down the tbr hole #9

As my Goodreads to-read shelf creeps closer to 500 books, I've been eyeing it with a growing feeling of apprehension. It would take forever to get through so many...and that's not counting all of the new books I hear about along the way. Thankfully I discovered Lost In A Story's series (by way of Boston Book Reader) at the beginning of the year and it sounds like a great way to trim down my TBR.

The guidelines, per Lost In A Story, are simple:

• Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf
• Order on ascending date added
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

I'll be going through 10 books every week, meaning it should take me almost the whole year to reach the end! If you'd like to do this yourself, be sure to visit Lost In A Story's original post and let her (and me!) know you'll be joining in the fun.

book review: the bad daughter

The Bad Daughter by Joy Fielding
Ballantine Books, 368 pp.
Published February 27, 2018

DISCLAIMER: I received a free digital ARC of this book from Ballantine Books via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Summary (via Goodreads): What first appears to be a random home invasion reveals a family's dark secrets in this domestic ticking-clock suspense from the New York Times bestselling author of See Jane Run.

A hostile relationship with her sister and a complicated past with her father's second wife have kept Robin estranged from her family for many years. But when her father's new family is attacked in their house, with her father, his wife, and young daughter in critical condition in the hospital, she returns home to await their fate and hopefully mend fences. It looks like a random robbery gone awry, but as Robin spends more time with her family members, she learns they all had their secrets -- and one of those secrets may have put them all in horrible danger.

state of the arc #2

State of the ARC is a monthly meme hosted by Avalinah's Books. It's a way to track your reading progress and see how fellow book bloggers are doing as well.

The rules for State of the ARC are quite simple; I couldn't put them any better than Evelina already has:

• Mention that you’re linking up with State of the ARC @ AvalinahsBooks, which is a fun way to share our ARC progress, challenges, wins, woes and mishaps.
• Include the link to this post, or the current State of the ARC post. You can use my State of the ARC image too.
• Don’t forget to visit all the other people in the link-up and comment.
• And most importantly – have fun!

sunday post #7

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer. It's a chance to recap posts from the past week and tease upcoming content, as well as share new books, reading challenge progress, and anything else you've come across in the last seven days.

Only a slightly eventful week this time around, and scheduling this post ahead of time means I can't even give details on the most exciting part! Saturday evening is a black-tie gala and silent auction for one of the young professional women's groups I belong to, and it's an event I look forward to every year. There's drinks and dancing, but most important is the fundraising for a local charity: this year the club selected a women's shelter, and members have spent the last several months volunteering, as well as raising money and supplies for residents. This will be the culmination of everyone's hard work and I'm delighted to see it benefit such a worthy cause.

On a much more frivolous note, I screened Red Sparrow earlier this week and overall I quite enjoyed it. It was a harder R-rating than I had expected, so those with queasy inclinations may want to sit this spy thriller out. The review embargo has already been lifted, but my full thoughts will go up on Friday morning!

film review: oh lucy!

In the opening minutes of Oh Lucy!, a stranger on a crowded platform whispers goodbye into Setsuko Kawashima’s ear and leaps in front of a train. This jarring incident sets both her (Shinobu Terajima) and the audience off-balance, a sobering start to what’s billed as a comedy-drama. Setsuko lives a largely unfulfilled and lonely life in the bustle of Tokyo; she enjoys neither her job nor her co-workers and fills her small apartment to the brim with meaningless clutter—a substitute, perhaps, for the void left when her boyfriend fell in love with and married her sister, Ayako (Kaho Minami), many years ago.

Shinobu Terajima as Setsuko Kawashima in Oh Lucy!

While the two siblings are somewhat estranged, Setsuko maintains a relationship with her niece Mika (Shioli Kutsuna). It isn’t surprising, then, when the younger woman calls and asks to meet for lunch. Finding herself in a bind for cash, Mika hopes that her aunt will buy out the last six months of an English speaking course she’s enrolled in. Setsuko tentatively agrees to a trial class where she meets John (Josh Hartnett), the outgoing instructor. He insists on hugs as greetings and has Setsuko select an English name—Lucy—and put on a blonde wig during class. These unorthodox methods make her uncomfortable at first, yet by the end of the lesson she seems a little smitten and agrees to pay Mika for the remaining six months.

Just enough money for Mika to quit her waitressing job and run away to America with John.

book review: annihilation

Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 195 pp.
Released February 4, 2014

Summary (via Goodreads): Area X has been cut off from the rest of the continent for decades. Nature has reclaimed the last vestiges of human civilization. The first expedition returned with reports of a pristine, Edenic landscape; all the members of the second expedition committed suicide; the third expedition died in a hail of gunfire as its members turned on one another; the members of the eleventh expedition returned as shadows of their former selves, and within months of their return, all had died of aggressive cancer.

This is the twelfth expedition.

Their group is made up of four women: an anthropologist; a surveyor; a psychologist, the de facto leader; and our narrator, a biologist. Their mission is to map the terrain and collect specimens; to record all their observations, scientific and otherwise, of their surroundings and of one another; and, above all, to avoid being contaminated by Area X itself.

They arrive expecting the unexpected, and Area X delivers—they discover a massive topographic anomaly and life forms that surpass understanding—but it’s the surprises that came across the border with them, and the secrets the expedition members are keeping from one another, that change everything.

down the tbr hole #8

As my Goodreads to-read shelf creeps closer to 500 books, I've been eyeing it with a growing feeling of apprehension. It would take forever to get through so many...and that's not counting all of the new books I hear about along the way. Thankfully I discovered Lost In A Story's series (by way of Boston Book Reader) at the beginning of the year and it sounds like a great way to trim down my TBR.

The guidelines, per Lost In A Story, are simple:

• Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf
• Order on ascending date added
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

I'll be going through 10 books every week, meaning it should take me almost the whole year to reach the end! If you'd like to do this yourself, be sure to visit Lost In A Story's original post and let her (and me!) know you'll be joining in the fun.

tagged: mystery blogger award

I was tagged by the marvelous Clo @ BookDragons247 and you can read her answers right here. Thank you so much for thinking of me! ♥ The rules for the Mystery Blogger Award are thus:

• Put the award logo/image on your blog.
• List the rules.
• Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog.
• Mention the creator of the award and provide a link as well. (Okoto Enigma)
• Tell your readers 3 things about yourself.
• You have to nominate 10 – 20 people.
• Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog.
• Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice; with one weird or funny question (specify).
• Share a link to your best post(s)

sunday post #6

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer. It's a chance to recap posts from the past week and tease upcoming content, as well as share new books, reading challenge progress, and anything else you've come across in the last seven days.

There's very little to report this week outside of bookish news! The opera last weekend was quite fun. I'm most excited for the next one, which premieres exactly a month after the last: it uses video projection and 3D glasses, with a libretto by the author of Cloud Atlas. Modern operas aren't always a hit with me, but I always love finding out if the next one will be.

After a spate of hit-or-miss indie films, I'm getting to review Red Sparrow this week. I'll go see anything with Jeremy Irons in the cast, even a minor role, but the ensemble is filled with actors I usually like. I haven't read the book its based on, and won't have time before the screening, so I'm going into it blind. If anyone has read the book by Jason Matthews, though, I'd love to hear your (non-spoilery) thoughts!

film review: the boy downstairs

We’ve all heard the story before: Girl meets boy. Girl leaves boy. Girls runs into boy several years later. Complications ensue. It’s a simple formula that allows for endless variation, with good and not-so-good results. The Boy Downstairs, the feature-length debut of writer/director Sophie Brooks, falls maddeningly into the middle ground between the two. Its capable if clichéd script allows enough room for the main players to find a little magic, before the disappointing denouement undoes their hard work.

Zosia Marmet and Matthew Shear in The Boy Downstairs

The film shifts between present day and four years in the past. Currently, Diana (Zosia Mamet) has just returned to New York after two years abroad. With no place but a friend’s couch to sleep, she jumps at the opportunity to move into an apartment owned by Amy (Deirdre O'Connell), a motherly former actress and widow who didn’t want to let go of a home with so much family history. What Diana doesn’t know when she signs the lease is that her ex-boyfriend Ben (Matthew Shear) lives in the basement apartment. They met four years earlier, before her move to London, bonding over a shared sense of humor and artistic aspirations. As present-day Ben and Diana adjust to their new and unplanned proximity, we also watch their relationship blossom, then wither, in the past.

book review: thunderhead

Thunderhead by Neal Shusterman
Simon & Schuster, 504 pp.
Published January 9, 2018

Summary (via Goodreads): Rowan and Citra take opposite stances on the morality of the Scythedom, putting them at odds, in the second novel of the chilling New York Times bestselling series from Neal Shusterman, author of the Unwind dystology.

Rowan has gone rogue, and has taken it upon himself to put the Scythedom through a trial by fire. Literally. In the year since Winter Conclave, he has gone off-grid, and has been striking out against corrupt scythes—not only in MidMerica, but across the entire continent. He is a dark folk hero now—“Scythe Lucifer”—a vigilante taking down corrupt scythes in flames.

Citra, now a junior scythe under Scythe Curie, sees the corruption and wants to help change it from the inside out, but is thwarted at every turn, and threatened by the “new order” scythes. Realizing she cannot do this alone—or even with the help of Scythe Curie and Faraday, she does the unthinkable, and risks being “deadish” so she can communicate with the Thunderhead—the only being on earth wise enough to solve the dire problems of a perfect world. But will it help solve those problems, or simply watch as perfection goes into decline?

down the tbr hole #7

As my Goodreads to-read shelf creeps closer to 500 books, I've been eyeing it with a growing feeling of apprehension. It would take forever to get through so many...and that's not counting all of the new books I hear about along the way. Thankfully I discovered Lost In A Story's series (by way of Boston Book Reader) at the beginning of the year and it sounds like a great way to trim down my TBR.

The guidelines, per Lost In A Story, are simple:

• Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf
• Order on ascending date added
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

I'll be going through 10 books every week, meaning it should take me almost the whole year to reach the end! If you'd like to do this yourself, be sure to visit Lost In A Story's original post and let her (and me!) know you'll be joining in the fun.

between daemons: true (bookish) love

Between Daemons is a discussion post series dealing in bookish and filmish topics. Inspired by the spiritual companions from the His Dark Materials series by Philip Pullman, I chose that specific title to encourage comments and conversations grounded in the personal thoughts, feelings, and opinions you may not have the chance to share very often. While disagreement is welcome, disrespect is not. As always, please be polite to your fellow commenters!

A popular theme for the month of February is love: familial, romantic, or platonic, everyone's attention seems to turn to the special people in our lives. I wanted to take a slightly different approach and, apropos to this blog's focus on books, discuss the presence of literary love in my life!

Because really, books don't differ all that much from the people we meet, do they? There are the unfortunate few we wish we'd never met, the fun and casual friends, the best friends, and the loves of our life. My favorite books are those that make me feel like the best version of myself: not because they're motivational self-help manuals, but because they inspire such a depth of emotion that I'm able to learn more about myself just by virtue of having read them.

Also like a love shared between people, the affection I feel for my favorite books can either be rooted in a very specific time, place, or feeling, or else it might grow and change with time. I've included a selection of both down below, and I hope after reading about my true bookish loves, you'll share yours with me as well!

sunday post #5

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer. It's a chance to recap posts from the past week and tease upcoming content, as well as share new books, reading challenge progress, and anything else you've come across in the last seven days.

Whew! My weekdays may have been calm, but this weekend was the first genuinely busy one of the new year. (And believe me, that was entirely by design!) Yesterday I had a very early start and long day outside as a strong and misty cold front rolled through. This afternoon I get to brave the cold and ice again for the first opera of the new year. I went to my first performance about 15 years ago: a classic rendition of Madame Butterfly by Puccini. It was love at first sight! My mother and I indulged in season tickets through high school, but let them go when I moved away for college and graduate school. Now that I'm back in my hometown, we've resumed the tradition ♥

film review: permission

If you’ve only been romantically involved with one person your entire life, is it possible to know that they’re your perfect mate? It’s a question posed to Anna (Rebecca Hall), in crasser terms, over a birthday dinner shared with her boyfriend Will (Dan Stevens) and fellow couple Heron (Raúl Castillo) and Hale (David Joseph Craig). She and Will have shared every relationship “first” with one another but, after 10 years together, the drunken suggestion that they may be missing out scuttles Will’s plans for a romantic proposal that night. Instead they decide, with no shortage of trepidation, to experiment with other partners.

dust motes: january 2018

Dust Motes is a monthly post featuring mini-reviews of new film releases, as well as new-to-me movies, that I've watched over the past month.

This month I watched a total of 22 new and new-to-me movies and TV series; keeping up that current pace, I would be on track to watch a total of 264 for the year. In 2017, the first year I started tracking what I watched, I saw a total of 234 new and new-to-me movies and TV series.

JANUARY 2018 VIEWING HABITS

I don't have any set goals about matching or exceeding last year's number. Instead, I'm most interested in breaking down my viewing habits by platform to see if there are any mediums I prefer over time. Keeping up with films and movies are hobbies that both have the potential to add up quickly; although I'm not worried about cutting back, necessarily, I'm curious to find out at the end of the year if I'm spending money on subscriptions I don't utilize as much as I should for the cost.

Last year was also the first time I wrote reviews for the films I watched, albeit only the advance screeners sent to me by my editor. Although I can accept and reject whichever titles get offered to me, I have no control over what actually winds up in my inbox. More experienced reviewers usually get the blockbuster releases, which means I often get a mixture of great indie finds and astonishingly bad movies. For that reason, I'd like to start sharing my thoughts on movies I picked for myself! This past January had its share of duds, but there were a few titles that stood out:

down the tbr hole #6

As my Goodreads to-read shelf creeps closer to 500 books, I've been eyeing it with a growing feeling of apprehension. It would take forever to get through so many...and that's not counting all of the new books I hear about along the way. Thankfully I discovered Lost In A Story's series (by way of Boston Book Reader) at the beginning of the year and it sounds like a great way to trim down my TBR.

The guidelines, per Lost In A Story, are simple:

• Go to your Goodreads to-read shelf
• Order on ascending date added
• Take the first 5 (or 10 if you’re feeling adventurous) books
• Read the synopses of the books
• Decide: keep it or should it go?

I'll be going through 10 books every week, meaning it should take me almost the whole year to reach the end! If you'd like to do this yourself, be sure to visit Lost In A Story's original post and let her (and me!) know you'll be joining in the fun.

book review: the storm king

The Storm King by Brendan Duffy
Ballantine Books, 400 pp.
Published February 6, 2018

DISCLAIMER: I received a free digital ARC of this book from Ballantine Books via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

Summary (via Goodreads): Nate McHale has assembled the kind of life most people would envy. After a tumultuous youth marked by his inexplicable survival of a devastating tragedy, Nate left his Adirondack hometown of Greystone Lake and never looked back. Fourteen years later, he's become a respected New York City surgeon, devoted husband, and loving father.

Then a body is discovered deep in the forests that surround Greystone Lake.

This disturbing news finally draws Nate home. While navigating a tense landscape of secrets and suspicion, resentments and guilt, Nate reconnects with estranged friends and old enemies, and encounters strangers who seem to know impossible things about him. Haunting every moment is the Lake's sinister history and the memory of wild, beautiful Lucy Bennett, with whom Nate is forever linked by shattering loss and youthful passion.

As a massive hurricane bears down on the Northeast, the air becomes electric, the clouds grow dark, and escalating acts of violence echo events from Nate's own past. Without a doubt, a reckoning is coming--one that will lay bare the lies that lifelong friends have told themselves and unleash a vengeance that may consume them all.

sunday post #4

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Caffeinated Reviewer. It's a chance to recap posts from the past week and tease upcoming content, as well as share new books, reading challenge progress, and anything else you've come across in the last seven days.

Can a week be quietly eventful? While I might not have gone globe-trotting (or even bar-hopping) I did make some encouraging progress with both my TBR and TBW (to-be-watched...is that a thing?!). My usually non-existent luck with giveaways also made a surprise appearance: I won two on the same day! I'll go into a little more detail in my book haul below, but suffice to say I'm absolutely delighted to have some book mail to look forward to, and especially so when it's these particular titles that will be arriving on my front step.

This upcoming week I'm happy to announce a new monthly post: Dust Motes. Every month I'll collect a handful of mini-movie reviews for titles beyond the screeners I'm given. It will include a mix of current theatrical releases, as well as films that have been in my queue on streaming and DVD subscription services. This first entry only covers movies but I'm open to including TV series in the future, so let me know if you'd like to see those included too!

film review: braven

It’s hardly surprising that Jason Momoa—perhaps most recognizable for his turn as Khal Drogo on Game of Thrones—carved out a sizeable niche for himself in the action genre after appearing on the HBO juggernaut. With an imposing physique, tattooed arms, and rumbling voice, it doesn’t require mental gymnastics to picture him as a film’s resident tough guy. His latest outing in director Lin Oeding’s Braven may not challenge Momoa or the audience to any great extent, but it capitalizes on his strengths to carry off a competent B-movie thriller.

book review: a false report

A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong
Crown Publishing, 304 pp.
Published February 6, 2018

DISCLAIMER: I received a free digital ARC of this book from Crown Publishing via First to Read in exchange for my honest review.

Summary (via Goodreads): Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists tell the riveting true story of Marie, a teenager who was charged with lying about having been raped, and the detectives who followed a winding path to arrive at the truth.

On August 11, 2008, eighteen-year-old Marie truthfully reported that a masked man broke into her apartment near Seattle, Washington, and raped her, but within days police and even those closest to Marie became suspicious of her story. The police swiftly pivoted and began investigating her. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie. Police charged her with false reporting. One of her best friends created a web page branding her a liar.

More than two years later, Colorado detective Stacy Galbraith was assigned to investigate a case of sexual assault. Describing the crime to her husband that night--the attacker's calm and practiced demeanor, which led the victim to surmise "he's done this before"--Galbraith learned that the case bore an eerie resemblance to a rape that had taken place months earlier in a nearby town. She joined forces with the detective on that case, Edna Hendershot, and the two soon realized they were dealing with a serial rapist: a man who photographed his victims, threatening to release the images online, and whose calculated steps to erase all physical evidence suggested he might be a soldier or a cop. Through meticulous police work the detectives would eventually connect the rapist to other attacks in Colorado--and beyond.

Based on investigative files and extensive interviews with the principals, A False Report is a serpentine tale of doubt, lies, and a hunt for justice, unveiling the disturbing reality of how sexual assault is investigated today--and the long history of skepticism toward rape victims.