Weekly Reads: Sharp Objects

I've read and enjoyed Gillian Flynn's other books, but hadn't yet read Sharp Objects. I feel like you have to be in a certain *mood* to read her books, if you know what I mean. They're so dark and twisted, that my brain needs to be in a pretty darn good place before I pick them up. I was in need of an audiobook the other day, and I saw this on the shelf as I was shelving at work, so I picked it up, planning to discard it if I disliked the narrator. But I didn't. I wasn't super in to it the first disc (12% of the story), but it really picked up and I was flying through the discs while driving back and forth to work. This book was so much darker than I was expecting, and since I was listening to it, I couldn't skim past some of the really intense parts. I'm not very squeamish but I was while reading (listening) to this, so that's saying something, I think.

My rating: 4 stars

Summary from Goodreads:

Fresh from a brief stay at a psych hospital, reporter Camille Preaker faces a troubling assignment: she must return to her tiny hometown to cover the murders of two preteen girls. For years, Camille has hardly spoken to her neurotic, hypochondriac mother or to the half-sister she barely knows, a beautiful thirteen-year-old with an eerie grip on the town. Now, installed in her old bedroom in her family's Victorian mansion, Camille finds herself identifying with the young victims—a bit too strongly. Dogged by her own demons, she must unravel the psychological puzzle of her own past if she wants to get the story—and survive this homecoming. 

Weekly Reads (Listens): Why Not Me?

Why Not Me?is the newest book by Mindy Kaling, but you probably didn't need me to tell you that. I adored her last book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? so I was excited to pick up the audio version of this one as soon as it came out. I convinced Kyle to listen to the first disc on the drive home from our honeymoon. Let's just say that he is not Mindy's target audience.

The other three discs I listened to on my own, and I enjoyed them. Some decent LOL moments.

My rating: 3.5 stars

Summary from goodreads:

From the author of the beloved New York Times bestselling book Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? and the creator and star of The Mindy Project comes a collection of essays that are as hilarious and insightful as they are deeply personal.

In Why Not Me?, Kaling shares her ongoing journey to find contentment and excitement in her adult life, whether it’s falling in love at work, seeking new friendships in lonely places, attempting to be the first person in history to lose weight without any behavior modification whatsoever, or most important, believing that you have a place in Hollywood when you’re constantly reminded that no one looks like you.

In “How to Look Spectacular: A Starlet’s Confessions,” Kaling gives her tongue-in-cheek secrets for surefire on-camera beauty, (“Your natural hair color may be appropriate for your skin tone, but this isn’t the land of appropriate–this is Hollywood, baby. Out here, a dark-skinned woman’s traditional hair color is honey blonde.”) “Player” tells the story of Kaling being seduced and dumped by a female friend in L.A. (“I had been replaced by a younger model. And now they had matching bangs.”) In “Unlikely Leading Lady,” she muses on America’s fixation with the weight of actresses, (“Most women we see onscreen are either so thin that they’re walking clavicles or so huge that their only scenes involve them breaking furniture.”) And in “Soup Snakes,” Kaling spills some secrets on her relationship with her ex-boyfriend and close friend, B.J. Novak (“I will freely admit: my relationship with B.J. Novak is weird as hell.”)

Mindy turns the anxieties, the glamour, and the celebrations of her second coming-of-age into a laugh-out-loud funny collection of essays that anyone who’s ever been at a turning point in their life or career can relate to. And those who’ve never been at a turning point can skip to the parts where she talks about meeting Bradley Cooper.

Weekly Reads (Listens): A Modern Romance

I'm a huge fan of Aziz Ansari, so when his new book was announced, I immediately got on the list for the audiobook Modern Romance. I was surprised once I started listening to it, because it was actually a book chrnoicling his research on all things relationship. So I actually learned things. Whoa. Great read/listen.

My rating: 4 stars.

Summary from goodreads:


At some point, every one of us embarks on a journey to find love. We meet people, date, get into and out of relationships, all with the hope of finding someone with whom we share a deep connection. This seems standard now, but it’s wildly different from what people did even just decades ago. Single people today have more romantic options than at any point in human history. With technology, our abilities to connect with and sort through these options are staggering. So why are so many people frustrated?

Some of our problems are unique to our time. “Why did this guy just text me an emoji of a pizza?” “Should I go out with this girl even though she listed Combos as one of her favorite snack foods? Combos?!” “My girlfriend just got a message from some dude named Nathan. Who’s Nathan? Did he just send her a photo of his penis? Should I check just to be sure?”

But the transformation of our romantic lives can’t be explained by technology alone. In a short period of time, the whole culture of finding love has changed dramatically. A few decades ago, people would find a decent person who lived in their neighborhood. Their families would meet and, after deciding neither party seemed like a murderer, they would get married and soon have a kid, all by the time they were twenty-four. Today, people marry later than ever and spend years of their lives on a quest to find the perfect person, a soul mate.

For years, Aziz Ansari has been aiming his comic insight at modern romance, but for Modern Romance, the book, he decided he needed to take things to another level. He teamed up with NYU sociologist Eric Klinenberg and designed a massive research project, including hundreds of interviews and focus groups conducted everywhere from Tokyo to Buenos Aires to Wichita. They analyzed behavioral data and surveys and created their own online research forum on Reddit, which drew thousands of messages. They enlisted the world’s leading social scientists, including Andrew Cherlin, Eli Finkel, Helen Fisher, Sheena Iyengar, Barry Schwartz, Sherry Turkle, and Robb Willer. The result is unlike any social science or humor book we’ve seen before.

In Modern Romance, Ansari combines his irreverent humor with cutting-edge social science to give us an unforgettable tour of our new romantic world.

Weekly Reads (Listens): Dark Places

After listening to, and loving the narration in Fangirl and Eleanor and Park, I looked up all the books that Rebecca Lowman had narrated, and up popped Dark Places, that has been on my to-read list since I read the disturbing psychological thriller Gone Girl . I've heard that Dark Places and Sharp Objects are both even more disturbing. On one hand, that makes me super excited to read them, but I feel like I have to be in the right "mood" ya know? So I picked up the audiobook, and was hooked immediately.

The narration is great, told by three different narrators, as it's told from multiple character's perspective. I found myself leaving for work early and sitting in my car to spend more time listening to the story when I arrived at the library. In typical Gillian Flynn fashion, it was awesome and I wanted to devour it.

My rating: 4 stars.


Summary from goodreads:

"I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ."

Libby Day was seven when her mother and two sisters were murdered in “The Satan Sacrifice of Kinnakee, Kansas.” As her family lay dying, little Libby fled their tiny farmhouse into the freezing January snow. She lost some fingers and toes, but she survived–and famously testified that her fifteen-year-old brother, Ben, was the killer. Twenty-five years later, Ben sits in prison, and troubled Libby lives off the dregs of a trust created by well-wishers who’ve long forgotten her.

The Kill Club is a macabre secret society obsessed with notorious crimes. When they locate Libby and pump her for details–proof they hope may free Ben–Libby hatches a plan to profit off her tragic history. For a fee, she’ll reconnect with the players from that night and report her findings to the club… and maybe she’ll admit her testimony wasn’t so solid after all.

As Libby’s search takes her from shabby Missouri strip clubs to abandoned Oklahoma tourist towns, the narrative flashes back to January 2, 1985. The events of that day are relayed through the eyes of Libby’s doomed family members–including Ben, a loner whose rage over his shiftless father and their failing farm have driven him into a disturbing friendship with the new girl in town. Piece by piece, the unimaginable truth emerges, and Libby finds herself right back where she started–on the run from a killer.