Week Three Prompt Response

1. I am looking for a book by Laurell K. Hamilton. I just read the third book in the Anita Blake series and I can’t figure out which one comes next!

The Lunatic Café is the fifth book in the Anita Blake series, and Bloody Bones is book number six. According to Goodreads.com, there are 26 books in the series.

2. What have I read recently? Well, I just finished this great book by Barbara Kingsolver, Prodigal Summer. I really liked the way it was written, you know, the way she used language. I wouldn't mind something a bit faster paced though.

I might suggest anything by Jhumpa Lahiri- according to Google and Goodreads, she is a Pulitzer-prize winning author who wrote The Namesake and Interpreter of Maladies. 

3. I like reading books set in different countries. I just read one set in China, could you help me find one set in Japan? No, not modern – historical. I like it when the author describes it so much it feels like I was there!

If you like non-fiction, I would suggest Valley of Darkness: The Japanese People and World War Two by Thomas R.H. Havens. It describes civilian life in Japan during the war. According to Goodreads.com (2018), the description of the book states, “This volume portrays the daily life of ordinary Japanese civilians on the home front during World War Two. Drawing extensively on wartime records and early postwar recollections of people who lived through the war era, the book reveals a surprisingly cohesive society that bore up remarkably well” (1). 

4. I read this great mystery by Elizabeth George called Well-Schooled in Murder and I loved it. Then my dentist said that if I liked mysteries I would probably like John Sandford, but boy was he creepy I couldn't finish it! Do you have any suggestions?

If you like mysteries set in England, you should try any of Rhys Bowen’s series: Her Royal Spyness series, the Constable Evans series, and her Molly Murphy mystery series. 

5. My husband has really gotten into zombies lately. He’s already read The Walking Dead and World War Z, is there anything else you can recommend?

Pride, Prejudice and Zombies by Seth-Grahame Smith might be another zombie book he could read. It is based off of Jane Austen’s original Pride and Prejudice, but with a gory, zombie-apocalypse twist. Austen’s work is not just for women! 

6. I love books that get turned into movies, especially literary ones. Can you recommend some? Nothing too old, maybe just those from the last 5 years or so.

According to Google.com, War and Peace was just released in 2016 starring Lily James, and it was a book written by Leo Tolstoy. Murder on the Orient Express was released in 2017 and had big-name actors such as Johnny Depp and Dame Judi Dench; the original book was written by Agatha Christie. 

7. I love thrillers but I hate foul language and sex scenes. I want something clean and fast paced.  

You might want to try the Left Behind series by Tim LaHey. It is a Christian Fiction series about the Rapture and the End Times. If you have seen the movie but you are wondering about the book, imdb.com has parental guidelines for the movie that could give you a general idea here, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2467046/parentalguide.

Works Cited

Google. 2018. Search (various titles). Retrieved from http://www.google.com

Goodreads. 2018. Search and Browse Books (various titles). Retrieved from http://www.goodreads.com 

Internet Movie Data Base. 2014.  Left Behind Parental Guide. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2467046/parentalguide

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins: A Thriller Book Review

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins

How well do you think you know your neighbors?

Rachel Watson, an alcoholic, her life less than perfect, took to the train- and drink- for comfort. She watched from the window the cookie-cutter neighborhoods go by and the idyllic lifestyle they represented. She used to live such a life, until her husband became involved with another woman and pushed Rachel out of his.

On the train, she imagined anyone else’s life but her own, wanted to help solve anyone else’s problems than her own.

She found the perfect couple in the cookie-cutter neighborhood. Jason and Jess, she called them; she didn’t know their real names. She found them in the comfort of their home, and watched them every day.

Something didn’t seem right.  Jason and Jess were fighting, and then their former babysitter went missing a few days after. She was found dead in the woods. At that point, Rachel was at her lowest. Even her imagined perfect couple had problems. If they needed help, there was certainly no hope for her. One night, she had a little too much to drink after discovering Jess had an affair with another man, leaving Jason in the dust. Rachel wanted to avenge her own circumstance by helping Jason get back at Jess for what she did to him. She knew the feeling all too well.

Blackout. Betrayal. Disappearance, murder.  Her clothes stained with blood, Rachel couldn’t remember what happened the night she passed out. Jason and Jess’s story had an uncanny parallel to her own. Rachel knew she had to become sober in order to solve this crime, because somewhere in her memory was the answer; she needed to prove her own innocence.

Characteristics of Thrillers, a Summary of Saricks' The Readers' Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction, Second Edition (2009):

• "Fast-paced story
• Language known by professionals sprinkled throughout the story, but not enough to confuse or overwhelm readers
• Easily adapted into movies because of their fast, complex plots, and sometimes there are plots within plots
• Troubled heroes/heroines with dark pasts usually save the day
•  Graphic details about the characters, dead or alive, are often included" (73).

Reviews

According to http://www.bustle.com., this book was in the top 11 that even scared Stephen King! In an article written by Amy Sachs (2016), King said, "Really great suspense novel. Kept me up most of the night. The alcoholic narrator is dead perfect" (1).

Below are other spine-chilling thrillers with similar stories, as suggested by Goodreads.com:

The Last Mrs. Parrish by Liv Constantine

The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena

The Woman in the Window by A.J. Finn

Works Cited

Goodreads. (2018). The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Book image and suggestions retrieved from https://www.goodreads.com

Hawkins, P. (2015). The Girl on the Train. New York: Riverhead Books. A Member of Penguin Group (USA).

Sachs, A. (2015). 11 Books That Scared The Master of Horror, Stephen King, And Will Terrify You, Too. Retrieved from https://www.bustle.com/articles/ .

Saricks, J. (2009). The Readers’ Advisory Guide to Genre Fiction (2^nd e.d.). Chicago: American Library Association.