One Day by David Nicholls – Book Review and Giveaway

Aug 102011

One Day by David Nicholls
Published by Vintage Books, an imprint of Random House

One Day is a book with a novel premise. On July 15, 1988, Dexter and Emma finally have an almost-fling, after Emma having had a crush on Dexter for years. Luckily, they end their near-tryst as friends, and One Day continues to check in on them every year on July 15; some years they are moving together, others they are moving apart, but always they mean something to each other.

The concept is fabulous, but it also has inherent problems. Only checking in one day per year means that there is always a lot of back story to fill in during the in between periods, which leads to quite a few letters as literary devices and exposition disguised as internal monologue. This made Dexter and Emma’s story much less powerful than it might otherwise have been. On the other hand, by the end it is clear just how powerful Nicholls’ structure truly is.

In all honesty, I didn’t totally love One Day, primarily because of the problems with the structure listed above. However, I’m very excited about the movie coming out on Friday, August 19th (website | Facebook page). I think much of what required exposition in print can be conveyed with visual cues such as setting and body language in the movie.

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On August 3, I was lucky enough, along with a group of bloggers, to be able to speak with David Nicholls about the book and movie. My portion of that interview can be found here.

I also have a prize pack provided by Focus Features for one lucky reader, filled with:

A paperback copy of One Day, movie tie-in edition
Clear cosmetic case
Necklace
Moleskin Journal
(prize pack valued at $30.95)

To enter, fill out the form below by 11:59 pm Central on Monday, August 15. US-only, please.

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Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Big Honcho Media.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Interview with David Nicholls, author of One Day

Aug 102011

OD 1Sht picture On August 3, I was lucky enough, along with a group of bloggers, to be able to speak with David Nicholls his novel One Day, and the movie adaptation. For a giveaway, as well as my thoughts on the book and expectations for the movie, see my review post.

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Jen: You have written both books and screenplays, how does the process compare?

David Nicholls: It’s a long time since I wrote a book, unfortunately, because I’ve been sort of tangled up in these various screenplays, which I love. But, the hardest thing is, when you write a novel, you create the characters. You kind of cast them in your head… You’re very much the director, the designer, the music coordinator, the editor. And when you move on to a movie, you have to kind of spread that load. You might get asked what you think of a particular location or a costume design, but it isn’t your responsibility.

And that’s not a bad thing. That can be quite liberating to know very precisely what the parameters are of your role. But, inevitably you can feel as if you are losing a little control. And so, on this movie, I felt that much less than I have in the past….
The other difference is you lose a lot of your equipment, if you like, your technique. It’s very hard to do an internal thought process.

A lot of what happens to Emma in the three years she leaves University happens in her head. And unless you use acres and acres of voiceover, minute after minute of long, protracted voiceover, you can’t really get a thought process. You can’t really get an interior monologue onto the screen.

So, there’s this terrific pressure all the time to move things forward and to concentrate on what people say and what they do rather than what they think and feel. And that can be quite tough…

And finally, I suppose there are the budgetary and scheduling restraints. I mean, the most obvious example of this, and I’ve used it before, is if you write in a novel, you know, “it’s raining,” then it’s sort of just words on the page. It’s nothing. And if you write “it’s raining” in a screenplay, then suddenly they’ve got to hire all this equipment, stand around in the rain all night, and it costs an extra 200,000 pounds. It’s not your 200,000 pounds. And someone is going to ask, “Does it really need to be raining?”

Jim Sturgess and Anne Hathaway as Dexter and Emma

Jen: I’m really interested in Emma and Dexter’s relationship, because it’s this grand relationship and there are all these obstacles in the way, but they never feel like you’re just throwing obstacles for the purpose of throwing obstacles. And they’ve got this love that’s this great cross between romantic love and friendly affectionate love.

David Nicholls: Yes. I mean, this is the great conundrum for the writers of modern love stories. You know, what are the obstacles? What are the modern obstacles to people getting together? The sort of golden age love story, there are kind of class divisions and family feuds and all of these very powerful barriers, the kind of Romeo and Juliet barriers. And now, what are those barriers? And I think they’re to do with temperament and personality.

And in One Day, there’s a mixture of plot driven obstacles, like letters that don’t get sent and phone calls that don’t get answered and a single stupid remark that pushes them away from each other for a period of time and being with someone else….
Those things are fun to plot, but the main obstacles are to do with their growing up. There’s a period of time where Emma is just much too self-involved and lacking in self-confidence and much too depressed, I think, for it to be the right time with Dexter. I know definitely a long period of time where Dexter is just too immature and just too self-involved and too foolish, really, to be the right match for Emma.

David Nicholls

And that seemed to me to tally with real life, with the observation of the relationships between my friends, that often the process of getting together was incredibly protracted, incredibly complex, incredibly complicated because it wasn’t quite the right time. And I think maybe that’s the great modern obstacle, that we all take a lot longer to settle into a relationship and to settle into thinking that it’s the right time.

This post was written as a result of an interview set up at the behest of Big Honcho Media

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close – Book Review

Aug 092011

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close
Published by Knopf, an imprint of Random House

The post-college years can be a relationship minefield. You begin to drift away from the friends who marry and have children significantly before – or after – you do; finding new friends and lovers becomes more difficult as you are no longer routinely thrown together in school with people in a similar age bracket and with similar interests. It is this limbo in which Isabella, Mary, and Lauren are firmly stuck. They are out of college and on their own: in nice apartments in Chicago and crummy shoebox ‘apartments’ in New York; in good relationships and dating idiots who cannot spell their names correctly; in nice, stable jobs and the worst of the worst waitressing jobs. In the middle of all this, they are scraping up cash for bridesmaids dresses, wedding shower presents, wedding presents, and baby shower presents, as it seems that everyone they know seems to be moving into that settled state of coupledom and familydom.

Girls in White Dresses is less a cohesive narrative than a collection of anecdotes about Isabella, Mary, Lauren, and their friends as they attempt to navigate young adulthoood. Rather than causing the readers to feel disconnected from her characters, though, Close’s structure lent her story a sense of universality. No matter what your post-college path or choices, it is likely that you will identify with one or more of the girls’ stories. Many of the vignettes in Girls in White Dresses are laugh out loud funny, as is this scene at a bridal shower when the bride’s mother’s friends all begin singing My Favorite Things:

They kept singing and started swaying back and forth. Abby was standing unfortunately close to the woman who’d started the singing, and the woman wrapped her arm around Abby’s shoulders, forced her to move in time with the music, and looked at her with an encouraging smile until Abby started to sing along with her. A few of the women were snapping their fingers. Lauren looked at Isabella and Mary and said, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, right?” -p. 171

Others, however, are poignant and thoughtful, as when Lauren and Isabella discuss a recently-divorced friend who has elected to keep her married name:

“Why wouldn’t she go back to Beth Bauer?” she asked Lauren. “She doesn’t have any kids. It’s so weird.”
“I don’t know,” Lauren said. “Maybe she’s afraid no one will remember who she is.”
“Maybe,” Isabella said. The thought left her uneasy. -p. 249

Close’s humor and grace is intensified by her lovely and engaging prose, creating in Girls in White Dresses a book that readers will be hard-pressed to put down.

Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

September BOOK CLUB giveaway – The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp

Aug 082011

5256159881 7ba9c432e6 m picture It is that time again! We are gearing up for this month’s discussion of By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham (Tuesday, August 23rd on Nicole’s blog), but it is also time to give away next month’s BOOK CLUB selection. In September we will be reading another offering from Picador, The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp.

littlek picture

We will be discussing The True Memoirs of Little K on Tuesday, September 27th right here on Devourer of Books.

From the publisher:

Exiled in Paris, tiny, one-hundred-year-old Mathilde Kschessinska sits down to write her memoirs before all that she believes to be true is forgotten. A lifetime ago, she was the vain, ambitious, impossibly charming prima ballerina assoluta of the tsar’s Russian Imperial Ballet in St. Petersburg. Now, as she looks back on her tumultuous life, she can still recall every slight she ever suffered, every conquest she ever made.

Kschessinka’s riveting storytelling soon thrusts us into a world lost to time: that great intersection of the Russian court and the Russian theater. Before the revolution, Kschessinska dominated that world as the greatest dancer of her age. At seventeen, her crisp, scything technique made her a star. So did her romance with the tsarevich Nicholas Romanov, soon to be Nicholas II. It was customary for grand dukes and sons of tsars to draw their mistresses from the ranks of the ballet, but it was not customary for them to fall in love.

The affair could not endure: when Nicholas ascended to the throne as tsar, he was forced to give up his mistress, and Kschessinska turned for consolation to his cousins, two grand dukes with whom she formed an infamous ménage à trois. But when Nicholas’s marriage to Alexandra wavered after she produced girl after girl, he came once again to visit his Little K. As the tsar’s empire—one that once made up a third of the world—began its fatal crumble, Kschessinka’s devotion to the imperial family would be tested in ways she could never have foreseen.

In Adrienne Sharp’s magnificently imagined novel, the last days of the three-hundred-year-old Romanov empire are relived. Through Kschessinska’s memories of her own triumphs and defeats, we witness the stories that changed history: the seething beginnings of revolution, the blindness of the doomed court, the end of a grand, decadent way of life that belonged to the nineteenth century. Based on fact, The True Memoirs of Little K is historical fiction as it’s meant to be written: passionately eventful, crammed with authentic detail, and alive with emotions that resonate still.

If you would like to be considered as a participant for September, please fill out the form below by the end of the day Wednesday, August 10th. Your mailing address will be discarded if you aren’t selected to participate and used to mail you the book if you are. I do not share or retain any personal information. Only those selected will be contacted by email.

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Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman – Book Review

Aug 082011

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins

It is hard to tell which is more soul-crushing: the corporate acronym-obsessed behemoth of a company for which Tom Violet works, or the incredibly embarrassing impotence he suffers whenever he and his wife try to make love (she really wants for them to have another baby). A visit from his father, the Pulitzer Prize-winning famous novelist isn’t exactly uplifting either, with Tom’s own novel sitting in a desk drawer. Really, the only bright spot most days is Tom’s lovely young subordinate at work, Katie, on whom he has an entirely inappropriate crush. This slow death but emotional and intellectual suffocation is not the future Tom had hoped for, so he decides he is going to make a change for the better in his life.

Domestic Violets is laugh-out-loud funny, right from the beginning. Think Office Space, but with a single protagonist who is older and slightly more mature, with a lot more problems in his life than just his job.

I do this sometimes. I react to thing based on what characters in movies would do. That’s kind of ironic, considering I’ve always thought of myself as a book person. At least I think that’s ironic. That word gets misused a lot. -p. 3

“She’s teaching Catcher in the Rye again this year. I guess her kids love it.”
Curtis shakes his head. “Well of course they do, Tommy. The only people who can actually get through that self-indulgent tripe without throwing up are teenagers and the criminally insane.” -p. 12

At the same time, though, Domestic Violets is a very real and at times quite moving novel. Despite this being a quintessential WMFUN (white male fuck up novel), Tom is an incredibly sympathetic character. After all, who among us doesn’t dream of doing what we love, instead of what pays the bills? Besides that, he really does love his wife and family, he just doesn’t always make the best decisions.

“It’s easier to love someone at first, when you’re young and you don’t know anything about anything. But it gets harder as you go along. Love is tough today. There are a lot of distractions.” -p. 177

Funny, smart, and meaningful, what else do you want in a book? Highly recommended.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Publisher, via Netgalley.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

TSS – Bookish Odds and Ends

Aug 072011

This is one of those weeks where, now that I think back on it, I’m not even sure what we did. Somehow, though, I didn’t have much reading time. Not during lunches, not in the evenings.

bloodspell picture One of my reading-free lunch times was really fun and bookish, though. YA author Amalie Howard was in town, and I had the opportunity to meet her and Julie from JKS Communications for lunch. We had a fabulous time talking all things bookish and book promotion. Definitely a fun time, and I can’t wait to read Amalie’s book – if only for that gorgeous cover!

Other fun news, I recently realized that I managed to finish the What’s In A Name 4 Challenge, which is very exciting. Here’s what I ended up reading for the different catagories:

Evil: Original Sins
Jewelry/Gem: Dragonfly in Amber
Life Stage: Mothers & Daughters
Number: A Thousand Rooms of Dream and Fear
Size: Little Rabbit Lost / Wide Sargasso Sea
Travel/Movement: The Statues That Walked

So overall it was a great bookish week, even if it wasn’t a very high page count sort of week. Here’s what I finished in print:

schoolofnight picture oneday picture

And in audio:

psychopathtest picture verybadmen picture

And, of course, what I reviewed this week:

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson – Audiobook Review

Aug 052011

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson, narrated by Jon Ronson
Published in audio by Tantor Audio; published in print by Riverhead Books, an imprint of Penguin

Synopsis:

Known as a journalist who gets things done, Jon Ronson is called quickly when neurologists all over the world all receive the same baffling book. Ronson uncovers the perpetrator with little difficulty, but his involvement in the hoax gives him an insight into another phenomenon: the impact of madness on our every day lives. During the course of his investigation, Ronson meets neurologists who deal with psychopathy and becomes particularly interested in the theory that nearly every aspect of our lives is shaped by the influence of psychopaths, particularly those who seem to be in positions of power in disproportionally large numbers. Armed with Bob Hare’s Psychopathy Checklist, known in many circles as the Psychopath Test, Ronson ventures out among a variety of people, all with apparently psychopathic tendencies to see what he can learn.

Thoughts on the story:

The title of The Psychopath Test is ever so slightly misleading. Ronson is not truly exclusively interested in psychopaths, but in madness and how it shapes the world, and our reactions to it – the case that led him to this topic did not directly involve a psychopath at all, in fact. However he finds over the course of his investigation that psychopathy is the most influential of madnesses, so it fittingly takes a place of prominence in his research and the resulting book.

The study of psychopaths truly is fascinating. At one point, another psychologist complains that Bob Hare – of checklist fame – speaks of psychopaths almost as if they were a separate species, Homo psychopathis, or something. There were many times throughout the book when the same thought occurred to me, not as a criticism, but as something that sent shivers down my spine. Still, though, by the end of his research, Ronson has learned not only a respectful fear of psychopaths, but a healthy dose of skepticism about our method for identifying them. Contrary to the ‘separate species’ remark, psychopathy is not an all or nothing proposition, but instead it is a spectrum. At what point are you a psychopath? For most intents, someone who scores a 30/40 on Hair’s checklist is so classified, but what about someone who scores a 29? Is that so far from a 31?

One thing I do wish had been addressed by Ronson and his research, even if only fleetingly, is the prevalence of male vs. female psychopaths. Unless I am much mistaken, each of the people in whom Ronson and others diagnosed psychopathic tendencies was male. We know that psychopaths comprise approximately 1% of the population, but it would have been interesting to see how that breaks down on gender – and other socioeconomic – lines. Is the faulty amygdala primarily a male defect, or did Ronson merely have a faulty sample?

Thoughts on the audio production:

In The Psychopath Test, Ronson narrates his own work. His voice does take some getting used to, but he is not half-bad, as narrators go. He is perfectly capable of inserting appropriate excitement and emotion into the text. Particularly attractive is his narration of his own anxieties, oftentimes nearly crippling. Because he inserts himself so completely into his narrative, it makes complete sense for him to do the actual narration when the text is translated into an audiobook. The experience is made that much richer by his familiarity with the text and ability to impart the full range of emotions he felt during this period of research.

soundbytes picture Overall:

The Psychopath Test is a fascinating work of extremely narrative journalistic nonfiction. Readers and listeners alike will be more than a little horrified by the psychopaths who lurk everywhere around us, mimicking our emotions though they feel none themselves. I would recommend The Psychopath Test in either print or audio, but be prepared to begin measuring everyone you meet against the Hair Checklist.

Buy this book from:
Powells: Audio/Print*
Indiebound: Audio/Print*

I’m launching a brand-new meme every Friday! I encourage you to review any audiobooks you review on Fridays and include the link here. If you have reviewed an audiobook earlier in the week, please feel free to link that review as well. Thanks to Pam for creating the button.

Source: Tantor Audio.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson – Book Review

Aug 042011

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson
Published by HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollins

Ginny’s Aunt Peg has always been incredibly fun, so when Ginny receives 13 blue envelopes from Peg and instructions to fly to Europe, she knows there is something special in store for her. Made all the more special by the fact that Peg has recently died, and must have created all these instructions for Ginny before she passed away. If there is one thing that the envelopes guarantee, it is an adventure.

Maureen Johnson is just such a fun, engaging writer, and 13 Little Blue Envelopes is no exception. Ginny is an adorable, loveable heroine. She has doubts and flaws like any realistic human being, but she manages not to be an overly obnoxious teen, even while she was asserting her independence from the adults in her life. Ginny’s adventure, too, is great fun, and Johnson keeps the story rolling along, while at the same time allowing Ginny some introspection.

All in all, great fun, and I’m intrigued to check out The Last Little Blue Envelope for the conclusion of Ginny’s story.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly – Book Review

Aug 032011

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly
Published by St. Martin’s Griffin, an imprint of Macmillan

This is the first book in the Rose series.

Fiona Finnegan may be a poor Irish girl living in Whitechapel, but she has big plans with her sweetheart, Joe Bristow. Together, they are determined to save enough money to marry and open a shop of their own, something that can take them away from a neighborhood where Jack the Ripper roams the streets after dark. When Joe takes a better paying job, it pains them to be apart, but seems a means to an end, until three tragedies rip Fiona’s life asunder and she is forced to face life on her own, with only her young brother by her side.

The Tea Rose is not a short book, and it is just the first in a trilogy of equally long books. Thus it is only to be expected that there is quite a bit of initial set up and characterization. This resulted, however, in a slow first 100 pages or so. Fiona was engaging the entire time, but her poor-but-getting-by family and her dreams of a future with Joe went a bit longer than would be optimal. Around page 100, though, things begin happening, and Fiona really begins to show her mettle and the story takes flight. Fiona is a strong character, without being too overly modern. She is certainly bold and willing to break out of societal molds, but never comes across as anachronistic.

Once it gets going, The Tea Rose is completely engaging late 19th-century historical fiction, an epic that captures the imagination. I cannot wait to read the rest of the series.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

If you are already a fan of this series, the third book, The Wild Rose, was just released by Hyperion Books. Buy it from:

Powells | Indiebound*

Source: personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Soulless by Gail Carriger – Book Review

Aug 022011

Soulless by Gail Carriger
Published by Orbit Books, an imprint of Hachette

This is the first book in the Parasol Protectorate series.

Being a soulless, half-Italian spinster doesn’t exactly put Alexa Tarabotti at the top of the height of the Victorian social scene. Basically ignored and disdained by her mother and flouffy half sisters (think Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, but too stupid to be truly evil). Even though she isn’t exactly sought after, she still is not used to being attacked by vampires at dinner parties. A normal vampire would know better than to attack someone who is soulless, since the soulless negate the powers of the over-soulled paranormal creatures like vampires and werewolves. Next thing Alexa knows, she is working with the Lord Maccon to discover what is happening to the plethora of missing werewolves and vampires, as well as the strange new creatures which have been wandering around London.

Soulless is a highly entertaining, quite funny paranormal steampunk romance:

Her mama thought her a bluestocking, which was soulless enough as far as Mrs. Loontwill was concerned, and was terribly upset by her eldest daughter’s propensity for libraries. – p. 17

If the description of ‘paranormal steampunk romance’ makes it sound like Soulless suffers from an excess of genres, that may in fact be the case, but Carriger pulls all of them off quite well, neither taking them too seriously nor making them too ridiculous. Alexa Tarabotti is a strong-willed young woman who makes for a fantastic protagonist, but perhaps even more interesting than Alexa was Carriger’s alternate Victorian era, which was molded quite well from the world with which we are familiar:

Miss Tarabotti shook her head in sorrow. The narrowmindedness of it all! She knew her history. The puritans left Queen Elizabeth’s England for the New World because the queen sanctioned the supernatural presence in the British Isle. The Colonies had been entirely backward ever since: religious fingers in all their dealings with vampires, werewolves, and ghosts. It made America into a deeply superstitious place. Fates only knew what they’d think of someone like her! -p. 102

All in all it makes for a very enjoyable romp of a read. I definitely plan on continuing in this series.

Buy this book from:
Powells | Indiebound*

Source: Personal copy.
* These links are all affiliate links. If you buy your book here I’ll make a very small amount of money that goes towards hosting, giveaways, etc.

Older Entries Newer Entries

Devourer of Books

One Day by David Nicholls – Book Review and Giveaway

Interview with David Nicholls, author of One Day

Girls in White Dresses by Jennifer Close – Book Review

September BOOK CLUB giveaway – The True Memoirs of Little K by Adrienne Sharp

Domestic Violets by Matthew Norman – Book Review

TSS – Bookish Odds and Ends

The Psychopath Test by Jon Ronson – Audiobook Review

13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson – Book Review

The Tea Rose by Jennifer Donnelly – Book Review

Soulless by Gail Carriger – Book Review

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