Summer Reading: The Last Time I Lied

The next selection on my summer reading list, The Last Time I Lied by Riley Sager, is another book that I simply could not put down! Luckily I don't have to get up at the crack of dawn during the summer because I have spent far too many nights reading into the wee hours of the morning! While spending the summer at Camp Nightingale, Emma and her older and more sophisticated bunkmates Vivian, Natalie, and Allison, enjoy playing a game called Two Truths and a Lie. One night Emma wakes up to find the three other girls gone, never to be heard from again. The negative publicity forces the camp to close and in the aftermath Emma has a nervous breakdown. Fifteen years later, still tormented by their disappearance, she is a successful artist but she is only able to paint disturbing portraits of the three girls disappearing into a dark and terrifying forest. She is contacted by Francesca Harris-White, the wealthy socialite whose family owns Camp Nightingale, and offered a job as an art instructor at the newly reopened camp. She is also informed that many of the former counselors and campers will also be back. She takes the job, thinking of it as an opportunity to find out what really happened to the girls and confront her demons so she can finally move on. But when she gets to Camp Nightingale, she must figure out who is telling the truth and who is telling a lie about that fateful night. This novel is incredibly suspenseful and, as I mentioned, I could not put it down because I had to know what happened! Sager does a masterful job of creating a sinister atmosphere and I felt a tremendous sense of dread as the events of the past come to haunt the present. I loved the fact that every single character has something to hide, including Emma who is a very unreliable narrator. The mystery is so clever because the clues are all there if you can piece them together (this may be a book that I need to read again). There were multiple times when I thought that I had figured everything out, but Sager took me in a completely different direction right up until the final page! I highly recommend this riveting story but do not begin it if you have to get up early the next morning. Trust me on this!

Note:  Have you read The Last Time I Lied?  What did you think?

The Biggest Little Farm

Last night I went to see the documentary The Biggest Little Farm.  It tells the true story about how a documentary filmmaker and a personal chef decided to leave life in the city to create an organic farm.  When John and Molly Chester adopt a dog named Todd, he does not adapt well to living in a small apartment and barks all day when they are not at home.  The neighbors complain and they are eventually evicted.  Since they have to move, Molly thinks it would be the perfect time to pursue her dream of owning a farm to produce the organic food she uses in her recipes.  With the help of a few investors, they buy a farm in Moorpark, California and name it Apricot Lane Farms.  It is a barren wasteland when they first buy it so they hire a consultant named Alan York to help them create a plan.  He tells them that they key is to create biodiversity where everything in nature, including the plants, livestock, and wildlife, work in harmony to mimic the natural ecosystems found on Earth and that it will take at least seven years for the farm to become self-sustaining.  The Chesters follow York's plan for designing their farm and rely on him completely but, one year into their experiment, York dies of cancer which leaves them on their own.  They encounter problem after problem but eventually look to nature to solve them.  For example, the ground cover they plant to enrich the soil in their orchard attracts snails which destroy their fruit trees.  One day, John notices that the ducks in their pond eat snails so they release the ducks in the orchard.  Coyotes attack their chickens and, after trying many different solutions, they feel they must kill the coyotes which goes against their mission of achieving harmony with nature.  One day, John notices that their sheep dogs like to play with the chickens so they have the sheep dogs guard them at night.  The coyotes then begin killing the gophers that have been plaguing the farm.  This story is so inspiring and I love that the fact that they continually find solutions in nature to achieve sustainability.  I also love that this documentary shows the eight years of backbreaking work it took to get the farm producing and that it highlights both the triumphs and the tragedies.  If I had one complaint it would be that I wish they had talked more about their business plan and how they got their investors.  This feel good documentary, filled with footage of the cutest animals you can imagine, has a great environmental message that everyone should see!

All Is True

I really love Kenneth Branagh's aesthetic as a director and his passion as a performer and I love anything relating to William Shakespeare so it should come as no surprise that I have been looking forward to All Is True.  This film, which I had the chance to see yesterday afternoon, is an elegiac look at what Shakespeare's final days might have been like.  After the Globe Theatre burns down, Shakespeare (Branagh) is unable to write and decides to return to Stratford-Upon-Avon to the family he has neglected for years.  His wife Anne (Judi Dench) is distant after hearing rumors of his infidelity for years, his daughter Susanna (Lydia Wilson) is married to a man who only cares about what she will receive in his will, and his daughter Judith (Kathryn Wilder) is bitter over his excessive grief over the death of her twin Hamnet.  He attempts, rather unsuccessfully, to create a garden while ruminating on his legacy with visits from the Earl of Southampton (Ian McKellen), purported to be the subject of many of Shakespeare's sonnets, and Ben Jonson (Gerard Horan), a rival playwright.  It is the story of a man facing his mortality with regrets and it is incredibly moving but the plot unfolds very slowly.  However, the images on the screen are unbelievably beautiful so I never found my mind wandering.  I loved the production design, especially the outdoor locations and the Tudor manor houses used throughout.  It goes without saying that both Branagh and Dench give absolutely brilliant performances but I was also really impressed with Wilder, particularly in a scene between Shakespeare, Anne, and Judith where they finally give vent to all of their seething recriminations.  It is pretty powerful!  Finally, nerd that I am, I loved all of the references to Shakespeare's works such as Titus Andronicus, The Tempest, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Sonnet 29 (just hearing Branagh and McKellen recite this sonnet to each other is worth the price of admission in my opinion).  I am sure most people will think this film is utterly boring but, since I have studied and taught Shakespeare's works for most of my life, I loved it!

Note:  I give the same lecture on Shakespeare's life to my sophomores every year before we start reading A Midsummer Night's Dream.  The students are always amused with Shakespeare's bequest of his second best bed to his wife.  This movie has a lovely explanation for it.

Dark Phoenix

The Children's Center, where my sister and her husband both work, has a huge benefit this time every year and it has been my responsibility to take Sean for the weekend (we have gone swimming, to drive-in movies, to the zoo, and to museums).  This year he didn't want to spend the weekend with me because we are going on a little trip next week and he thought we might annoy each other if we spent too much time together before we went!  I suggested that we could still go to a movie and he was pretty lukewarm about it until I mentioned Dark Phoenix.  He is a huge fan of the X-Men franchise (we went to X-Men: Apocalypse during one of these weekends) so he was immediately on board!  Despite the bad reviews we both, but especially Sean, loved it!  Set a decade after the events in X-Men: Apocalypse, Raven (Jennifer Lawrence), Beast (Nicholas Hoult), Cyclops (Tye Sheridan), Quicksilver (Evan Peters), Storm (Alexandra Shipp), Nightcrawler (Kodi Smit-McPhee), and Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) are sent by Professor X (James McAvoy) to save astronauts on the Space Shuttle from a solar flare.  During this mission Jean absorbs the energy from the solar flare to save one final astronaut and miraculously survives, earning the nickname Phoenix.  She now has even stronger powers that she struggles to control and, when she learns something about her past which was repressed by Charles, the rage she feels causes her to lash out and she kills one her friends.  She turns to Magneto (Michael Fassbender) but he wants to kill her when he learns what happened.  The mutants then become divided over what they should do about Jean but must unite when an alien being named Vuk (Jessica Chastain) wants Jean's powers.  While some of the CGI in this movie isn't very good I really liked most of the action sequences, especially those in space and on the train.  I also really loved the atmospheric score by Hans Zimmer.  Turner gives a great performance as Jean, particularly when she is confronted with the consequences of her actions.  I have always really enjoyed McAvoy as Charles and Fassbender as Erik in this franchise and this movie highlights their shortcomings and they, too, have to deal with the consequences of their actions in several very poignant scenes.  Each of the mutants has a moment to shine and I especially enjoyed the Beast's character arc.  This is reportedly the final movie in this particular franchise (we could have movies about new mutants) and I absolutely loved the final resolution between Charles and Erik because it hearkens back to one of my favorite scenes in X-Men: Days of Future Past.  I really enjoyed this movie (Sean loved it) so I would recommend it.

Summer Reading: The Woman in the Window

I have been reading a lot this summer! At least once a day I will sit in one of the three reading areas that I have in my house, grab one of the books on my summer reading list, and then not even notice that two hours have suddenly gone by! It makes me so happy to have time to read what I want! I actually read the second book on my list, The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn, in less than two days because I could not put it down! Anna Fox was once a renowned child psychologist before a mysterious accident derailed her life. She is separated from her husband and daughter and now lives alone in her New York brownstone suffering from severe agoraphobia and a drinking problem. She spends her days counseling others in an agoraphobia chat room, playing chess online, learning French, watching classic black and white noir films, and spying on her neighbors through the window. She becomes obsessed with watching a new family, the Russells, across the park and eventually she sees something violent happen to one of them. She reports the incident to law enforcement but the Russells deny it and no one believes her. Police officers reveal a huge plot twist which, along with her abuse of prescription drugs and her excessive drinking, discredits everything she says. Even she begins to doubt what she saw, thinking she might be remembering the plot of one the films she was watching. But what if what she saw actually happened? The chapters are extremely short which makes the action move quickly and the tension builds and builds to a conclusion I honestly didn't see coming. Anna is a very compelling character (she reminds me of the unreliable narrator in The Girl on the Train) and Finn does a great job of showing her claustrophobia and frustration, especially when she begins to doubt her own reality. As a classic film aficionado myself, I really enjoyed the references to all of the noir thrillers, especially Hitchcock's Rear Window, Shadow of a Doubt, Vertigo, Spellbound, Suspicion, and George Cukor's Gaslight, because they mirror events in the narrative. In fact, this novel feels a lot like a Hitchcock film with characters who cannot be trusted, escalating tension, and a climactic plot twist! It is a brilliant psychological thriller and I highly recommend it!  Incidentally, I cannot wait for the movie version which is due to hit theaters in October!

Note:  Have you read The Woman in the Window?  What did you think?