Pop Culture Nerd – Page 7 – Pop Culture Nerd

Funny Shows For Sad Times

If you’ve been finding yourself weeping for the past week, perhaps you could use some laughter. Why not check out the hilarious shows below? You’re probably on the couch already.

What I especially like about these programs, all half-hour, is that they don’t force silly gags or cheap toilet humor on you. They’re funny and poignant because sometimes there’s only a fine line between the two.

Check them out and hopefully your spirits will be lifted, too, at least while you binge.

Schitt’s Creek (PopTV.com)

This stars Catherine O’Hara and Eugene Levy—are you laughing yet? The Christopher Guest ensemble players portray Johnny and Moira Rose, a rich New York couple who, due to their investment advisor’s illegal activities, loses everything. Except a small town they bought as a joke, a place called Schitt’s Creek.

The town is so pathetic the government doesn’t want to seize it, so the Roses and their millennial kids, David (Dan Levy) and Alexis (Annie Murphy), go to live there. Cultures clash as they try to coexist with the small-town folk, who are worlds away from the Roses’ hoity-toity friends from New York society.

As expected, O’Hara and Levy are funny; Moira is an actress so O’Hara gets to be ridiculously dramatic. But the younger Levy—also the show’s cocreator and cowriter with his dad—Murphy, and the actors who play the townies are fine comedic talents, too (save for Chris Elliott, who’s just gross and annoying).

Fleabag (Amazon Prime)

This six-part BBC comedy series stars one of my favorite discoveries this year: Phoebe Waller-Bridge. She creates, writes, and stars in her own shows, and does all of it with aplomb. She just won the Groucho Club Maverick Award for this show, beating out Lin-Manuel Miranda. Do I have your attention now?

Fleabag (a nickname; we never learn her real name) is a young woman trying to move on after the death of a loved one. That doesn’t sound funny at all, I know, but the show has many absurd, wacky, laugh-out-loud moments. That’s where Waller-Bridge’s talent lies.

She makes you laugh one minute, and the next she’s hitting you between the eyes with something profound. Or vice versa. Life is like that in Waller-Bridge’s world, where laughter and pain are often not far from each other.

Crashing (Netflix)

After Fleabag, if you immediately want to see what else Waller-Bridge has done, check out Crashing, another absurd dramedy about six people living in an abandoned hospital to save money on rent. Think Friends but much weirder and with much less fancy digs.

Superstore (NBC)

America Ferrera heads the cast playing employees at a Walmart-like store, except here the employees are more outlandish than the customers.

But the characters aren’t weird for weird’s sake. The writing and acting show why they behave the way they do, which engenders more understanding and compassion than judgment toward them. And isn’t that what we need more of?

Have you seen any of these shows? What are you watching these days to lighten your mood?

Photos: Schitt’s Creek/CBC; Waller-Bridge/BBC; Superstore/NBC

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Knife-Sharpening Nasty Women

As with millions of people, I have been struggling to process the results of the US election. I wanted to write something about how I was feeling because writing can be healing for me. But my words kept running away from me, hiding somewhere I couldn’t reach them.

Then my 18-year-old niece Aline, who voted for the first time, posted the following on Facebook. I thought it was fiercer and more eloquent and hopeful than anything I could write. She gave me permission to reprint it here. —PCN

*****

I woke up this morning feeling unbelievably small, sore-throated, and unable to shake this Zora Neale Hurston line from my head: “No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.” I think I skipped straight from numbness to knife-sharpening.

I recognize that I still come from a place of relative privilege and that this election doesn’t hold as many tangible risks for me as it does for others. Even as a daughter of immigrant and refugee parents, I’ve been lucky enough to have socioeconomic security and education.

But I know how alienating it feels to be a young woman. There’s something desperately lonely about being a teenage girl, especially a nonwhite one in largely white spaces, especially one who’s always wanted more for as long as she can remember.

It’s the kind of Otherness that you can feel anywhere, it’s that pang of fear while walking down a street alone at night, that silence when someone says something casually racist or sexist because you don’t want to be a bitch, that urge to dumb yourself down in conversations so you don’t seem unaccommodating.

It’s almost painful to watch how consummately civil Hillary Clinton’s been in the wake of these results—I’m not asking her to act otherwise, because I understand why she needs to be—but the injustice behind that rationale makes me upset.

I saw a Facebook comment about her in the wake of her concession speech calling her a “power-seeking bitch”—ostensibly for having the sheer nerve to campaign for president in the first place—and it made me think about all the names we have for women who dare to vocalize wanting. Nasty woman. Bitch. Cunt. Et cetera.

The fact that this election’s revealed the vitriolic hatred at America’s core makes me angrier than ever, but I’m glad I’m still feeling something. If fighting to make this country better means I’ll be the nasty, bitchy nightmare of a woman I always feared I’d become, I couldn’t be more excited.

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Book Review: ESCAPE CLAUSE by John Sandford

After dealing with dognappings in 2014’s Deadline, Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension agent Virgil Flowers investigates catnappings in Escape Clause, his ninth outing in John Sandford’s Prey spinoff series.

The cats in this case are no household pets; they’re a pair of endangered Amur tigers stolen from the Minnesota Zoo. Flowers fears they’ll be slaughtered for parts to use in illegal traditional medicines.

But the first body he encounters is human, a small-time crook linked to the stolen tigers. Then another corpse surfaces. And yet another person goes missing. Flowers realizes he’s up against someone who intends to kill not only the tigers, but anyone who gets in the way of a deadly get-rich scheme.

Though the crimes in this novel are no joke—a subplot involves the exploitation of illegal Mexicans in the workplace—the appeal lies in the humor Sandford gives his eccentric characters.

Sporting long blond hair and cowboy boots, Flowers is sometimes underestimated by others as a law enforcement officer, but readers know he’s smart, competent and fair. His sidekicks are two other BCA agents who resemble “Mafia thugs,” but Flowers points out they’d do well in Hollywood with that look. The cool but complex Catrin Mattson, another colleague (Field of Prey), begs for a spinoff series of her own. Flowers’s girlfriend, Frankie, has a sister who’s dangerously self-centered, but Flowers’s relationship with Frankie is still going strong, just like this series.

This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission.

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Nerdy Special List November 2016

Though some publications have already put out their best of 2016 lists, this year isn’t over yet so we’ll just tell you about our favorite books this month.

Except for Erin, who has a special recommendation. Because of that, she’ll have the final position this time.

We hope you’ll add at least one of these titles to your TBR stack.

From Jen at Brown Dog Solutions:

Moranifesto by Caitlin Moran (Harper Perennial, November 29)

Moranifesto is a collection of articles Moran published first in London’s The Times. The book is divided into four sections, with exclusive content opening each division. Each article then has a brief introduction explaining how it ties into the whole manifesto.

The articles are intelligent, witty, and diverse. She covers entertainingly silly subjects such as listening to a song over and over, then switches directions to discuss political topics like abortion and poverty.

Those familiar with her work will recognize her strong feminist perspective. Moran is well informed and knows how to interject just the right amount of levity at the right time.

She’s also very capable of wielding her sarcasm like a sword. Moranifesto made me want to subscribe to The Times just so I could spend more time with this amazing writer and woman. This is the perfect book for strong women and the men who are smart enough to appreciate them.

And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer by Fredrik Backman (Atria, November 1)

The old adage about good things coming in small packages applies to Fredrik Backman’s novella. It folds an amazingly beautiful story with huge themes into a wee little volume of goodness, complete with delightful color illustrations.

But it also comes with a warning label: Crying guaranteed.

And Every Morning started out as simply a way for Backman to come to terms with something in his life. He hadn’t intended to publish the scribbles he was making to free complicated emotions from his mind.

Lucky for us that changed. The novella tells the tale of an old man, his son, and his grandson. The old man is suffering from dementia and his memory shrinks every day.

Backman opens the book with a letter to readers that says, “This is a story about memories and about letting go. It’s a love letter and a slow farewell between a man and his grandson, and between a dad and his boy.”

And Every Morning is a single-sitting read but one to reread. Just keep the Kleenex close.

[Ed. note: Read Jen’s full review of this novella here.]

From Lauren at Malcolm Avenue Review:

Inherit the Bones by Emily Littlejohn (Minotaur, November 1)

If you can get past the clown (it’s a dead one, if that helps), Inherit the Bones is a super debut mystery featuring Deputy Gemma Monroe and an impressively diverse cast of supporting characters.

When the identity of the clown is discovered, the small town of Cedar Valley, Colorado, is forced to face dark secrets that have been hidden for decades.

The clown is just the newest in a long line of tragedies, including the disappearance of two boys, the discovery of a woman’s body on a riverbank, and the seemingly accidental slip-and-fall death of the mayor’s son.

Along with a partner she doesn’t fully trust and a freshly minted recruit, a very pregnant Gemma must mine the town’s past crimes in order to solve its most recent. Any good that comes from taking a shovel to buried secrets in a small town is always coupled with more violence, and Littlejohn keeps the anticipation high by weaving the past and present together in fine fashion.

Littlejohn has created numerous characters with the depth to make them intriguing while never distracting from the action. Her beautiful writing always keeps the story moving forward, and despite increasingly numerous subplots, the author deftly pulls them all together. She has a great start to a new series on her hands.

Niagara Motel by Ashley Little (Arsenal Pulp Press, November 15)

Niagara Motel is proof that writing in the voice of a child can be sublimely captivating. Readers will fall madly in love with Tucker Malone, who is more wise and world weary than any eleven-year-old should be.

Tucker never knew his father, whom he firmly believes is Sam Malone from the television sitcom Cheers, but Gina, his narcoleptic stripper mother, has tried to make a good life for him despite their dreary circumstances.

When tragedy separates them, Tucker is sent to a youth home where he meets older, pregnant Meredith, and the two strike up an unlikely yet lovely friendship.

After Meredith agrees to accompany Tucker to California to look for his father (Sam wasn’t at the Cheers bar in Boston, so the next likely place to find him is on set in Hollywood, right?), what transpires next is one of the most oddly inventive road trips ever.

Yes, ever. It’s so good and weird it’s almost distracting, but Little’s characters and writing are strong enough to keep the story on track.

Smart and funny, Niagara Motel is, at its heart, the story of Tucker Malone and his journey to find meaning and friendship. Go in blind, keep Google at the ready, and be prepared to get sucked in by this charming, heartfelt story.

From PCN:

Keigo Higashino’s Under the Midnight Sun, trans. by Alexander O. Smith with Joseph Reeder (Minotaur, November 8)

It wasn’t until I was about a third into this 500+-page book that I realized almost everything I believed about certain characters was wrong. And it was a chilling realization.

I had to reevaluate the information I had from a different angle with a sense of dread.

Higashino, Edgar Award nominated for The Devotion of Suspect X, has created a Japanese Les Miserables, with a dogged detective who chases someone he believes has gotten away with murder for almost 20 years.

The story starts in 1973 with the body of a man found in an abandoned building. He’s been stabbed multiple times and the police have no suspects.

Over the next two decades, we follow what happens to the man’s young son and a little girl whose mother might’ve had a tangential connection to the dead man. Life is hard, and sometimes they have to do ugly things to survive.

And there’s Detective Sasagaki, who refuses to give up on that cold murder case.

The power of this novel lies in challenging the way we judge others when we don’t know the whole story. It asks us to see that even people who commit horrific acts are capable of great courage, and sometimes they do the former because of the latter.

I vacillated between fearing and loathing and being in awe of the two lead characters, and in the end, I couldn’t help but feel compassion for them.

From Erin at In Real Life:

My love of reading (and my nerdiness) comes in large part from my dad, and as I write this, he’s hours from taking what will be his last breath.

Erin’s dad, Christmas ’92, with BREAKING BLUE on table

Dad recommended a lot of books over the years, including Breaking Blue by Timothy Egan, which he gave me for Christmas 24 years ago. It remains one of my “desert island” books.

So here’s my recommendation this month, with love to my dad, and thanks to PCN for letting me recommend a book that’s not new, but might be new to you.

I’m not a big reader of nonfiction, but when narrative nonfiction is done well, it takes my breath away. Breaking Blue is such a book.

Set in Spokane, Washington, in 1935 (and 1955 and 1989), it concerns a police department that defines institutional corruption in the most graphic ways possible.

When a town marshal is murdered, there’s not much of an investigation and no one is arrested for the crime. By 1989, it was the longest unsolved murder in the United States.

Enter a Spokane cop who, in the course of doing research for his master’s degree, finds an apparent deathbed confession to the murder from 1955. His subsequent investigation of the 1935 crime, and into his fellow police officers, is terrifying and tragic.

Breaking Blue is a genuine page-turner. When my dad gave it to me, I read it on the train back to Chicago from Spokane. I was lucky that Chicago was the last stop, because I was so engrossed in the story, I would have missed any earlier one.

Timothy Egan has won a lot of awards for his reporting and storytelling, including a Pulitzer Prize, and he deserves every one of them. In Breaking Blue, he unravels a gripping cop-vs.-cop tale, replete with fascinating history, nuanced atmosphere, and sociological insight.

This is one of those stories that prove truth indeed is often stranger than–and just as fascinating as–fiction.

Erin with her dad

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Review: GOOD GIRLS REVOLT

From L: Camp, Darke, Angelson

It’s funny. When I started PCN eight years ago, I made TV one of the categories because I occasionally review TV shows, but as I started writing about Good Girls Revolt, I didn’t know how to label it because it’s on Amazon Prime. Is it an iPad show? Laptop show?

Whatever you call it, it’s an engaging, thought-provoking series you should definitely check out. The 10 episodes premiered last Friday and I binged them (how else?) in 24 hours.

It’s about the real case of 46 female Newsweek employees who filed a complaint against the magazine in 1970 for gender discrimination, because no women were allowed to be reporters there.

One of those women, Lynn Povich, wrote a book about it called The Good Girls Revolt: How the Women of Newsweek Sued their Bosses and Changed the Workplace, which became the basis for this show, though the characters and magazine have been fictionalized to give the creators more creative license.

The focus is on three young women: Patti, Jane, and Cindy, researchers and photo caption writer, respectively, for the male reporters and photographer at News of the Week (so subtle). The women chase down stories, gather facts, interview people, write up drafts, and then the men make some revisions (sometimes not) and slap their bylines on the stories.

Patti is the ambitious flower child, the leader of the group. Cindy feels trapped in an unhappy marriage with a man who has given her only one year to work before she must start producing babies. Jane comes from money and is fine with remaining a researcher because she’s certain she won’t be there long, only until her longtime boyfriend proposes, which should be any day now.

Into this mix comes Nora Ephron (one of only two characters who retain their real names), the catalyst for the revolt because she refuses to accept the status quo. When she sees her female colleagues fighting over stories for which they’d receive no credit, the future famed writer says, “It’s like you’re fighting over the bottom bunk in prison.” Grace Gummer nails Ephron’s essence but looks exactly like her mom, Meryl Streep.

Ephron doesn’t last long at the magazine, but long enough to give the other women a wakeup call. Their trajectories move at different speeds, but eventually they realize they deserve more and must challenge the system to get it.

Genevieve Angelson is a major discovery as Patti, the spunky girl who knows what she wants and boldly goes after it—or him. Angelson imbues her character with scrappiness and intelligence, convincing us Patti would be a very good writer if only she’s allowed to be one.

Patti has the most fabulous bohemian chic wardrobe, alternating between looking like Brigitte Bardot, Julie Christie, and Michelle Phillips. Angelson has said in an interview she was tempted to abscond with all her costumes but didn’t want to get fired. I understand that urge after seeing her strutting around in boots and one cool mini after another.

Erin Darke is endearing as sweet, vulnerable Cindy, who at first has the least confidence of the three leads but experiences an awakening at work and sexually, occasionally at the same time.

Anna Camp, best known for the Pitch Perfect movies, delivers a complex yet subtle performance as the seemingly perfect woman who holds so tightly to tradition, she becomes the hardest obstacle to move. Her fashion choices are more proper than Patti’s but equally eye popping.

Comparisons to Mad Men are probably inevitable but Good Girls Revolt is from a female point of view. Besides creator Dana Calvo, most of the directors and writers are women—a rarity for any show.

Which isn’t to say the men get bashed. The male characters receive fair and balanced treatment from the writers and the actors who portray them, particularly Hunter Parrish as star reporter Doug and Chris Diamantopolous as Editor-at-Large Finn.

Yes, I often yelled “WTF?!” at the screen due to the men’s sexist behavior. Jane experiences one incident of sexual harassment that’s so obscene, I was shocked into silence. (And it was depressing to think that, judging by a certain presidential candidate’s boasts, that kind of behavior still exists.)

But Doug and Finn are more products of their time than male chauvinists at heart. Once they’re schooled on what women want and how they’d like to be treated, Doug and Finn do attempt to change, albeit not always successfully. Enlightenment doesn’t happen overnight, after all.

What did happen overnight was my finishing the entire season of this show. I didn’t know much about the landmark case before I started watching, and afterward googled many of the key players to learn more. As a former journalist, I’m so thankful I never had to endure what those women did in the newsroom, and that they helped make it possible for me to even call myself a reporter.

Nerd verdict: Very good Revolt

Photos: Amazon Prime Video

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Book Review: WHERE AM I NOW? by Mara Wilson

Mara Wilson shot to fame when she was five years old, after playing Robin Williams and Sally Field’s daughter in Mrs. Doubtfire. That led to her stepping into Natalie Wood’s shoes in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street. At seven, Wilson landed her dream role: the titular character in the film adaptation of Matilda, the Roald Dahl classic that Wilson and her mother loved.

Then tragedy struck. Wilson’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and would not live to see the release of Matilda. After her mother’s death, Wilson started having anxiety attacks and OCD symptoms. As she entered puberty, casting directors stopped calling.

Where Am I Now? contains engaging, poignant accounts of the actress-turned-storyteller’s struggles to find her identity after losing her mother and Hollywood’s adoration: “I didn’t want to stop acting because I had to, because I was too ugly.”

Wilson covers difficult topics but can leaven a painful anecdote with incisive wit. Remarking on a harsh review in which a movie critic expresses a desire “to shake [Wilson] by her tiny adorable shoulders until her little Chiclet teeth rattle,” Wilson writes: “What better way to show one’s edgy coolness than hypothetical child abuse?”

When fans ask for a picture with her, she panics: “I don’t photograph well, and…they’re going to put it on the Internet, where not everyone knows I’m funny and charming and generally a decent person.” But that’s exactly how she comes across in this memoir, with a sense of self-acceptance that indicates she knows where—and who—she is now.

This review originally appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers and is reprinted here with permission.

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Squirrels and Kittens and Gators—Oh, My!

Today is pub day for Laura Benedict‘s The Abandoned Heart, and I’m happy to welcome her back to PCN. She’s the nicest twisted person I know, as evidenced by the creepy post she wrote for me last year about medical dolls, which I’ve barely recovered from.

This year she takes a look at Victorian taxidermy, which plays a part in Abandoned Heart. Oh, man, I’m going to have nightmares about the kids below for a long time.

Read on, and then check out Laura’s book!

Victorians and Their Love for Creepy Dead Things

The Victorians were mad for taxidermy. One theory is that it had something to do with their legendary obsession with death. But given that Queen Victoria’s beloved Prince Albert didn’t die until 1861—giving rise to elaborate mourning traditions that the middle class quickly embraced—I think it was more complicated than that.

From the very early nineteenth century, naturalists like Charles Darwin were traveling widely, trying to make scientific sense of the natural world. They brought that world back with them for research and curiosity purposes.

The middle and leisure classes were also always on the lookout for new and novel things to fill their free time. If you were even vaguely interested in exotica like a baby rhinoceros and couldn’t get to Africa to see one, why not trot down to the local exhibition and view the next best thing?

London’s Great Exhibition of 1851 featured the work of no fewer than fourteen taxidermists. The one who drew the longest lines was Hermann Ploucquet, who had published a book called The Comical Creatures from Wurtemberg. Its illustrations featured anthropomorphized animals, and Plouquet took the illustrations one step further by posing taxidermy animals in representative tableaux.

From the pert look in the eyes of Ploucquet’s creatures, it would appear he figured out that animal eyeballs had to be replaced with glass. Not all early taxidermists understood this, and their work is sadly (and perhaps for the best) lost to time.

There are plenty of bad taxidermy examples on the Internet, but please enjoy this lion assembled from bones and skin in the eighteenth century by a taxidermist who had never seen an actual lion.

This is the famous Lion of Gripsholm Castle, along with his backstory.

Plouquet was famous in his time, but the taxidermist who emerged from the era with truly enduring fame is Walter Potter. No one is certain, but he must have been inspired by Plouquet’s earlier work.

Potter (with whom I share a birthday; apparently Cancers are a little twisted) took the tableau method and went crazy with it, often with birds (many, many birds) and kittens. He exhibited his work in a private museum in the village of Bramber in England until 1914, and his animals do look incredibly lifelike and plausible. Let’s try not to think how all of these kittens and squirrels coincidentally died at the same time, yes?

The Guardian did a piece with some wonderful photography of several of Potter’s works.

Thanks to some adoring parents, we have photographic evidence that nineteenth and early twentieth century taxidermy wasn’t just for grownups, but was enjoyed by the kiddies, too.

And, yes, also by the Paris Hiltons and Kardashians of their day.

Taxidermy as popular viewing entertainment fell out of favor early in the twentieth century as Victorian whimsy was replaced by the very real concerns of industrialization and World War I. People also began to examine the provenance of the animals. Surely they all could not have died natural deaths, as Walter Potter’s descendants suggested.

Hmmm…okay.

Laura Benedict’s latest dark suspense novel, The Abandoned Heart: A Bliss House Novel, is set in 1878 Virginia. One of the children in the novel is very attached to a balding taxidermy squirrel named Brownkin, given to her by her eccentric grandfather, an amateur taxidermist. Read more about The Abandoned Heart and Laura’s other books here.

Photo: Jay Fram

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Nerdy Special List October 2016

Need something to take your mind off all the ugliness in the news these days? How about checking out the books on this month’s Nerdy Special List? Our contributors have diverse and excellent taste so I hope one of these titles will spark your interest. Happy reading!

From Jen at Brown Dog Solutions:

Balls: It Takes Some to Get Some by Chris Edwards (Greenleaf, October 4)

Chris Edwards knew at the age of 5 that he’d been born the wrong gender. Every step of growing up only reinforced that understanding, leaving him depressed and suicidal.

Balls is the amazing, courageous and even humorous story of his 30+-year journey through the loneliness and isolation, the discovery of gender dysphoria and an amazing therapist, as well as the grueling ups and downs of 28 surgeries.

Before the term “transgender” existed, before Chaz Bono and Caitlyn Jenner, Edwards dared to pursue the life he was intended to lead. Balls is told with eloquence, grace, sharp wit and brutal honesty. This is currently my favorite book of 2016.

You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Leiris, trans. by Sam Taylor (Penguin Press, October 25)

In November of 2015, French journalist Antoine Leiris lost his wife to a terrorist act. She was attending a rock concert at Bataclan Theater in Paris. You Will Not Have My Hate is partly his story of the days following the attack and partly his manifesto to the world.

He and his son will find happiness in her name, and they will deprive the terrorists of their hate and fear. A short book you will likely read in one sitting, You Will Not Have My Hate packs colossal impact into every single page. Leiris contrasts the hideousness of the crime with writing that sings a moving tribute to his wife.

The translation doesn’t seem to have lost an ounce of the emotion Leiris poured into this inspiring memoir. With so much hate in the world now, this book is a shining beacon of hope for us all.

From Rory at Fourth Street Review:

Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (Hogarth, October 11)

The Hogarth Shakespeare project launched in late 2015, with prominent authors retelling and reimagining the works of Shakespeare.

With authors such as Anne Tyler, Margaret Atwood, and Gillian Flynn participating, I couldn’t help but be excited about these novels. Yet despite Atwood’s contribution being the fourth installment, it’s the first one I’ve read!

Hag-Seed, Atwood’s take on The Tempest, is the perfect blend of humor and heart. Felix (as Prospero) is the artistic director of the Makeshiweg Theatre Festival, or he was, until he was maneuvered out of his position by his scheming assistant, Tony.

After a self-imposed exile, complete with a dilapidated shack, he takes on a new position at The Fletcher County Correctional Institute for nonviolent offenders. Here he teaches inmates about Shakespeare, changing their lives—and his—in the process.

I won’t say how it wraps up, but I loved it. While I had very little doubt about Atwood being an excellent choice for such a project, I am very happy my suspicions were confirmed. Hag-Seed is witty, wonderful, and tongue in cheek. I’d highly recommend it to most anyone.

From Erin at In Real Life:

IQ by Joe Ide (Mulholland, October 11)

A debut novel that shows great promise is a thing of beauty, and IQ is such a novel.

IQ is Isaiah Quintabe, a young man living in Los Angeles who is brilliantly clever, incredibly observant, and works as an unlicensed private investigator.

Sound familiar? It should. In many ways, IQ feels like a return to any one of a number of favorite PI stories. Isaiah is something of a neighborhood Robin Hood, helping those who have nowhere to go in exchange for whatever they can pay him. He’s the young man we’d all like our daughters to date, but his history is clouded and dark.

This is very much a “start of a series” book, combining Isaiah’s history, the how-he-got-here tale with a new case involving a self-absorbed rapper who’s on someone’s murder list. IQ is refreshing for its moderate violence and a cast of characters as varied as the world around us. You’ll want to meet IQ.

From Lauren at Malcolm Avenue Review:

The Annie Year by Stephanie Wilbur Ash (The Unnamed Press, October 11)

When the new vocational-agriculture teacher arrives in Tandy Caide’s small Midwestern town, her staid life as a CPA takes a careening turn.

With his ponytail, man clogs, freshly-mown-ditch scent and multicolored beaded belt, the Vo-Ag teacher lights a fire in the semi-uptight Tandy, causing ramifications across town, including with Tandy’s former lover and the daughter of Tandy’s estranged best friend.

Ash’s raucous debut will have readers cringing and laughing as the first-person narrative takes them through Tandy’s awkward journey of redemption and self-discovery.

Soul-baring and heartfelt, Tandy’s story is both relatable and foreign, and always entertaining. The humor alone makes it a winner, and this reader is still laughing over the town diner’s nickname.

The Heavens May Fall by Allen Eskens (Seventh Street, October 4)

Allen Eskens is a monster. In The Heavens May Fall, he takes two supporting characters from his prior novels, turns each into a hero protagonist, and then puts them on opposite sides of a high-profile murder case.

Law professor Boady Sanden agrees to return to the courtroom to represent his former law partner, who’s accused of murdering his wife. Boady is certain Ben is innocent.

Boady’s best friend, Detective Max Rupert, is just as sure Ben is a stone-cold killer. Each man is determined to see his view of justice served, even if the heavens may fall as a result.

The fact that one of these good men has to be wrong is an ingenious means of sucking readers in and holding them captive, and Eskens executes it brilliantly.

With short chapters from alternating perspectives, Eskens’s straightforward yet scintillating prose keeps the action moving at a perfect pace, and his legal acumen keeps courtroom scenes intriguing. This is a friendship-testing murder mystery well worth diving into.

From PCN:

Tell the Truth, Shame the Devil by Melina Marchetta (Mulholland, October 11)

I was going to recommend Joe Ide’s IQ—it’s heartbreaking and hilarious, with lead characters I can’t wait to read more about—but Erin selected it above, so I’m going with Truth, not that it’s second best. The two books are equally excellent.

Bish Ortley has just been suspended from the Met Police when he gets a call saying a bomb went off on a bus containing his daughter. She turns out to be OK, but Bish sees something disturbing on the passenger list: the name of the granddaughter of a man who bombed a supermarket years earlier. And the girl disappears. Was she the target, or the bomber?

No blurb I write can do justice to the complexity and emotional depth of YA author Marchetta’s first novel for adults. The story deals with familial loyalty, the danger of racial profiling, and the sacrifices made out of love. Bish reminded me of a British Harry Bosch—relentless in seeking out truth and making sure everybody counts.

What are you excited about reading this month?

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Movie Review: THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN

DreamWorks/Universal Pictures

Though I was less than impressed with The Girl on the Train in book form, I like the talent associated with the movie, especially Emily Blunt, who plays Rachel, the titular character. So I went in with an open mind, but the last thing I expected was to be bored.

For those of you unfamiliar with the plot, here’s a spoiler-free version: a woman (Rachel) who takes a train every day becomes a voyeur of the lives of people who live along the train tracks. One day Rachel sees a young woman (Megan) kissing a man who’s not her husband, and then Megan goes missing afterward. Rachel is convinced what she saw is important to the investigation, and finagles her way into it as a helpful citizen. But wait—she’s a drunk and an extremely unreliable witness.

I tore through the book because Hawkins’s nonlinear and unreliable storytelling kept me constantly wondering what the heck was going on, despite my intense dislike of all the characters. They remain unlikable in the movie, even though Blunt, Haley Bennett as Megan, and Allison Janney as the investigating cop do good work. Rebecca Ferguson, a revelation in Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation, is criminally underused as Anna, the third narrator in the novel.

Some prominent details have been changed (mainly Rachel is in NY instead of London) or left out altogether, but the adaption, written by Erin Cressida Wilson and directed by Tate Taylor (The Help), remains mostly faithful. Since I now know all the answers, it was hard for me to maintain interest. The story had lost its only hook: keeping me in the dark.

I sat next to a woman who hadn’t read the book, and it was clear from her vocal reactions she was really into the movie, especially the ending. So it might be a solid choice if you’re coming to it clean. Otherwise, it’s OK to miss this Train.

Nerd verdict: Take a different Train

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Nerdy Special List September 2016

I’ve seen many fall-books list in the last couple of weeks, but they all seem to have the same five books on them. Well, WE’RE RECOMMENDING ALL DIFFERENT BOOKS.

(I’m not punchy, just hungry. And tired of seeing the same five books on lists.)

Here’s what we really liked and want you to read this month.

From Jen at Brown Dog Solutions:

Darktown by Thomas Mullen (September 13, 37 Ink/Atria)

Blending historical fiction with a police procedural, Thomas Mullen has imagined the lives of the first eight black officers on the Atlanta, Georgia, police force in 1948. The realism tears at the readers’ hearts while the suspense keeps them glued to the plot. It’s a magnificent work of art.

When a young black woman is found brutally murdered and left in a pile of trash, partners Lucius Boggs and Tommy Smith decide they are going to find the murderer. They know the white detectives won’t make any effort, but Boggs and Smith could lose their jobs for pursuing the case.

As part of the black officers unit, they don’t have a patrol car, can’t arrest a white suspect, and aren’t even allowed in the main police department; they’re relegated to the basement of the YMCA.

But not long before she was killed, Boggs and Smith had seen the woman in the car of a drunk, white man who hit her. They feel an obligation to find out exactly what happened, no matter what it costs them.

Mullen doesn’t soft play the racism or bigotry of the era, and his despicable antagonists are as complexly drawn as the conflicted protagonists. Mullen has been quoted as saying he’d like to revisit these characters, and that’s the only consolation to turning the last page in Darktown.

From Lauren at Malcolm Avenue Review:

The Red Bandanna by Tom Rinaldi (September 6, Penguin Press)

Imagine losing a child in the Twin Towers on 9/11 and not knowing how or exactly where. Then imagine reading a post-attack article in which survivors describe the courage of the man who saved their lives—a man wearing a red bandanna tied around his face, a bandanna just like your son carried with him every day since he was a boy.

The story of Welles Crowther, that bandanna-wearing young man, is shared by Tom Rinaldi in The Red Bandanna. Emotional but not overwrought, Rinaldi’s writing strikes just the right tone in setting out just who Welles was and the upbringing that turned him into a man who, when faced with a raging inferno, went back up instead of out to safety.

After the first half of background, buckle up for a stirring reenactment of the events of Welles’s final moments, and the impact he had on those he left behind.

When President Obama spoke at the dedication of the memorial museum in 2014, he only mentioned one name: Welles Crowther. Rinaldi’s recounting of the story is well worth a read and one to which we should bear witness.

One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist: Stories by Dustin M. Hoffman (September 1, University of Nebraska Press)

Dustin M. Hoffman has an extraordinary voice. To be more accurate, Hoffman has many voices, as evidenced by the sixteen distinct stories in his debut collection, One-Hundred-Knuckled Fist.

Each piece is an ode to the blue-collar worker, a cross section of some of society’s most forgotten and invisible individuals: painters, hardscapers, commission salesmen, and ice-cream truck drivers (to name a few), along with the homeless and the unemployed, each trying to make their way under the pressures their lives and the world exert on them.

The stories in this collection are wonderful and weird and gross and gritty and ingenious. Some made me say, “What the hell?” Others made me silent with awe. To a one they kept me glued to the page.

Although the blue-collar theme is carried throughout, each work is idiosyncratic in its own special way. I highly recommend this collection, winner of the 2015 Prairie Schooner Book Prize.

From Patti at Patti’s Pens & Picks:

Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race by Margot Lee Shetterly (September 6, William Morrow)

This book is about black women being hired by the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA, precursor to NASA) during WWII to do computations as new airplanes were being designed to win the war.

Most of these women had had the opportunity to go to college and studied math. Many selected teaching as a profession as they could get jobs teaching in the then-segregated schools. Several started working at NACA as a summer job, but they stayed on as they made more money there than teaching.

The women we learn the most about are fascinated with math, and the ways they could use math to solve aeronautical problems so that airplanes, and eventually spaceships, could fly higher, faster, and more safely.

These women were very much like the women of today. They worked long days, were married, did the shopping, cooking, went to church, participated in their communities, raised children, and challenged them to follow in the women’s footsteps. They also participated in the civil rights movement, both in the workplace and out in their communities.

I admire these women so much, and the math they were capable of doing, and then how it impacted America’s progress with aeronautics during WWII, and then later with the moon landing.

[Ed. note: The movie adaptation of this book will be released on December 25, 2016.]

From PCN:

Daisy in Chains by Sharon Bolton (September 20, Minotaur)

Last year, one of my top three favorite books was Sharon Bolton’s Little Black Lies. She’s one of those authors who, well, if I’m eating a pizza after being lost in the woods for a week and someone says, “This Bolton book for your pizza,” I’d hand over the pizza even if a slice was halfway to my mouth.

Bolton’s latest, Daisy in Chains, has that creepy atmosphere she’s so good at creating, and a strong female protagonist who intimidates or rubs everyone the wrong way—another welcome staple of the author’s work.

In this standalone, Maggie Rose is an attorney who specializes in overturning convictions, even of the vilest criminals. She’s trying to decide if she should take on the appeal of surgeon Hamish Wolfe, convicted serial killer of women. He’s charming and all, and keeps proclaiming his innocence (don’t they all?) but she doesn’t know if she can trust him. She embarks on her own investigation and of course it leads her to some pretty dark places.

Bolton’s prose has a mesmerizing quality, and unlike Maggie’s reaction to Hamish, I surrendered to Daisy in Chains.

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Movie Review: SULLY

Like many people, I thought I knew what happened on January 15, 2009 with US Airways Flight 1549, which Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger landed on the Hudson River about 3 minutes after takeoff from La Guardia Airport. A bird strike resulted in the loss of both engines and the captain had no choice but to do what he did, right?

Turns out, according to Clint Eastwood’s Sully (based on Sullenberger’s memoir, Highest Duty), we barely knew the story at all.

The movie starts out with a startling scene, of a plane in trouble flying low in Manhattan. I’ll leave it at that.

The story unfolds in a nonlinear way, alternating between what happened on the flight that day, the ensuing investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, and Sully’s internal turmoil as he starts to doubt his actions (should he have tried to make it back to LaGuardia? Did he risk killing everyone on board by making that water landing?).

Tom Hanks, on a streak of playing real people (see: Captain Phillips and last year’s Bridge of Spies), is very good as Captain Sullenberger. It’s all in his eyes—the recognition that something is terribly wrong with the plane, the quick analysis of his options, his decision to do the impossible, and his courage as he does his job.

Even after landing, he doesn’t stop being the captain, wading through water in the fast-filling aircraft to make sure everyone has deplaned before being the last man off himself, then begging rescue workers to do a head count during a chaotic situation. It’s not possible due to passengers being taken to different hospitals, but later, when Sully is told simply, “One fifty-five,” Hanks’s quiet reaction, understating the immense relief the pilot must’ve felt in learning everyone has survived, makes that number seem like the most wondrous thing he’s ever heard.

Aaron Eckhart as copilot Jeff Skiles and Laura Linney as Sully’s wife, Lorraine, have little to do besides being supportive of the captain as the NTSB questions his decision to land on the river (the captain stresses on, not in, the Hudson), while the recovered data supposedly shows he had much safer options.

The investigation provides good conflict and an untold angle to the Miracle on the Hudson story, but I wondered how much of that was exaggerated for cinematic effect. Captain Sullenberger pulled off a remarkable feat, everyone lived—why were they trying to, well, sully his reputation and 42-year career?

The real NTSB investigators have since protested their portrayals, while Sullenberger, who consulted on the movie, stands by his account.

Though this movie is about a recent event whose outcome is well known, director Clint Eastwood still manages to make it thrilling and incredibly suspenseful. Scenes of the plane diving toward water, or coming straight toward the camera, or flying way too close to buildings made me tense. I was like Sully waiting for that head count after the landing—I could not relax.

Eastwood hired real emergency workers to give the rescue scenes veracity. Sully shows how the end result wasn’t so much a miracle, but a group of people coming together to take care of one another during 208 seconds of terror. (Stay for the credits to see some of those real people.)

Nerd verdict: Gripping Sully

Photos: Warner Bros.

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Not Too Long Ago, In a Place Not So Far Away…

This past Saturday, I got to do something I’ve long wanted to do: see John Williams perform live, conducting the L.A. Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl.

I did not come dressed as a Star Wars character, nor did I bring a lightsaber, but after talking to the costumed couple next to me, it was evident that my SW nerdiness ran just as deep, or deeper, than theirs, if only because I’m old and remember seeing the very first film in the theater when it first came out, when it was called simply Star Wars without any episode numbers or subtitles attached, and collecting the Topps trading cards and owning the action figures.

After the first segment of the concert, in which composer David Newman conducted the orchestra through scores for classic Hollywood films such as Sunset Boulevard and The Godfather, the 84-year-old Williams took the stage in a white tux jacket.

The crowd went wild, and out came the lightsabers in Force (heh).

Williams first teased us by playing his more recent compositions, including the score from this summer’s The BFG. But he knew what the crowd, dressed as Ewoks and Rey and gold-bikini Leia (it was cold!), was there to hear. First came “The Imperial March.”

Williams was very personable and witty between sets. He talked about how when he first saw the original SW, he saw two beautiful lead characters in Luke and Leia, assumed they’d end up together, and composed a love theme that built to “a torrid climax, hardly appropriate for a brother and sister. I didn’t find out until two years later!”

He also said he’d already said yes to scoring Episode 8 because “I can’t bear to have anyone else write music for Daisy—Rey,” whom he’d fallen in love with after seeing The Force Awakens.

After playing more SW music, Williams performed 3 encores: music from the Harry Potter and Superman movies, and ET. I kept hollering for the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme, but no luck.

I can’t properly describe how special this experience was for me. The music didn’t bring back only memories of some of my favorite films ever, but also recollections of my time in the school orchestra when I played some of Williams’s iconic scores on my violin in school concerts. I remembered the notes and the runs and crescendos and pianissimos, my fingers tapping along on an invisible instrument.

During Newman’s portion of the concert, he played pieces by Lalo Schifrin (Mission: Impossible) and Bernard Herrmann (North by Northwest, Psycho), giants in their field who left behind unforgettable themes. John Williams is a living legend, and I was thrilled I got to see him doing what he does best.

I leave you with this. May the Force be with you.

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