media update: August

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. Dirt Creek* by Hayley Scrivenor:  The disappearance of a twelve-year-old girl reverberates through her small Australian town.

2. The Devil Takes You Home by Gabino Iglesias:  Mario is drowning in debt due to his daughter's leukemia.  He starts taking on murder-for-hire jobs, but then he gets an offer that he can't refuse, even though it may very well get him killed: robbing a drug cartel.  Some indelibly creepy stuff in this one; a kid being horrifically mutilated for his supposedly miraculous body parts haunted me for days.

Side note:  this book has a LOT of untranslated Spanish in it, most of which can't be inferred from context.  I got my copy from Book of the Month, and they kindly included a translation guide, but it did take away from the dramatic flow having to refer to it constantly. 

3. All Good People Here* by Ashley Flowers:  Margot returns to her small Indiana town to care for her beloved uncle, who's suffering from early onset dementia.  Her best friend was murdered when they were both six, and now another little girl has disappeared.  An engrossing read that I tore through in two days.

4. Sharp Edges by Leah Mol:  Katie is adrift in life; her best friend has abandoned her for a boy, her mother is a hypochondriac, and the boy she likes is a bit of a mess.  She discovers a website where she can sell her underwear, and she finally feels in control, but it's an illusion.

2022 TOTAL SO FAR: 35

NONFICTION

1. I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy:  A blistering (as you can guess from the title) memoir about the author's rise to fame as a Nickelodeon star and her complicated relationship with her abusive stage mother.

2. No One Crosses the Wolf* by Lisa Nikolidakis:  The author's childhood and adolescence was marred by her father's physical, emotional, and sexual abuse.  When she was 27, her father murdered his girlfriend and her daughter and then killed himself.  Wondering who her father really was and why he'd committed such horrible crimes, she went to Greece to track down his estranged family.  Dark and sad (obviously), but it ends on a redemptive note, and it made me cry, which books rarely do.

2022 TOTAL SO FAR:  7

MANGA/GRAPHIC NOVELS

1. My Dress-Up Darling vol. 6 by Shinichi Fukuda 

2. The Way of the Househusband* vol. 8 by Kousuke Oono

2022 TOTAL SO FAR:   19 graphic novels and 27 volumes of manga

MOVIES

1. Everything Everywhere All at Once*:  A woman (Michelle Yeoh) unwittingly gets involved in interdimensional shenanigans in this visually unique and very strange movie.  

2. Lightyear*:  After a mistake maroons him and his crew on a hostile planet, astronaut Buzz Lightyear tries to get home.  Much better than I was expecting, considering the lackluster (for Pixar, anyway) critical and commercial response.

3. The Lost City:  When a romance novelist is kidnapped, her cover model comes to the rescue.  Some funny moments, and Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum have good chemistry together.

4. The Black Phone*:  When Finney is abducted by a masked serial killer (Ethan Hawke) and thrown into a basement, he gets help from an unusual source.  Great sense of time and place, and an excellent performance by Mason Thames as Finney.

5. Day Shift:  Bud (Jamie Foxx) works as a vampire hunter, and after reluctantly rejoining the union in order to make more money, he's assigned a union rep (Dave Franco) to look after him.  Some funny moments and surprisingly good action sequences.

6. Men:  Reeling from a tragedy, a woman goes to the English countryside to heal, but finds herself being menaced by strange people.  The last twenty minutes are an extra disturbing WTF-a-thon.  I didn't like it nearly as much as most of Alex Garland's work, but it sure was different.

7. The Gray Man*:  A CIA agent (Ryan Gosling) tries to stay one step ahead of an ex-CIA agent (Chris Evans, playing against type) who wants a valuable piece of intel.  Super exciting and a lot of fun.

22 TOTAL SO FAR:  52