We Have Always Lived in the Castle

Shirley Jackson is the supreme ruler of pschyological fiction.

Don't believe me?  Haven't read The Lottery?  Or The Haunting of Hill House (movie versions with Liam Neeson don't count)?

Then you ought to read We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

The Blackwood family is so many ways of messed up.  What is left of the family (Connie, Uncle Julius, and Merricat) lives in their huge house, fenced off from the town, after Connie is acquitted of fatally poisoning the other four family members with arsenic six years ago.

It was in the sugar.  For the berries.

Cousin Charles shows up to help the girls "move on" and stop living in isolation/being fodder for the local gossips (so he says).  For a little while, it seems he might be successful.  Then everything goes completely wrong.

This book constantly keeps a reader on his or her toes - mostly due to the fact that the book is narrated entirely by Merricat (Mary Katherine).  At eighteen years of age and either immature or unbalanced (draw your own conclusions), Merricat is an unreliable narrator at best.  She has odd rituals and practices sympathetic magic.  Things happen when she's around.  Creepy.  Forboding.

My edition, the Penguin Deluxe Classic, has an introduction by Jonathan Lethem and fantastic cover art by Thomas Ott.  The cover alone is worth buying the book.

Inverted World

Christopher Priest's Inverted World is a very scientifically-grounded dystopic novel (the afterword classifies Inverted World as a Hard SF novel but it doesn't seem that way at first; it seems more typical of a dystopic novel but about halfway through the Hard SF elements start poking their way through).

A walled city is being winched through a devastated landscape on rails.  The rails must be laid before it and taken up after.  The city is forever in chase of The Optimum.  To halt is to fall victim to a crushing gravitational pull.

Helward Mann is our guide to this world.  When he takes the oath to become a Future Surveyor, he is inducted to all the secrets normally kept from the city population.  The dystopic novel was previous to this point, now it's Hard SF's turn.

History, geography, and physics all come into play.  Is this world truly inverted, that only the enlightened of the city will follow the Optimum and avoid death, or are those in the city chasing a truly delusional vision?

Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day

If you are looking for a book of short stories that are eerie, dreamy, whimsical, strange, unsettling, and sometimes just plain weird have I got a book for you!

Ben Loory's collection of stories, Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, has a little something for everyone.  The tales range from the very short ("The Shadow") to much longer ("The Graveyard").  One is an homage to Ray Bradbury.  One reminds me of Stephen King.  A few remind me of Roald Dahl or Philip K. Dick.  "The Hat" reminds me of Gogol.

One ("The TV and Winston Churchill") made me laugh.  A lot.  It's my favorite.
As a bookseller, I found "The Book" meaningful in a time when we debate the future of books and literacy.

I read this with my friends from the bookstore and, through the magic of Kat's enthusiasm, we got to Facebook chat with the author.  It was a really nice hour or so - slightly complicated by needing to dictate our questions to Kat who was serving as amaneuensis - where we talked about influences, his imagery, and how much we all liked the cover.  Then Ben dropped an interesting tidbit - he really hadn't wanted to include "The TV", a longer piece that is included in an appendix at the back of the book.  There is a note saying it was included at the request of the publisher, even though it wasn't part of the same project that produced the other pieces, but I hadn't thought too much about it.  It is a different piece, stylistically, and it contrasts with the rest of the book.  I liked the story, and was glad to read it, but I got the feeling Ben wished he had fought the publisher/editor more to keep it out.  I can understand why the publisher would want to - this is a thin book already, so the inclusion of "The TV" added a few more pages at the end - but it does contrast a bit too much with the other stories so perhaps wasn't necessary.

For another perspective on Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day, Goodreads users need to go read my friend Kat's review.  She wrote it as an homage to the author.  I think it's lovely.

ttyl / ttfn / l8r,g8r (I read banned books - nyah, nyah!)

September has my little bookclub reading our own selections that fit with the term "language" - we can read whatever we want relating in some way to that word.  I had planned to read The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English but I can't find it; the book is still in my database, so I didn't get rid of it, I must have packed it while "decluttering" my office.  The packed boxes are, unfortunately, in my parents' basement.

Rats and *le sigh*.  What will I read now?

I looked around to see what I could read quickly...and I thought about novels written in IM shorthand.  There are a decent number - particularly in the teen/YA section of the store (see? I said I was going to read more YA) - and Lauren Myracle's Internet Girls series caught my eye.  Hmmmm.  Then I remembered Myracle's series is one of the top ten banned or challenged books of 2009....Banned Books Week is coming up so bring on the banned books!!  Where's my "I read banned books" pin?  I think I have a whole envelope-full in my desk...

Back to Zoe, Maddie, and Angela.  ttyl opens as the "winsome threesome" starts their sophomore year of high school, ttfn starts at Thanksgiving of the girls' junior year, and l8r, g8r closes out the last semester of their high school careers.  The girls grow into adulthood over the course of the three books and they behave much like normal teenagers.  They talk about their bodies, having/not having sex in its various incarnations, drinking, doing drugs, playing pranks, applying to college, problems with their parents, problems with boys.  They gossip, swear, use slang.  I can see how parents can get bent out of shape with this series but the reality is that Zoe, Maddie, and Angela sound like real teenagers.  Real teenagers swear, real teenagers worry about having sex for the first time.  Real teenagers make poor decisions.

Myracle shows the girls in both good and bad situations and the consequences of the girls' decisions.  Angela is the first of the girls to get a boyfriend of-sorts but is also the first to deal with unfaithfulness in ttyl.  Maddie makes a poor choice regarding pot smoking in ttfn; although she decides to quit smoking up on her own, she ends up getting arrested while with a group of friends who are buying pot.  In l8r, g8r Zoe decides that she would like to be sexually active with her long-time boyfriend Doug so she goes to Planned Parenthood for an exam and a prescription for birth control and the couple uses condoms; if that doesn't say "responsible teenager" then I don't know what does.  The situations go on and on: cyberbullying, student-teacher relationships, college applications, relationships.  High school isn't some 1950s utopia where your hair is always perfect, your grades are wonderful, everyone is nice to you, and you have the perfect boyfriend; my high school experience was approximately 15 years ago and full of nasty pitfalls (but relatively tame compared to what happened to some kids I went to school with).  I can't imagine what high school is like now (the Internet was new when I was in high school, no one had email until they went to college) but I can tell you that kids need "real" novels as much as they need the fairy tales.

For books written entirely in IM, the series is surprisingly readable.  The level of Internet shorthand is pretty low, using fairly common abbreviations (brb, lol, omg, u, ur, y, etc).  Each girl consistently uses the same typeface/color/font, just like we do on AIM, etc., and their personalities come through the IMs.  Angela uses a lot of dramatic smilies and *gestures* to convey her meaning.  Maddie uses the most slang (it varies depending on who she's been hanging out with).  Zoe's are almost always complete sentences (like me - I haven't converted to internet shorthand very well).  Myracle never breaks with the convention of telling the story solely through IMs between the three characters.  I've read a few reviews for the series that feel using only IM makes for unreliability in the narrators but I think it lends more reality to the situation.  I was watching myself IM the other night and what's the #1 thing I do on IM?  Gossip.  What do the "winsome threesome" do first on IM in their coversations?  Gossip.  It's the first thing they do every time - they talk about what happened at school (particularly if one of them missed something), they talk about each other (especially if two are worried about the third), they talk about evil Queen Biotch Jana, then the three discuss what to do about whatever problem someone's currently having (Zoe's creepy teacher, Angela's move to California, Maddie's relationship with Ian).  That's not unreliable.  That's the reality that is IM.

Can you tell I really liked this series?  I had a lot of fun reading Zoe, Maddie, and Angela's IMs, I identified with each of the girls, and cheered them on when they took on Jana and her backstabbing ways (I had some bully trouble in junior high so I've been there).  This series should be accessible to teens - if you're a parent who really can't stand the thought of your "innocent" kid* reading a book that talks about oral sex then you'd better get ready to heilcopter parent like mad.  Better idea:  read the books your teen wants to read then talk about them.  Teens can surprise you.

*Spoken by a former teen who read all of Anne Rice's Beauty trilogy at the age of 14 while I was in the library waiting for my little brothers to pick out their books.  "Winnie-the-Pooh" is to "ttyl" as "ttyl" is to Anne Rice.  Learning about group sex and S&M didn't make my brain explode or turn me into a raving nymphomaniac (actually, it kind of did the opposite...) but it did make my hair stand on end for a while.

The Moonflower Vine

This is another instance of starting a book then forgetting about it for a year.

I suggested The Moonflower Vine for my bookstore bookclub last September.  I read the first 60 pages or so then either got distracted or lost interest (can't remember anymore).  I dug it back out and finished it eleven months later in an attempt to decrease the number of half-finished book languishing around the house.

The Moonflower Vine is the only novel published by Jetta Carleton, surprising in that she had a successful career as a radio and television copywriter then later operated a successful publishing house, The Lightning Tree.  The Moonflower Vine was out-of-print until Jane Smiley commented on the novel in 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel leading HarperPerennial to release a new edition of The Moonflower Vine.

Although largely autobiographical, The Moonflower Vine doesn't have a tight narrative; the story is actually created by a set of vignettes, each narrated from the point-of-view of one of the Soames family members.  The first section, which is also the "modern" segment, is narrated from the vantage of the youngest daughter Mary Jo, modeled on Jetta herself.  It tells the story of a single day in the Soames family, busy with cooking, celebration, family.  The next segments jump back into the family history, explaining why each of the three other daughters - Jessica, Leonie, and Mathy - and parents Callie and Matthew behave as they do.  Education is important in the Soames family, as is good work and avoiding idleness.  Carleton's writing shows a love for her rural Missouri setting; the most lush description is reserved for scenes where the sisters are enjoying the outdoors.  The Moonflower Vine is also like a time capsule, describing a time and place in middle America where the school principal might still farm his own land, too.

I am so glad I went back and finished The Moonflower Vine - this is not a novel to be missed and definitely not one to speed read.

The Corrections

So, I feel kinda like a heel.  I never read Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections; I never read it because Oprah said she liked it and I ran full-tilt in the other direction.  Never mind Franzen didn't want to be on Oprah.  It was too much pop culture, tabloid sniping for my taste (I wasn't in the mood for pop culture when I was in grad school).  Not long ago I read Reading With Oprah and the idea that I never read The Corrections niggled in the back of my head.  Franzen's novel received the National Book Award in 2001 so it was probably pretty good...hmmm.  I got to pick the June book for our little booksellers bookclub so I decided to choose The Corrections.

I'm really glad I finally read The Corrections because it really is an interesting look at a middle class family.  Everyone in this family needs to take their blinders off.  Alfred is caught in the downward spiral of senile dementia; he can't relinquish his rigid, 1950s-derived concepts of family and behavior.  Enid is concerned with the facade of presenting a happy nuclear family to the neighbors.  Gary is unable to acknowledge his own mental and marital problems.  Chip's academic cocoon has burst and he's on a path toward self-destruction.  Denise doesn't know what she wants but she knows it's not "this" ("this" being "not her mother").

Every character in this family is completely incapable of having an honest conversation with another member of the family without resorting to gossip/spying/sneaking around behind people's backs.

The Corrections was hard to get into.  I realy liked Franzen's style but the timeline Franzen uses is one of these oddball, post-modernist ones where you jump back and forth and between characters without a good chronology.  It took me until about halfway through Chip's introduction to understand how the book was structured; after that I was good. 

While I both liked (and hated, I wanted to slap all of them least once during the book) the characters, I really think Franzen did his best when characterizing Alfred.  Alfred is an intelligent man, a disciplined man, who cares deeply for his family (even though he really has trouble expressing any deep feelings to anyone).  As he descends into dementia the vivid hallucinations are wonderfully rendered.  Although it's only a fictional representation, the possibility that I could wind up like Alfred (that we ALL could wind up like Alfred) - concerned about a roving piece of feces and destined for sedatives and a nursing home - is terrifying.  I really have to re-read The Corrections because I feel like I missed a great deal on just one reading.

(By the way, there is a fantastically hilarious scene where Chip is in a grocery store and it underscores just how desperate Chip has become in trying to keep up appearances.)

Current book-in-progress: Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
Current knitted item: blue shawl (I am almost done!)
Current movie obsession: You've Got Mail
Current iTunes loop: The Five Browns

How To Lose Friends and Alienate People

Toby Young's first memoir, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People is a little bit Love, Actually, a little Bridget Jones's Diary, and a little bit American Psycho, with a dash of The Jerk.

It was funny and pithy (at times) - I did start to feel sorry for the guy.  He was so completely out of his depth in Manhattan's Vanity Fair office that he wore jeans and a t-shirt to the office when told it is "casual".  And sent a strippergram for a friend's birthday...but it happened to be "Take Your Daughters to Work Day", too...and just generally had some bad luck.  Methinks off-the-wall, sarcastic, un-superhot dudes generally don't fare well as self-referential, boot-licking celebrity magazines.

Best chapter in the book:  when Toby and his office mate start speaking dude-slang about trying to get the office nitwit into bed.  Hysterical.

What did bother me was the final chapter where Toby makes a blanket statement about how meritocracy in the United States is complete bollocks because it doesn't work.  I know his dad wrote The Rise of the Meritocracy (and coined the term) but Toby's reference for the US is New York society/celebrity and Hollywood.  Not a good litmus test for the other 85% of the country, aka the "fly-over states" as put in the book.  Here's a meritocracy story for you:  my father is the son of a self-employed auto mechanic and volunteer fire chief and my mother is the eldest child of a self-employeed businessman who built his business from scratch.  None of my grandparents went to college but both my parents did.  My father is a very respected system safety engineer and my mother is a parish administrator.  I have one advanced degree and am going back to school for another while my brothers are both college-educated (as are my sisters-in-law) and they are all gainfully employed.  If meritocracy doesn't work, as Young seems to think, the lot of us would've been stuck in rural Illinois either in jail (because that's what happens when you're a no-hoper) or working at the Handimart.  We all got where we were because of hard work, opportunity, and the ability to network successfully.

Pinocchio

I always thought "Pinocchio" was an old fairy tale, I mean really old, and then Disney turned it into the animated-movie-I-will-never-ever-watch-again-because-it-scared-the-holy-bejeezus-out-of-me-when-I-was-3 so I avoided "Pinocchio" so I could sleep.  As it turns out, the original Pinocchio is a children's novel by Carlo Collodi, the first half initially serialized 1881-1883 and the full novel published in 1883.  Kat wanted to read it for our bookclub - especially the NYRB Classics edition with introduction by Umberto Eco.  Cool.

Pinocchio is not a long novel - approximately 160 pages - and being a story for children (more or less) it takes almost no time at all to read.  Once you sit down to read it.  This has a very Brothers Grimm or Hans Christian Anderson feel - the blue-haired Fairy with a coach drawn by mice and a poodle for a coachman, charlatan team the Fox and the Cat, Toyland - so it does feel like an old folk tale.  But it is also a very long parable (parable?  allegory?) - Pinocchio does learn many lessons, most memorable is learning not to lie, on his path to becoming a real boy.  One thing that struck me was Pinocchio's growing lack of gullibility; each time he is tempted off his path it takes more and more cajoling to get him to stray from the straight and narrow.  He learns but slowly; he is only a puppet, as Pinocchio himself likes to point out.

We watched the 2002 Roberto Benigni Pinocchio adaptation as our movie tie-in.  I am OK with this because it's not the Disney version.  According to the IMDB trivia the original idea for the 2002 Italian adaptation was to have Fellini direct with Benigni acting as the title role; Fellini died and Benigni continued the project as director and star.

Benigni should have gotten someone else to play Pinocchio, as in perhaps a teen or younger adult actor, because a 50-year-old man with a five-o'clock shadow playing a temper-tantrum-prone wooden puppet dressed like a Pollichinelle from The Nutcracker just does not work for me.  It actually got a little creepy during a scene (which, as far as I remember, does not exist in the book) where Pinocchio and Lucinolo (Lampwick) are licking a fish-shaped lollipop in turn....as in child porn creepy...and then the crazy Benigni antics got plain old irritating and boring.  The rest of the movie does work quite well, the sets and costumes have a very fairy-tale/fantasy feel (with the exception of a perspective issue during the puppet theatre show).  I do quite like Nicoletta Braschi as the Fairy with the Turquoise Hair (aka the Blue Fairy) and I think she did quite well to give some depth to what could have been a very flat character.  I did like the creature effect make-up to give the suggestion of a Fox and a Cat as a character but still see the human actor - much like real life where wily people are described as foxes, etc.  I wonder what Italian audiences thought of the film (I don't read Italian so any reviews I might dig up I wouldn't be able to read); I think it was a good choice to watch Benigni's Pinocchio for our bookclub, just to see a non-US adaptation, but it certainly isn't a movie I want to watch again.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Rick Riordan's first installment in the "Percy Jackson" series, The Lightning Thief, is the February pick for my store bookclub (we agreed that we would all read it, then go see the movie on February 12 with Kat's two boys).  Being a kids' book, do you want a guess at how fast I read this?  Not only is Percy an engaging character, the plot is compelling, and the reading, being aimed at the 3rd-6th grade reading level, is a breeze.

Now, I have heard that some people call Percy Jackson the "Harry Potter rip-off" and I don't think that's true.  Outside of the make-up of the trio of kids - Percy, Annabeth, and Grover - and the "trouble-brewing-amongst-the-supernatural-characters" there isn't a lot of similarity.  Trios aren't that unusual in YA literature (even A Wrinkle in Time has a trio of two boys and a girl) and it works well in this setting.

I love how Rick Riordan is able to use Greek mythology to add all the side plots and what may even be the master plot running under the series (I haven't read the last four, yet).  He even lets kids with dyslexia and ADHD dream that they, too, are special like Percy and have special powers.  One element of The Lightning Thief has to do with fate and that is a tremendous part of Greek epic and drama.  Percy visits the Oracle and, like Oedipus and other tragic heroes, is given a cryptic prophesy that must come true even though it is open to interpretation.  It's a great plot element that keeps Percy on his toes.

However, the motion picture adaptation loses many of the Greek side-plots including the idea of fate and prophecy.  We had a great time watching the movie (except for some family that brought a very young, very loud child who didn't know what was happening and got scared) and after, a friend's son treated us to a run-down of all the changes made to the movie (I remember being totally possessive of the stuff I read when I was ten, so it was pretty cute).  The cuts and changes were extensive and, in my opinion, largely unnecessary because the nuance of the book was lost.  The plot deviation removes a major character and scene from The Lightning Thief while adding another and curtails avenues for adaptation of the remaining books in Rick Riordan's series.  Spectacular CGI effects can only get you so far so Logan Lerman does a great job as Percy (he has gorgeous eyes) and works well with Alexandra Daddario and Brandon Jackson - essential because the three of them must hold the thinner plot together.  Percy Jackson is a bit like Harry Potter in this respect - great chemistry between the three main actors and you are warned that if you see it as a fan of the book be prepared to miss your favorite scenes.  But all-in-all it was entertaining and when I pay my nine bucks I better be entertained.

Preview goodies:
1.  Despicable Me - a teaser trailer with little yellow dudes playing with a tilt-the-can-to-make-it-moo toy until the tall yellow dude plays a mean trick on the short yellow dude....huh?
2.  Letters to God - cute, based on a true story, reminds me of the trailers for The Blind Side
3.  Marmaduke - my note to myself only reads "srsly?"...yeah, I'm pretty uninterested in a live-action movie about a comic that ceased to be funny once I hit puberty; did I mention it's a talking Great Dane voiced by Owen Wilson? *blech* (scratch that I saw the casting...there are a lot of talking dogs...double *blech* )
4.  The Karate Kid - omg, wtf??!???! Hollywood is destroying my childhood; there is no way in hell that Jackie Chan will make this better than the original...the clip from the trailer had take-your-jacket-off-put-your-jacket-on...nope, Pat Morita and wax-on-wax-off will live forever
5.  Alice in Wonderland - almost. peed. my. pants.  The trailer makes this look more like The Looking Glass Wars so I'm pretty jazzed about this one now (I don't care if Johnny Depp looks like a crack-head with a make-up problem...I'm so on board with this one)
6.  Diary of a Wimpy Kid - another adaptation of a popular kids series; this one looks soooo cute, very much in line with the books

[I really want to spoil the pants out of this book/movie combo so I can talk about differences but I don't want to be mean...so sorry if I'm being a little vague.]

Speak (times two)

Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak was on the schedule for January as the first book of the new year for our little bookseller bookclub.  I've had a copy lurking about on my bookshelves for a while and I'm so very glad it was Jackie's pick for the group.  Speak is a book that always comes up in conversation with teens and teachers so I was happy to have a good reason to catch up on good YA literature.

Miranda Scordino narrates in the first person, taking the reader through her first year of high school, a year that was supposed to be fun but is now a mine-field of ostracism and indifference.  She is very frank in her feelings, her thoughts play out in prose, scripted dialogue, and lists (the "First Ten Lies They Tell You in High School" are, sadly, very true).  She gives her classmates and teachers nicknames (Hairwoman is an apt name) and she rebels against her parents efforts to "normalize" her.  The one thing from Speak that stays with me is Miranda's voice - she has an authentic voice, she sounds like a young teen, one who has been traumatized but remains very observant of her school and peers.  Even though Miranda can't "speak" about what happened she learns to begin expressing herself through art; the construction of the turkey-bone sculpture is a poignant scene.

Speak is a book that shows serious subjects - date rape and depression - presented in a format accessible to a younger audience.  It isn't graphic either in imagery or in language, you can hear and see far worse at any movie rated PG-13.  When Miranda finally flashes back to the assault her memories are disjointed, all the images are jumbled together so we are left to fill in the gaps and imagine the worst.  What disturbs me the most about Speak is that no one really wants to get behind the changes in her behavior; her parents are absorbed in their work, outside of the art teacher the rest of the teaching staff aren't concerned about her beyond her grade, her friends don't even bother to ask why she called 911 and abandon her the same way the rest of the school does.  Miranda displays many of the symptoms of PTSD and yet no one seems to care that she has gone from relatively normal to withdrawn, depressed, and nearly mute in the space of a few weeks.  It does seem to be a common theme; one edition of Speak contains a poem Laurie Halse Anderson wrote based on letters she received from teen readers, some of them confessions of assaults that no one ever knew about.  Miranda helped them "speak" and it shows the power in the novel.

I also, for the life of me, really can't quite figure out why Speak winds up being challenged/censored by school districts.  It is an honest book, but not graphically so; compared with The Lovely Bones, which opens with a graphic and harrowing scene of the rape and murder of a similarly-aged heroine, Speak does not fill the reader with terror.  Anderson comments on challenges often on her blog so I have developed a little insight - most challenges to Speak revolve around the assault, because it's the S-word (omg, sex!) - but it still boggles the mind.  The focus of the book isn't an overly graphic play-by-play assault sequence but Miranda's journey back from the trauma of the assault.  Clearly, people are missing the point and they would rather have ignorant kids instead of intelligent ones who stand up for themselves.

Our little book group tends to pick books that have been adapted for the silver screen so we can have a chat-and-movie night (failing any adaptations of a chosen book we just pick a movie we want to watch).  Speak was adapted into a 2004 movie starring Kristen Stewart and an oddly-cast-but-works-very-well Steve Zahn as the art teacher.  Kristen Stewart was very good as Melinda; I'm impressed.  I ragged on her performance as Bella Swan because it was some pretty flat acting but this movie shows that she does have talent.  She also has far more emotional material to work with when playing Melinda as opposed to playing Bella.  The adaptation from Speak the novel to Speak the movie is one of the best I've seen in years.  The screenwriter manages to keep Miranda's inner monologue and "voice" going throughout the movie which, being the focus of the book, goes a long way toward a faithful adaptation.  Anderson makes a cameo appearance as one of the cafeteria servers.

Current book-in-progress: What are Intellectuals Good For?, A Jury of Her Peers, The Omnivore's Dilemma, The Lightning Thief, and A Tree Growns in Brooklyn
Current knitted item: baby sweater
Current movie obsession: The History of Britain
Current iTunes loop: Glee!

The Film Club

The Film Club by David Gilmour is the November edition of our little bookclub, picked by Kat (in case you're wondering, we drew names for each month except October).  It did look intriguing, a memoir written by a film critic who made the decision to let his son (Jesse) drop out of high school so long as the two watched three movies a week together.  It reads very fast so I finished it off the other night.

I regret to say I am underwhelmed by The Film Club.  I was hoping there would be a little more film criticism/theory, in that Gilmour would include more real discussion about the films he watched with his son.  The book instead is a memoir of Gilmour's attempt to keep his son engaged with the world by letting the kid do something he likes - watch movies - instead of what he has no interest in - go to school - with some film trivia mixed in.  As a memoir, I really don't feel anything for David, Jesse, Maggie (Jesse's mom), Tina (David's wife), or any of Jesse's spoiled girlfriends.  There is a detachment - I'm not sure if it's the writing or just the subject matter.  I did find there was an alphabetical list in the back with all the movies the two watched over the years but it's just a list, nothing more.

Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge Count: 7/10

The Other

The Other by Thomas Tryon was Kat's choice for the bookclub's October creepy/horror novel month (Jackie's choice was Carrie, which I didn't re-read having read it in about 8th grade and scared the pants off myself).  I linked to the current trade paperback edition because there isn't a link for the edition I read - Kat got a ratty old mid-70s mass market edition and then passed it off to me (the binding glue was falling out in chunks and the pages were falling out).  That copy is pretty much unuseable now and will have to be consigned to the trash bin because I won't foist it off on the library sale in that condition.

The Other is a hard book to describe, other than a psychological horror novel, without giving too much away.  The main action of the novel concerns a set of identical twins - Holland and Niles - who may or may not do some pretty despicable things.  As in evil things.  Creepy, chilly, horror-novel-type things.  They also have a Russian maternal grandmother (who claims to have the sixth sense - alluded to as "the Game") and a mother suffering a major depressive episode over the mysterious death of their father.  The sections of the novel are narrated by a member of the community looking back on the past so there is a frame to the novel; handy since there's a point at which you wonder exactly what is going on here.  As with any good horror novel, I expected flinching and chills - Tryon delivered in spades.

Bookclub met the evening that readathon ended so (conveniently enough) I finished reading The Other as one of my last finished books during the readathon.  After a discussion of certain endpoints of the novel open to interpretation (which I really can't discuss here because that would sooooooo blow the plot of the novel and ruin the suspense) we settled in to watch Robert Mulligan's adaptation of the novel, The Other.  Tryon adapted, produced and wrote the screenplay for the movie which starred Uta Hagen as the grandmother and Diana Muldaur as the mother with Chris and Martin Udvarnoky as Holland and Niles (watch for a young John Ritter as the son-in-law).  The adaptation of the book to the screen is quite good, dispensing with the framing story (would have been too clunky) and removing a number of townsfolk to make the family more insular out at their farmhouse.  Tryon kept all the major scenes from the novel and it really was enjoyable to see a story told from beginning to end without major alterations for the movie (although I still cringe at two scenes even now - serious "ick" factor but not because it's gory).  A very good movie for a creepy time of year and one of the best book-to-screen adaptations I've ever seen.

The DVD treated us to several "previews", too, including The Hills Have Eyes and both versions of The Omen (the re-make must have been releasing at the time the DVD for The Other was, too).

Clear Off Your Shelves Challenge Count: 6/9