Nerdfighting.
I’m seeing John Green, Hank Green, and The mothereffing Mountain Goats at Carnegie Hall tonight.
Sometimes, my life is cool.
Review: The Dead and Buried
Title: The Dead and Buried
Author: Kim Harrington
Publisher: Scholastic Point
Release Date: January 1, 2013
Format: eBook via NetGalley
Jade loves the house she’s just moved into with her family. She doesn’t even mind being the new girl at the high school: It’s a fresh start, and there’s that one guy with the dreamy blue eyes. . . . But then things begin happening. Strange, otherworldly things. Jade’s little brother claims to see a glimmering girl in his room. Jade’s jewelry gets moved around, as if by an invisible hand. Kids at school whisper behind her back like they know something she doesn’t.
Soon, Jade must face an impossible fact: that her perfect house is haunted. Haunted by a ghost who’s seeking not just vengeance, but the truth. The ghost of a girl who ruled Jade’s school — until her untimely death last year. It’s up to Jade to put the pieces together before her own life is at stake. As Jade investigates the mystery, she discovers that her new friends in town have more than a few deep, dark secrets. But is one of them a murderer?—via Goodreads
I had some concerns about reading this book, given my three month I’M SCARED OUT OF MY MIND streak from seeing that God-forsaken movie, but I figured, “You know, I’m doing better lately. I’ve been sleeping with the light off. I can read this book.”
So I did!
And I didn’t have nightmares!
This is why I love YA. Because I can read a ghost story about an angry mean girl that is haunting her old house and still think that the book is cute and fun and not be worried about sleeping at night.
And, okay, the ghost isn’t really angry, but the ghost was a mean girl when she was alive and all she wants is to solve her murder. Well, she wants Jade, the girl who moved into her house, to solve her murder for her, so she throws her ghostly mean girl weight around to get her way.
So really, this book is more of a murder mystery than it is about a haunting. Although, there are a few creepy scenes involving possession and a child, but we’re not going to think about that.
In the end, this book was a good time. I liked Jade and the supporting characters in this book. Their personalities were very varied—the hot, smart jock who doesn’t come from a wealthy home, the manipulative popular girl who is mourning her best friend, the misunderstood, hot, artsy guy mourning the loss of his girlfriend while trying to protect her secrets, and the competitive brainiac who doesn’t understand or care to understand social cues—which kept the book feeling realistic and gave it a lot of personality.
Overall, this is a very fun, quick read that will satiate your desire for a nice, high school-set murder mystery with some ghosty action. Sort of like if Cordelia had that apartment with the ghost in it on Angel, but in an episode of Buffy. Except Jade isn’t a vampire slayer. In fact, there are NO vampires in this book. I repeat NO VAMPIRES. So, pretend that Jade is Willow and that there is no Buffy and no vampires. Cool? Cool.
Now go read.
What’s Making Me Happy {19}
Happy Sunday everyone!
It’s humid and cloudy and weirdly warm here.
Which means my hair is ridiculously curly. And not in the cute way.
Despite the frizzy coiffure there are still some things that are making me happy this week.
1. The Books They Gave Me
This Tumblr features stories that people write in anonymously to tell about books that people have given them. The stories are short, normally just a couple paragraphs, and run the gamut from sad to bitter to sweet to romantic.
2. Patrick J. Adams Delivers the Perfect Apology
I like this a whole lot better than that Josh Hutcherson is The Most Sensitive Guy in the World video.
3. Stark Kids Rap the Game of Thrones Intro
4. Lena Dunham Likes Taylor Swift
I’m one of those people who likes Lena Dunham and Girls (Woo, season two starts toniiiiight!), as well as T-Swizzle, so I was delighted to learn that Dunham is a Taylor fan!
5. Style Up
Y’all. This website will email you and tell you what to wear the next day. It is a revolution.
I hope you’re all enjoying your Sundays and are gearing up for the Golden Globes/Downton Abbey/Girls!
The Worst Time I Went to the Movies
I have this friend who is a very fancy film journalist.
Seriously, he is PAID to watch movies and review them, and talk to celebrities like JOSS FREAKING WHEDON. (Actually, the story of my friend calling me in the middle of the day when I was at—I kid you not—the 9/11 Memorial with some friends who were in town, and telling me he had ten minutes to sit down with Whedon is pretty hilarious. Mostly because I acted like a complete lunatic at a very somber place. My friends were ashamed and acted like they didn’t know me.) And he gets to fly all over the world and go watch movies and interview celebrities and stay in hotel rooms that are comped*.
For real.
He’s a very good friend to have, even if I do die from jealousy at least once a week. (And also, for the record, I would be friends with him even if he weren’t a very fancy film journalist.)
This is because he sometimes takes me to film screenings with him. (And also because he’s great.)
Back in early October he invited me to one such screening. It was for this horror film I hadn’t really heard of, but I was free that night and he told me Ethan Hawk stars in it and that it would be a good time.
So I said yes, of course I’ll go to a free movie with you.
This movie ended up being the film Sinister, which I will not link to for any reason because it scared the shit out of me. It scared me so much that I took my glasses off and refused to look at the screen after twenty minutes.
I’m not even kidding.
The plot of the movie is actually really dumb—true crime writer hasn’t written anything good in about a decade, he’s obsessed with his former fame in a way that is truly pathetic, and so he moves his family into the home of a family that was MURDERED IN THEIR BACKYARD in hopes of being inspired to solve their murder by living there. Then he finds this box of film footage and a projector in the attic and he watches it and it’s gruesome and horrible and OMG I CAN’T GET THE IMAGES OUT OF MY HEAD of all of these families being murdered in violent, awful, very realistic ways. BOXES OF THAT KIND OF SHIT. And then it turns out that there’s a pagan god involved in all of this and he’s actually controlling a little kid in each of these families and it’s the kid who is doing the killing. Sorry (I’m not sorry) if I spoiled it for you.
So, that’s the plot but there are some other quirks to it too, and they are things that actually link to some serious plot holes. BUT, at the time of watching the film I wasn’t thinking about that. I was thinking I JUST WANT IT TO BE OVER. MAKE IT STOP.
It didn’t help that the critic sitting next to me (I think he was from the Village Voice) had this backpack with him, and about halfway through he moved it on his lap and kept his hands near the top of the bag, where the zippers met in the middle, and so I was convinced he was going to pull out a knife and stab me.
I realize I’m ridiculous.
So, I’m traumatized by sitting in this theater, not-watching this movie. And my friend keeps jumping and gasping at points in the movie where there is no sound—oh yeah, that’s another thing about this evil movie: they utilize sound in a really creative way so that the sounds of Ethan Hawk putting film into the old school film projector will TERRIFY YOU FOR LIFE and then when there is absolute silence, you know there’s something creepy going down—and it just wasn’t a good night for me.
I won’t tell you what happens in the end, but I did watch it—which I shouldn’t have—and it’s actually pretty ballsy for a genre film.
So! We finally finally finally get out of the theater and go to Duane Reade so he can buy, like, a toothbrush or something, and then we go down to the subway and part ways. I was fine on the subway, and then I got on Metro-North to get to my home that is barely in the ‘burbs. While I’m riding, I realize that I have to walk home. At this point, it’s way after dark, and while this wouldn’t bother me any other night, I was just not okay with it because the walk involves going past a playground, which is something I wasn’t about to do after being terrified for a while. So I text my roomies and ask if one of them can pick me up at the train station. They oblige.
I get home, I tell my roomies how terrified I am, we all laugh about how big of a girl I can be (I live with two guys, one of whom LOVES scary movies), and then we all go to our separate rooms to sleep because we don’t sleep in a cuddle puddle in the living room. So I’m in my room, which I normally love, but on this particular night I’m terrified all by myself and keep looking at my closet, waiting for some pagan god to come out and claim me even though I’m not a child. To calm myself down, I ended up watching a princess movie on Netflix and sleeping with my light on.
The next night was way, way worse.
I get home from work and I’m home alone, which is a little strange because my roommates are both teachers and are normally home from running their after-work errands by the time I get home. But it was totally empty. And quiet.
I proceed to turn on every single light in the apartment and instead of sitting on the couch like a normal person to watch TV, I sit on the floor, in front of the coffee table, covered up in a blanket. Like I was in shock or something.
So I sit there, unmoving for two hours still totally alone and with all the lights on. I’m watching sitcoms, trying not to be scared, and doing a really poor job of it.
AND THEN A TRAILER FOR THE MOVIE COMES ON AND I HAVE A FULL-ON CONNIPTION.
I fumble with the remote trying to mute the damn TV, but our mute button is weird and it wasn’t working, so I literally closed my eyes and started yelling “LALALALALALALA” over and over again until I think it’s safe.
I know.
FINALLY, one of my roommates gets home and I yelled, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN WHY DID YOU LEAVE ME HERE ALONE OMG I’M SO GLAD TO SEE YOU, YOU HAVE NO IDEA.”
He had been on a date. It’s a good thing he didn’t bring her over.
Anyway. This could just keep going because I’m only JUST NOW to the point of being okay with a) being alone in the apartment and b) sleeping without a light on.
I still can’t watch trailers for horror movies.
WHICH REMINDS ME. About a week after watching that movie I went to Comic-Con with friends. We camped seats in the room where the Walking Dead and Firefly reunion panels were going to be held later in the day and ended up having to sit through THREE horror movie panels, complete with terrifying clips.
I took my glasses off for those too.
To add on to all of this, it definitely didn’t help that not long after seeing that fucking movie, I read Libba Bray’s The Diviners, which is GREAT, but doesn’t help with the sleeping at night in the dark if you’re already ridiculously scared of everything.
I’m seriously considering buying a nightlight.
*I don’t know if they’re technically comped, but he doesn’t pay for it with his own money, which in my mind means comped.
Review: My Life Next Door
Title: My Life Next Door
Author: Huntley Fitzpatrick
Publisher: Dial Books
Release Date: June 14, 2012
Format: Library book
“One thing my mother never knew, and would disapprove of most of all, was that I watched the Garretts. All the time.”
The Garretts are everything the Reeds are not. Loud, numerous, messy, affectionate. And every day from her balcony perch, seventeen-year-old Samantha Reed wishes she was one of them . . . until one summer evening, Jase Garrett climbs her terrace and changes everything. As the two fall fiercely in love, Jase’s family makes Samantha one of their own. Then in an instant, the bottom drops out of her world and she is suddenly faced with an impossible decision. Which perfect family will save her? Or is it time she saved herself?—via Goodreads
Every now and then, I pick up a book thinking “Well this will be light and fun,” and then I start reading it and it is so much more than that.
My Life Next Door is that kind of book.
Once I started reading, I couldn’t bring myself to put it down. I devoured it, and resented having to stop and make myself food so that I wouldn’t literally devour the book while I was reading it. It’s the kind of book that took me from laughing out loud and hugging the book to my chest to literally sobbing and trying really hard not to cry on the book since I had to return it to the library.
You better believe that I bought my own copy.
What I loved most about this book is that the plot is so layered—it hits on topics of loneliness, stress, supporting a friend who is battling addiction, first love, determining for yourself what is right and wrong in a world where everything is so, so gray, and even more so when your mother is in politics—but the pacing is casual, as Fitzpatrick takes her time with the story, allowing relationships to slowly develop and unravel, positioning families who have lived next door to each other for years and are polar opposites to become irrevocably intertwined, and creating a summer that changes everything in both of those families’ lives.
The pacing, y’all. I swoon for the pacing. (This is how we know I’m a humongous nerd.)
But the characters are pretty great too. Samantha is introspective, obedient, the youngest woman in a household of three women, who yearns for a life that isn’t puritanical and controlled by her mother. That’s why she watches the Garretts, the next door neighbors who have a loud, rambunctious house full of kids. Then one day, she meets and becomes friends with Jase Garrett, who—I swear to you—climbs her trellis to get to her.
I mean. C’mon.
Jase is the kind of guy who quietly sweeps you off your feet—he’s calm and confident, without being smarmy or cocky. On a couple different occasions, Samantha observes that even at seventeen, he’s more a man than a boy, which is so apt and kind of makes me melt a little. However, I would have never made it with Jase because he owns both a snake and a ferret, which is basically just a snake with fur. But somehow Samantha doesn’t care about those things, and the two of them are perfect without be nauseating. But that doesn’t mean their relationship is without hardship.
There are other relationships in this story, too—Samantha’s best friends, the siblings Nan and Tim, each of whom is struggling with their own mental and emotional battles. In the course of this book, you see enormous shifts within these relationships, in a way that is surprising, a little upsetting, but ultimately really spot-on to how friendships evolve. And then you have Samantha’s relationship with her mother—a perfectionist who is running for state senate, her mother’s new boyfriend, Clay, whom I was sure was some sort of con artist, but turns out to just be an intensely political animal: this relationship is strained, restrained, and cold. When juxtaposed with the immediate warmth, fun, and openness of the Garretts, the contrast is stark and, at times, startling. Where Samantha’ s house is full of consequences and critique, Jase’s is full of understanding and compassion.
You guys, I don’t even know how to explain to you how much I loved reading this book. My biggest harrumph with it—aside from Jase owning reprehensible creatures—is that Samantha often wears nightgowns, which is baffling to me. Do people actually wear nightgowns? Am I ignorant of a nightgown-wearing culture?
Anyway.
I’ve always heard the writing advice, “When you think you’ve tortured your main character enough, find other ways to do it,” which always seemed rather evil to me. But My Life Next Door is the kind of book that shows you just how much you can put your characters—and your reader—through, and just how much better that makes the story.
This book is all of the things: funny, heartwarming, a heaping dash sexy, heartbreaking, and resonant.
Seriously. Read this book. You won’t be sorry you did.
Bethany Larson 