
Now, let’s get to the nitty gritty. There were some choices that Jones makes in the memoir that simply baffled me. The first of these was including “Literature Background Notes.” These contained short story definitions, elements of a short story, the meaning of conflict and its types, the Aristotelian plot structure, general terms for literature, how readers get to know the characters, and the different kinds of genre. I don’t know why he included them other than to emphasize how to create a framework around one’s story that he stresses in the first chapter. What’s more confusing is that it’s in the “Erik Erikson’s Eight Stages of Psychosocial Development – Explanation” chapter.
The next problem was the lack of conflict. Don’t get me wrong. There was drama so to speak, but it only popped up once in a blue moon, and it was immediately resolved by the end of the page or by the next one. For instance, on his very first day of school when he was 5, a car ran into him, which resulted in a tear in his pants and a bruised kneecap. He lied to his mother about the injury saying that he fell on a sidewalk by some stones. I wondered how he was affected by the situation, like if he developed some phobia in which he had to look both ways before crossing the street in order to combat it, or if he became so good at lying that he would even lie to himself. Nope, he just moved on, and recounted the other adventures while walking to school. And, that was that. Readers never get to hear that story and its impact again. I’m not saying that Jones needed to have some traumatic event that shaped his life for good or worse. John Marszalkowski’s life is just about as average as Jones’, but his memoir/set of informal essays is full of inner turmoil like whether or not he wants to have kids and the need to belong. It’s as if he doesn’t want to show more conflict than needed, or else it would not fit the framework that he devised to tell his story, and that’s a big no no. A good structure rises from the narrative itself, not imposed onto it.
My biggest peeve with this memoir is that it’s in third person. All of the other autobiographies and memoirs were in first person as a way for the readers to connect to their story and to get into the author’s mindset. Starting from the opening pages where Jones talks about how to tell one’s story, it felt like a 1950s instructional video in book form. If one ever gets their hands on a copy, try reading it out loud in that voice. It’s very uncanny. I couldn’t connect to it for that very reason. I wanted to hear more about how he felt about the important moments and people in his life and how he developed his opinions, but that point of view prevented me from doing that. In other words, I would’ve gotten to know him more if the memoir was in first person.
Oh, and another quick thing: the table of contents shows 11 chapters in the book. In reality, there’s 12. Did the editor see that? This is not me throwing shade; I’m only asking.
Overall, A Life Well Bred, A Life Well Led: A Personal Memoir in Eight Psychosocial Development Stages by Robert Jones should’ve had the more accurate title A Life Too Well Bred, A Life Too Well Led: A Personal Memoir in Eight Psychosocial Development Stages That Demonstrate How Well Robert Jones Lived His Life. There’s a reason why people gravitate towards memoirs and autobiographies that are so gut wrenching and heartbreaking, but are triumphant in the end. I’m not saying that Jones should’ve lived a less perfect life, but with what conflict there is in the memoir, it’s basically saying that he lived a good and fairly average one. I personally didn’t mind the Psychosocial Development Stages framework; it needed to be more clear for more like myself who are seeing that theory for the first time. It also doesn’t help with the third person voice. The only way that I will recommend this memoir is to those who love reading materials from local authors and to those who taken psychology and child development classes.
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When certain novels get popular, there’s a risk that they can be overhyped to the point that it might ruin their appeal. Once readers finally have a chance to read about the titles in question, they might ask, “What did people see in this book?”
Miracle Creek – the debut novel of Angie Kim – was popular when it first came out. I remember looking at the May 2019 issue of Book Pages magazine and seeing the book cover on it. That was how I knew it made it. And given the plot, I knew I had to read it. And reader, the hype was worth it.
Miracle Creek takes place over a course of four days and follows a murder trial after a hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) chamber explodes and kills two people including an autistic child in a small town in Virginia. A showdown unfolds among various characters who may or may not be keeping secrets in regards to what happened.
It’s a pure coincidence that I posted this review the week after the movie version of Where the Crawdads Sing – another book that received a lot of hype upon its release. Miracle Creek has a lot of things going for it as I will explain in this evaluation, which certainly appeals to a wide range of readers, but there’s a big difference between the two novels. While Where the Crawdads Sing contains a lot of familiar tropes, it doesn’t do anything new with them, which is not necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, Miracle Creek brings nuance to its themes, which have more of a long-lasting impact.
The novel is told through 7 characters. Normally, I would think that there’s way too many perspectives because how can one remember who’s saying what? Fortunately, this book doesn’t have that problem. Each one of them is layered, has their own motives and conflicts, and is sympathetic (to some degree), but not completely innocent when it comes to the crime. In other words, although all of them have good intentions, they are unreliable as narrators. For instance, Elizabeth is the mother of Henry – the dead autistic child, and she’s on trial for the murders. She wanted her son to be normal and would go to great lengths to ensure that he could behave like neurotypical children. However, what she does can be seen as child abuse like making him drink bleach. Did she really start the fire? One will have to read the book to find out. I didn’t like her because of what she does to Henry, but she has a realization that how he acts is not always because of his diagnosis. He’s simply being a kid. Overall, I can easily see where she’s coming from. And this is coming from someone who has a complicated relationship with the spectrum.
In addition, it helps that they interact with the other characters constantly. These relationships inadvertently play several roles in the explosion. For example, Matt – a doctor who was getting HBOT for his infertility – was sharing cigarettes with the teenaged Mary and doing “other things” with her. When his wife Janine finds out about it, she confronts Mary by calling her nasty names and throwing a cigarette pack and some matches at her. Did this lead to the fire? One will have to read the novel to find out. In addition, prior to the incident, Elizabeth and Theresa – a mother of a daughter with cerebral palsy – talked about the trials and tribulations of having special needs children and how sometimes they think of what would have happened if their children didn’t exist. They would be relieved since they would have time for themselves. Yet, at the same time, they always felt guilty for thinking that because of the devastation. Did this play into the fire? For the last time, read the book!
Along with disability and taking care of special needs children, Miracle Creek also deals with immigration, the Asian-American experience, how far people are willing to go to aid and protect their families. Kim handles these themes well, for she explores them pretty deeply. The Yoo family came from Seoul, South Korea years prior to the explosion for a better life. Young and Mary came to America first, while Young’s husband Pak stayed behind for sometime to raise some more money for Mary’s education. Because of this, he’s called a “goose father” (a common expression in South Korea used for fathers who stay behind while their families are in an English-speaking country). At the same time, Young had to work long hours at the store their host family owned, and as a result, she didn’t see her daughter all that often. This resulted in a strained relationship between them.
For the Asian-American experience, Janine reflects on how she wanted to become a doctor just to spite her family who wanted her brother to train as one. She also comments on how her family reacted to her dating a white guy. At one point, she ruminates about how there’s an Asian fetish, but not a blond one. I personally never thought about that until now. Meanwhile, when Young confronts Pak about his involvement with the explosion, he wants to keep silent on the new details, so they can get the insurance money for Mary’s college funds. Refusing to stand by this any longer, Young insists on telling their lawyer, so they wouldn’t hold the truth in anymore. Throughout the book, Young is a dutiful and obedient wife and loves her family despite the strains, but once she discovers the truth, she realizes that she must speak up even at the expense of said family.
Since this book is a suspense novel, I have to talk about the twists and turns. There were so many of them, especially in the second half. A lot of these occur at the very end of the chapters to leave readers hanging. It’s like the revelation on an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit occurring right before the commercial break. Cheesy as it may sound, but they worked because they were out of left field. For example, when Young finds some cigarettes in the barn by their house. She questions this, for Pak promised her that he quitted smoking. And then, she finds a pamphlet containing apartment listings in Seoul dated a week prior to the explosion. I was like, “What?????”
Kim also handles the trial scenes effectively as she explores the ins and outs of how one is conducted throughout this book. This makes sense as she is a former trial lawyer. In the novel, both the defense attorney and the prosecutor prefer spinning the truth to adhere to their narratives that they initially conducted as opposed to exposing the actual stories as they come out. These scenes contain a lot of twists and turns that I didn’t see coming for the most part. This would make John Grisham proud.
Overall, Miracle Creek by Angie Kim is worth the read. It’s a wonderful mystery/suspense novel about a murder trial involving a HBOT explosion, and it explores a variety of characters and themes with plenty of depth as well as their involvement with the incident. This nuance along with the twists and turns got me hooked from start to finish. I would recommend it to those who love books involving trials, the Asian-American experience, caring for disabled loved ones, and slow burner mysteries like Where the Crawdads Sing. I get why it became popular, and it deserves to be remembered.
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Hi Everybody,
I want to let you all know that I’ll be launching a podcast called “Adapt Me Podcast.” It’ll be about novels that have never been adapted into movies, television shows, etc… very soon, so mark it in your book(s)!
I’m looking for guests from all backgrounds who love books! If you want to be one, feel free to email me here!
I’m really looking forward to this new adventure!
Content warning: this review briefly discusses the Delia Owens controversy and sexual assault.
When the novel Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens was published in 2018, it became one of the biggest and best selling books in recent years. Of course, it was only a matter of when it was going to get a movie adaptation. Our prayers were answered when the film version of the popular novel was developed and released on July 15, 2022. Since I reviewed the book over a year ago, I knew I had to do the same with the flick. And what do I think? Well…I find the controversy surrounding Owens to be a lot more interesting than the movie itself, but I still liked it.
Before I get into the review proper, let’s explore more of the elephant in the room. For the last few weeks, various outlets have talked about the controversy surrounding the author. For those who don’t know, Delia Owens was summoned by the country of Zambia to testify as a witness about a murder of a poacher that occurred in 1996 when she and her then husband Mark lived there. According to The Atlantic, that nation has no statute of limitations when it comes to homicide.
As a result, many people have flat out mentioned that they didn’t want to see the movie because of this situation. They say this because they don’t want to pay money to someone who was potentially involved in a murder.
In addition, it seems that many reviews divulge into the Delia Owens situation whenever they discuss the film, but why? None of the people participating in the movie were involved. Owens herself had no part in the making of the movie except for a cameo, yet she’s getting royalties out of it. I can certainly think of other things like how the main character Kya is the author’s self-insert who is also accused of a murder. However, there’s one aspect that will probably be overlooked: the film is so average that there’s not much to talk about.
But, because I’m a reviewer, I’m going to take a crack at evaluating Where the Crawdads Sing the movie. Ok, where to begin? Oh yes, the film is a faithful adaptation of the novel albeit with a few changes. The first one involves the black characters Jumpin’ and Mabel (played by Sterling Macer Jr. and Michael Hyatt). The novel tries to relate Kya’s struggles to theirs since it takes place in the 1950s and 1960s North Carolina. There’s even a scene, in which she throws rocks at some white boys after they call Jumpin’ the n word. Screenwriter Lucy Alibar wisely cut this out because of the white-savior narrative implications even though it still retains various white people reminding Jumpin’ and Mabel of their place in society. As a result, their involvement is reduced, but they still have the limited role of the helpful black people.
The second one involves the structure. The book switches timeline from the murder investigation to Kya’s life up until that point and vice versa almost constantly. The flick knew that it had to make a simpler structure, so it decided to condense the investigation and focus on Kya. Specifically, it emphasizes how she’s treated by the other people in Barkley Cove as well as the love triangle among her, Tate, and soon-to-be-dead-man Chase. It does this by having Kya (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones) tell her story to her lawyer Tom Milton (played by David Strathairn) before and during the trial. There are times that the movie focuses so much on the romance aspect that I almost forgot that there was a murder trial happening. At the same time, this makes sense because it was one of the two things about the novel that made it marketable (the other involving detailed nature descriptions wasn’t going to translate to the screen as well). This was a smart move overall because anybody who has read the book will know how the trial turns out.
Speaking of the predictable, let’s talk about the ending as much as possible. It’s still foreseeable, but how Tate discovers the truth of Chase’s death is more on the nose in the movie. In the novel, Tate uncovers some poetry that Kya wrote under a pseudonym that explains her involvement in Chase’s murder. In the flick, Tate finds a book that Kya was working on, which contains descriptions and drawings of that dead person. Despite how on the nose it is, this makes more sense as this is more in line with Kya’s character as she had written nature books with lots of drawings of the animals that lived in the marsh.
Oh, the acting was fairly good. Macer and Hyatt bring dignity (and plenty of side-eyeing) to characters that, according to various book reviewers, were denied that in the novel despite how small their roles were. Edgar-Jones embodies Kya with her whispers and her hunched back, but she’s able to be loud and vulnerable when the script calls for it. The chemistry between her and Taylor John Smith (Tate) and later Harris Dickinson (Chase) was fine. I certainly cared for her when the movie wanted me to. The standout was clearly Strathairn as the defense lawyer. I was delighted whenever he came on screen since he clearly conveyed how much his character cared for Kya’s wellbeing. The compassion and determination to have Kya go free was on the same level as Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird without impersonating the latter.
Despite its positives, the whole reason that the movie feels average is how marketable and predictable it is. Now, this is not entirely the film’s fault. The book contains many familiar tropes like the false accusation, an abandoned child, girls and women in awful situations, the coming-of-age story of an outsider, etc, and they are presented with a neat and sometimes fanciful blow on top. Director Olivia Newman replicates that almost to a tee with gorgeous wide shots of the evergreen marsh (when I mean green, it’s very green), lovely close-ups of various animals like the herons and egrets, shots of Kya running away from something and/or crying, the physical differences between the good and evil characters, and having Kya look pretty good with her bed hair and occasionally dirty feet even though she spent her entire life in the marsh. There’s even a song by Taylor Swift called “Carolina” that’s in it too (quick review of that: it’s what one excepts Swift to do for a movie during her folk era, and she emulates Lana del Ray at various points. It’s definitely been growing on me because of the instrumental and the main melody and how well suited they are to the film). All the major scenes in the book are in with very little surprises. Those who haven’t read it will probably be able to predict what will happen next. It felt so dull at times that I struggled to stay awake during the first half while watching it in the movie theater.
However, that’s not to say it was entirely uninspired. Along with the acting, there’s a scene in which Kya confronts Chase about his engagement that was well handled. At one point, he violates her. When that happens, the colors get muted, and the sound gets fuzzy before she hits him over the head with a rock. This made me more invested in the movie during the second half.
All in all, Where the Crawdads Sing the movie is what one expects a film adaptation of Where the Crawdads Sing to be. The scenes are played out in a way that’s predictable and deliberately marketed to a wider audience. A lot of the “problems” with it stem from the source material, which uses a lot of cliches. At the same time, it’s well made and acted. A C+ is the most accurate rating that I could give the movie. I would mainly recommend it for those who loved the novel. I wouldn’t necessarily advise others to see it not because of the Delia Owens controversy, but because of how average it is. I’ve said this once, and I’ll say it again: I find that case to be a lot more interesting than the film, but I still liked it.
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Hi Everybody!
I hope all of you had a great 4th of July! I sure did, despite what’s been happening in the the country lately. I got to spend time with friends and family, eat some delicious food, slip on an inflatable water slide!
I also started some new books! Before I show you what those titles are, I want to let you all know that from the last chapter, I’m still reading No-Mod: Book 1 of the Mute-Cat Chronicles by Derek Porterfield and The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. With the latter, I’ve read 490 pages so far, so if anyone betted that I would give up between 260 and 490, they lost.
Now, onto the new books!
I Let You Fall: A Romantic Drama by Sara Downing is about a woman trying to connect with her loved ones after a terrible accident. On a summer night, art teacher Eve Chapman witnesses a surgery of a patient with a horrific head injury. She’s even more shocked to find out that it’s her own body on the operating table. Trapped in a coma, Eve struggles to communicate with her family and friends because they can’t see nor hear her. But then, she meets Luca Diaz, a handsome and comatose lawyer who can see her. He teaches her to use her new abilities to comfort the living. Weeks go by, and Eve desperately tries to find a way back to her body and to Nathan, the man she loves. However, the more time she spends with Luca, the more she doubts about returning to her old life.
I like the book so far. Eve is a likeable character, and I really want her to emerge from her coma. At the same time, it’s a little hard to get emotionally invested when the main character is comatose. Talk about being passive, eh? I’m sure Downing expected this, for she includes flashbacks prior to the accident, so readers can see what Eve and her relationships were like before her current state. I’m at the point where Luca is showing her the ropes of using her special gifts to comfort the living. I like Luca. He’s a nice and thoughtful guy, and I see why she might have feelings for him despite her love for the sophisticated, but unreliable Nathan. At the same time, I hope he’s more than a Maniac Pixie Dream Boy. We’ll see what happens as I continue to read it.
Now, let’s move onto another story that involves reconnecting with loved ones!
Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline is a story inspired by the traditional Métis tale of the Rogarou – a werewolf-like creature that haunts the roads and woods of Métis communities. Joan has been searching for her husband, Victor, for nearly a year after they had their first serious argument. One day, when she’s hungover in a Walmart parking lot in Georgian Bay, she’s drawn to a revival tent where the local Métis have been going to hear a charismatic preacher named Eugene Wolff (hmm that’s not suspicious at all). She comes in when the service over. But as she’s about to leave, she hears an unmistakeable voice. It’s Victor! The same face, same eyes, same hands. However, he has has short hair and wears a suit. On top of that, he doesn’t know who Joan is. In fact, he thinks she’s delusional and insists that he’s the Reverend Wolff and his mission is to bring people to Jesus. Except, as Joan soon discovers, that’s not all the enigmatic Wolff is doing. With the help of Ajean, a foul-mouthed euchre shark with a knowledge of the old ways, and Zeus, her 12-year-old-Johnny-Cash-loving nephew, Joan must find a way to remind Reverend Wolff of who he is if he’s really Victor.
I find the premise to the extremely interesting and want to root for Joan to find her husband. Also, it makes me want to look into the original Rogarou tale and other stories that the Métis have. At the same time, it’s slowly paced, yet it has been picking up once she first encounters the wolf (the reverend I mean).
In addition, by looking at the blurb, certain readers might think that all of the interesting stuff happens in the first 20-30 pages. While I can see an issue with this (Final Jeopardy by Linda Fairstein has a similar one), it seems that there’s more to come judging by how the book’s unfolding.
Finally, let’s transition from one woman trying to find her husband and repair her marriage to a woman trying to leave an abusive one.
Hour of the Witch by Chris Bohjalian is about a young Puritan woman who’s trying to leave her cruel husband. Mary Deerfield is 24 years old and beautiful. In England, she would’ve gotten a lot of suitors, but in 1662 Boston, she’s the second wife of Thomas Deerfield – an abusive and powerful man. When Thomas, prone to drunken rage, purposely drives a three-tined fork into the back of Mary’s hand, she believes that enough is enough and that she must divorce him to save her life. However, in a world where every neighbor is watching for signs of the devil, a woman like Mary – a woman who harbors secret desires and finds it difficult to tolerate the hypocrisy of so many men in the colony – soon finds herself the object of suspicion and rumor. When tainted objects are discovered buried in the ground, when a boy whom Mary has been treating with herbs and simple dies, and when the boy’s sister – a servant in the Deerfield household – runs out of the home screaming, Mary must not only escapes her marriage, but also the gallows.
To prepare for this book, I watched this video.
I like this one as well. Much like Bohjalian’s other female protagonists, Mary is a three-dimensional character with desires, but she is forced by the Puritan society to maintain her duty as a wife despite the circumstances. In a way, Mary reminds me of Cassie from The Flight Attendant. Even though Mary is a more respectable person, both are trying to clear their names from crimes they didn’t commit. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bohjalian made that decision after the success of the first season of The Flight Attendant television show.
In addition, I enjoy the world building. Since the book takes place in the Puritan Massachusetts colony, it constantly reminds readers of the values that they held dear as a community like moral and religious earnestness as well as predestination. This context aides them in understanding why the characters would’ve had major concerns over Mary’s attempt to divorce her husband. Also, it doesn’t help that accusations of witchcraft were becoming prevalent when the novel begins.
Another thing that I want to note is how the book, so far, is structured like the Greek play Antigone. I’m only in the first third, yet I noticed how a good chunk of it involves lot of exposition. Then, after Mary leaves her husband, a bunch of people come to her parents’ home and beg her to reconsider. This reminded me of how the characters in Antigone like the advisors and the son Haemon tell Creon that he should change his mind and bury Antigone’s brother Polynices who fought against Thebes. I hope there’s more to it than that.
I’m listening to the audiobook now, and it’s good. Grace Experience narrates it along with a full cast although the latter are relegated to reading official documents, and they do an effective job in embodying the main characters while sounding accurate to the Puritan era. That’s why I’m not listing everyone who’s on the audiobook as of now. In addition, I don’t know if those records are real or made up for the story; I’ll have to do more research. Experience (Bohjalian’s daughter) needs no introduction as she did part of the narration for The Flight Attendant. She blends a contemporary and period voice well. At first, I wasn’t sure about this take because it felt a little too modern, but I realized that she’s portraying a third-person narrator. This gives more leeway in how she interprets the story. My only complaint is that a lot of the characters sound similar, but it’s still a solid performance.
We have now come to the end of the thirty-fifth chapter of “What Am I Reading?”
But, before I go, I want to let you know that I will be seeing the movie version of “Where the Crawdads Sing” this coming week! Stay tuned for the review! In the meantime, go check out my evaluation of the book!
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Full disclosure: I was given a free PDF copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I’ve read plenty of biographies and memoirs, but there’s only two that truly shocked me because I couldn’t believe what had happened. One of them was Educated by Tara Westover, and the other was Confessions of a Bad, Ugly Singer by Collette McLafferty. The latter was a well-written and accessible story of something unbelievable happening to a woman that made her more adamant on standing up for and on loving herself.
Confessions of a Bad, Ugly Singer details a two-year period, in which the author had to go through the legal system. In April 2014, McLafferty was playing a P!NK cover band when she found herself named in a 112-page complaint. The person who sued was a personal injury lawyer, played drums for Michael Bolton, and had a dispute with the band leader claiming he stole the lawyer’s idea to form the first P!NK cover band in Long Island. Oh, and he was suing them for $10,000,000. Knowing that she was going to be involved for years to come, she took her case to the press. She made a call to the New York Post in hopes of leaving a message. However, she later discovered the headline “Singer Sued for Being Too Old and Too Ugly for P!NK Cover band” in the paper. His sensationalized headline told a story of a singer who was so “old, ugly and untalented” that her one-night performance prompted the lawyer to sue. This version of the events went viral worldwide and threatened to put an end to her 20-year professional history in the music business. The headlines alleged she “ruined” the P!NK cover band with her inferior looks and singing, triggering a deep depression. Determined to find justice, McLafferty fought the case and eventually introduced “Collette’s Law” with the help of The Lawsuit Reform Alliance of New York and Assemblyman Luis Sepulveda.
Much like everyone else reading this, I was shocked to learn that this actually happened. All of what went down felt too strange to be true, but as I mentioned before, truth is stranger than fiction. Even McLafferty herself couldn’t believe it either, which made it all the more bizarre. It was good seeing the author trying to make sense of it all like Alice in her own version of Wonderland. She reached out to various news outlets to set the record straight and even tried to get in contact to P!NK herself to get some support (sadly to no avail). She also made a music video of her cover of “Perfect” to show her journey and to display how she wasn’t bad nor ugly. Moreover, she tried to get the state legislature in New York to pass a law – Colette’s Law – to require those who sue without merit to pay the other party’s legal cost and increase sanctions for those who file inane lawsuits. (Just a quick side note: even though the law was introduced in the New York State Assembly in 2017, I have a feeling that it was never passed because I couldn’t find any other information about it after 2016).
However, it was not all one smooth road. During the two years battling the lawsuit, McLafferty drank to the point that she could be considered an alcoholic and spent some time in therapy. I will admit that these sections were a little tough to get through, yet the framing of how she dealt with it (as opposed to wailing in her suffering) made it endurable.
McLafferty writes what occurred several years after the fact, which is the most logical thing to do when writing about something deeply traumatic. This allows her to process all of the events in the most objective way possible. Heck, she makes jokes about certain people and moments. That’s how one knows someone has moved from a tragedy. In addition, she’s able to see people with their own thoughts and feelings. For example, when she finally meets and confronts the man who sued her, he tells her that he was bullied as a kid for his weight. She empathizes with him because of her own experiences with bullies (including ones that called her “Collette Germs”), yet she doesn’t excuse him for his actions and his misreadings of the relationship between her and the band leader. The same goes with said band leader. She had some nice things to say about him, but she was wary of him after seeing his social media posts bashing certain individuals.
Besides the story itself, what stood out to me was the commentary on ageism. I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that dealt with that subject so openly. McLafferty comments on how the music industry basically bars women over the age of 30 from singing, or if they do, not having successful careers. She’s a living example of defiance because she’s still putting out new music and hopefully going to be releasing a solo album called 42 soon (before Adele gets to that title first).
Overall, Confessions of a Bad, Ugly Singer by Collette McLafferty is shocking in a good way. I never knew that this happened, and I feel bad for her. Luckily, her uplifting, funny, and very real style of writing are what make the memoir rootable. I would recommend it to those who like reading nonfiction that deals with events that are stranger than fiction, lawsuits, ageism, and the music industry. I’m glad that she was able to write about this event and eventually heal from it because this book is perfect to me.
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Book Reviews by a Chick Who Reads Everything