media update: April
Asterisks denote something I particularly enjoyed or found especially worthy of my time; double asterisks are reserved for the creme de la creme. As always, your mileage may vary.
FICTION
1. Emergency Contact by Mary H.K. Choi: Penny has just moved to Austin, Texas to attend college in hopes of becoming a writer; Sam is a tattooed barista with a flair for baking. After Penny helps Sam while he's having a panic attack, they exchange numbers, joking about becoming each other's emergency contact, and it turns into a serious texting flirtation. Some really nice, sharp dialogue in this book. I don't usually read YA novels that aren't dystopian/sci-fi/fantasy, but this one kept my interest.
Side note: this book has one of my favorite covers in a long time. It's GORGEOUS.
2. The Innocent Wife* by Amy Lloyd: Dennis Danson has been in prison for over 20 years after being convicted of murder, but a group of true crime fanatics believe he's innocent. Sam, a young British woman, becomes obsessed with the case and begins writing him, and soon she moves to Florida to be with him as much as possible and help a documentary crew with their film about the case. Dennis and Sam even get married, but a series of events leads her to start doubting his innocence after all. It's so good I had a hard time believing it was the author's first book; I'll definitely keep an eye out for her future work.
3. Rainbirds by Clarissa Goenawan: When his sister Keiko is stabbed to death, Ren Ishida takes over her position at a cram school and her gig reading to the bedridden wife of a politician in hopes of discovering what happened to Keiko. It sounds like a thriller or a mystery, but it's more of a mediation on grief.
Side note: oddly enough, The Innocent Wife is partially set in the Florida county of Red River, and this book, which I read immediately after TIW, is set in the (fictional) Japanese town of Akakawa, which means...red river.
4. Stray City* by Chelsey Johnson: Andrea is a lesbian living in Portland in the late 1990s. Feeling vulnerable one night after seeing two of her exes together, she starts hooking up with a guy named Ryan. She keeps the relationship secret so as to avoid the judgment of her "gold star" (i.e. lesbians who have never had sex with a man) friends, but then she becomes pregnant and decides to have the baby. I don't usually cry over books (which is weird, because pretty much everything else ever makes me cry), but the last couple of pages WRECKED me.
5. The Gunners by Rebecca Kauffman: When Mikey was a kid, he hung out with a group of other kids that called themselves the Gunners (after a sign in front of the abandoned house where they hung out). Now an adult, Mikey gets a call that one of his old friends has died by suicide, and he gets together with the others to figure out what happened. It wasn't bad, but there's a plot point that was so ridiculous that it bothered me.
6. Two Girls Down* by Louisa Luna: Jamie Brandt leaves her daughters Kylie and Bailey in the car while she runs into Kmart to buy a birthday gift, but they're not there when she returns. Desperate for answers and not trusting the overworked local police, Jamie's aunt hires Alice Vega, a former bounty hunter, to look into the disappearance.
7. The Elizas by Sara Shepard: Shortly before her first novel is about to be published, Eliza Fontaine is found at the bottom of a hotel pool. She's rescued and swears someone tried to kill her, but because she has a history of suicide attempts involving bodies of water, nobody believes her...especially when the lines between her reality and her fiction start to blur. One thing that really bugged me is that almost every other chapter is an excerpt from Eliza's book, and it is SO SHITTILY WRITTEN that I had an extremely hard time believing it led to a huge advance. I mean, The Elizas itself is pretty bad, but the novel-within-a-novel is breathtakingly awful.
8. Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison: After getting fired from his landscaping job, Mike Munoz tries to scrape by while dealing with his family and a hopeless crush. There was a major character development that seemed to come out of nowhere, but other than that, I liked it.
2018 TOTAL SO FAR: 38
NONFICTION
1. Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of a Modern Exorcist by R.H. Stavis: The author, a self-proclaimed nondenominational exorcist, talks about her process and some of her most difficult cases. I was, and remain, skeptical, but I read it as entertainment and it succeeded on that level regardless of its veracity (or lack thereof).
2. Eat the Apple by Matt Young: An unusually structured memoir about the author's stint in the Marine Corps and his three deployments to Iraq. (The title comes from the expression "Eat the apple, fuck the Corps!")
3. Look Alive Out There by Sloane Crosley: A collection of essays about everything from a particularly noisy neighbor to the author's porn star uncle. (Well, technically her mother's cousin, but she refers to him as uncle.)
4. You All Grow Up and Leave Me* by Piper Weiss: As a teenager in the early 90s, the author had an unusually attentive tennis coach named Gary Wilensky. Gary tried to kidnap one of his other students, and when his attempt failed, he killed himself. An engrossing combination of memoir and true crime.
5. A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back by Kevin Hazzard: What it says on the tin!
2018 TOTAL SO FAR: 13
MANGA/GRAPHIC NOVELS
1. Gabriel Dropout vols. 2-3 by Ukami
2. The Water Dragon's Bride vol. 5 by Rei Toma
3. Food Wars! vol. 23 by Yuto Tsukuda and Shun Saeki
4. Erased vol. 4 (final volume) by Kei Sanbe
2018 TOTAL SO FAR: 17 volumes of manga and 7 graphic novels
MOVIES
1. Lion*: When young Saroo (Sunny Pawar, in an extraordinary performance) get separated from his brother at a train station, he climbs onto a train and winds up thousands of miles from home. Eventually, he's sent to an orphanage and adopted by an Australian couple. When Saroo gets older, he (now played by Dev Patel) decides to track down his biological family using Google Earth. Based on a true story, this movie is compelling and bittersweet. (And yes, the title is explained, though you have to wait until the very last moment.)
2. Murder on the Orient Express: When a passenger is murdered on the titular train, Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) investigates. Enjoyable, especially because I had no idea whodunnit!
3. Thelma: The title character is a college student in Oslo whose long-dormant supernatural abilities are triggered when she falls in love with another woman. It's pretty good, and the opening 5 minutes were so compelling that I knew I would finish it.
Warning: there's an extended scene involving strobe lights, so view with caution if you have epilepsy or flashing lights set off migraines, as they often do for me. (I looked away and had to hope there was no important dialogue in that scene; the movie is in Norwegian with English subtitles, and the only Norwegian word I know is tak.)
4. Suicide Squad: Hell to Pay: Amanda Waller sends the Suicide Squad after a mystical "Get Out of Hell Free" card in this ultra-gory animated flick.
5. The Commuter: Michael MacCauley's bad day gets worse when a mysterious woman sits across from him on the train and makes him an offer: locate a particular passenger and get a nice payout, or his family will be killed. Standard thriller fare elevated by an interesting opening and the tastiness of both Liam Neeson and Patrick Wilson (as a cop, no less! HNNNNGH).
6. Creep: When Aaron answers a Craigslist ad for a videographer, his client Josef says he's terminally ill and wants to make a video diary for his unborn child. But as the shoot goes on, Aaron discovers that Josef is, well, a creep. Tense and unsettling.
7. Black Panther: Since everybody in the world has already seen this movie, I'll skip the recap!
8. Dead Calm: After the tragic death of their son, John and Rae (Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman) are spending time at sea when they rescue a man (Billy Zane) escaping from a sinking ship. They take him onboard, but they begin to regret their decision when the dude turns out to be a psychopath.
9. Downsizing: Paul Safranek (Matt Damon) undergoes a new procedure to shrink himself to 5 inches tall, which allows him to live in luxury and reduce his carbon footprint.
2018 TOTAL SO FAR: 42
VIDEO GAME OF THE MONTH
(Note: this review doesn't cover the bonus episode "Farewell", which wasn't included on the disc we got from Gamefly. We watched it on YouTube afterwards and were glad we didn't pay the $10 to download it, as it was only about an hour's worth of gameplay and didn't really cover any new ground.)
With its unique time-rewinding mechanic, honest depiction of how teenage girls behave and think, and thought-provoking storyline, Life Is Strange was my favorite game of 2016. So when a prequel was announced, I knew I'd have to pick it up.
Life Is Strange: Before the Storm (hereafter referred to as BTS) revolves around Chloe Price, a teenage girl who's never quite recovered from two losses she suffered: her father died in a car accident only days before her best friend Max moved away and dropped off the radar. Despite the fact that she doesn't try all that hard, Chloe's smart enough to have scored a scholarship at the prestigious Blackwell Academy.
One night, Chloe sneaks into a concert and gets involved in an altercation. Much to her surprise, she's rescued by Rachel Amber, Blackwell Academy's golden girl, and the two form an immediate and strong connection.
LOVED
- Like its predecessor, BTS does an incredible job of creating strong, believable, flawed but endearing teenage girls. Chloe is angry and snarky, but she's also funny, resilient, and fiercely loyal, and I couldn't help falling in love with her all over again.
- Chloe doesn't share Max's ability to reverse time. Instead, a mechanic called "backtalk" has been introduced in which your dialogue choices can either get Chloe out of a tough situation or make things much worse.
- Chloe keeps a journal filled with beautiful art and collages, and it's both fun to read and a good refresher on past events.
- For the most part, the voice acting is excellent.
- A wonderful musical score.
- Getting to know Rachel Amber made Life Is Strange even more poignant in retrospect. In fact, if you haven't played LIS, I'd recommend playing BTS first for that very reason.
- LGBTQ+ issues were handled respectfully. (Take some notes, Atlus!)
LOATHED
- Probably due to its origins as a downloadable game, the graphics aren't great.
- Chloe's original voice actress didn't return for BTS. Her replacement VA was perfectly fine, but the original VA was phenomenal, so she was badly missed.
- The voice acting for a couple of minor characters was pretty meh, and one fairly important character legitimately sucked.
posted by ~C @ 9:11 AM
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