08 January 2018

Review: The Idiot

The Idiot The Idiot by Elif Batuman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book… I don’t know.

I remember that book Prep from 13 or so years ago, and this book has a very similar conceit and setup. In this one, a clearly bright college student falls a bit for an upperclassman and ends up following him for a semester overseas. She’s definitely in over her head a bit in pretty much everything, and the book chronicles those results.

I struggled with it largely because I couldn’t tell, exactly, whether we were supposed to feel pity for the protagonist, whether we were laughing at her, or whether it was something else entirely. The whole disconnect there made it pretty awkward on a whole, and I almost feel like I may be the idiot in that I didn’t quite follow the point. Or maybe that was the point.

Still, not the most compelling read as of late. I can’t really recommend as much as I’d like to.

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Review: We Are Okay

We Are Okay We Are Okay by Nina LaCour
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This came to me fairly highly recommended, and I think I can see why. Sort of an emotional journey through teenagedom as things slowly unravel that our heroine is fairly incapable of stopping, I was ultimately impressed by the core of this story and the way it was presented. While it is really reliant on a lot of standard and typical tropes (in many regards, I could hear the checkboxes being filled in as I read), it stands out because of what felt like some serious realism across the board.

Where I struggled was that the narrative did ultimately feel detached from the story being told. I wanted more from this and wanted to care more about what was happening, and the plot was instead a lot quieter and relied perhaps too heavily on those emotional notes in favor of a plot that didn’t truly gear up until the second half. By then, a lot of my investment in the tale was among the missing, but it came around.

This won’t be for everyone, and people with a LOT of YA experience might see this as more of the same, but there’s enough here to make this stand out. Closer to a 3.5.

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03 January 2018

Review: The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I’ve never actually watched The Room from start to finish, but I’ve seen enough bits and pieces that I have probably seen the entire thing at this point. With the movie version of this book out, I finally decided to dive in and read about the making of the film from one of the people closest to director Tommy Wiseau.

As the author is a friend of Wiseau, if anything, you figure he may actually be holding back on how absolutely strange the whole affair, including Wiseau himself, truly was. And even as you read through this, it’s just entirely puzzling how it got to the point it did and I found myself wincing at a lot of the amateur issues that more seasoned professionals (read: not me) would likely know to avoid by the time they were making a feature film.

On a whole, this is definitely worth a read whether you’re part of the Room cult or not, if only for the stunning way everything went down on a whole. I’m definitely more interested in seeing the movie now than I was before I read it, and maybe now it’s time for me to actually watch The Room properly. A good read, not as great as I expected, but pretty enjoyable on a whole.

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Review: The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made

The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made The Disaster Artist: My Life Inside The Room, the Greatest Bad Movie Ever Made by Greg Sestero
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

I’ve never actually watched The Room from start to finish, but I’ve seen enough bits and pieces that I have probably seen the entire thing at this point. With the movie version of this book out, I finally decided to dive in and read about the making of the film from one of the people closest to director Tommy Wiseau.

As the author is a friend of Wiseau, if anything, you figure he may actually be holding back on how absolutely strange the whole affair, including Wiseau himself, truly was. And even as you read through this, it’s just entirely puzzling how it got to the point it did and I found myself wincing at a lot of the amateur issues that more seasoned professionals (read: not me) would likely know to avoid by the time they were making a feature film.

A good read, not as great as I expected, but pretty enjoyable on a whole.

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