Oh yay! It’s Saturday and you know what that means! Another week of a hearty debate for what stays and what goes straight on your TBR list!! I will try and catch up with you today but I am at the Bloggers bash so may not respond today!
From last week after all the mixed responses I kept
*drum roll*
Oopsie I kept 4!! lol Well so many of you said keep Kinsella and King.
What do I have for you this week? First up :
The Running Man by Richard Bachman, Stephen KingAlso by this author: UR, In the Tall Grass
It's not just a game when you're running for your life.
Every night they tuned in to the nation's favorite prime-time TV game show.
They all watched, from the sprawling polluted slums to the security-obsessed enclaves of the rich. They all watched the ultimate live death game as the contestants tried to beat not the clock, but annihilation at the hands of the Hunters. Survive thirty days and win a billion dollar jackpot - that was the promise. But the odds were brutal and the game rigged. Best score so far was eight days.
And now there was a new contestant, the latest Running Man, staking his life while a nation watched.
This one I think I will vito and keep mainly because it is a film with Arnie in lol.
The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks
Alternate Cover Edition can be found here
Seventeen-year-old Veronica 'Ronnie' Miller’s life was turned upside-down when her parents divorced and her father moved from New York City to Wilmington, North Carolina. Three years later, she remains angry and alienated from her parents, especially her father . . . until her mother decides it would be in everyone’s best interest if she spent the summer in Wilmington with him. Ronnie’s father, a former concert pianist and teacher, is living a quiet life in the beach town, immersed in creating a work of art that will become the centerpiece of a local church.
The tale that unfolds is an unforgettable story about love in its myriad forms - first love, the love between parents and children - that demonstrates, as only a Nicholas Sparks novel can, the many ways that deeply felt relationships can break our hearts . . . and heal them.
Yes it is another Sparks but is this one any good to save?
The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
On a winter night in 1964, Dr. David Henry is forced by a blizzard to deliver his own twins. His son, born first, is perfectly healthy. Yet when his daughter is born, he sees immediately that she has Down's Syndrome. Rationalizing it as a need to protect Norah, his wife, he makes a split-second decision that will alter all of their lives forever. He asks his nurse to take the baby away to an institution and never to reveal the secret. But Caroline, the nurse, cannot leave the infant. Instead, she disappears into another city to raise the child herself. So begins this story that unfolds over a quarter of a century - in which these two families, ignorant of each other, are yet bound by the fateful decision made that long-ago winter night. Norah Henry, who knows only that her daughter died at birth, remains inconsolable; her grief weighs heavily on their marriage. And Paul, their son, raises himself as best he can, in a house grown cold with mourning. Meanwhile, Phoebe, the lost daughter, grows from a sunny child to a vibrant young woman whose mother loves her as fiercely as if she were her own.
Now I have a feeling I have read this book before but I actually can’t remember if I am getting confused or not with another book.
The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
Everyone in the small town of Central City, Texas loves Lou Ford. A deputy sheriff, Lou's known to the small-time criminals, the real-estate entrepreneurs, and all of his coworkers--the low-lifes, the big-timers, and everyone in-between--as the nicest guy around. He may not be the brightest or the most interesting man in town, but nevertheless, he's the kind of officer you're happy to have keeping your streets safe. The sort of man you might even wish your daughter would end up with someday.
But behind the platitudes and glad-handing lurks a monster the likes of which few have seen. An urge that has already claimed multiple lives, and cost Lou his brother Mike, a self-sacrificing construction worker who fell to his death on the job in what was anything but an accident. A murder that Lou is determined to avenge--and if innocent people have to die in the process, well, that's perfectly all right with him.
In The Killer Inside Me, Thompson goes where few novelists have dared to go, giving us a pitch-black glimpse into the mind of the American Serial Killer years before Charles Manson, John Wayne Gacy, and Brett Easton Ellis's American Psycho, in the novel that will forever be known as the master performance of one of the greatest crime novelists of all time.
I REALLY want to watch the movie with Casey Affleck but I want to read the book first. It sounds so dark and delicious but does it stay?
The Runaway Jury by John Grisham
Every jury has a leader, and the verdict belongs to him. In Biloxi, Mississippi, a landmark tobacco trial with hundreds of millions of dollars at stake begins routinely, then swerves mysteriously off course.
The jury is behaving strangely, and at least one juror is convinced he's being watched. Soon they have to be sequestered. Then a tip from an anonymous young woman suggests she is able to predict the jurors' increasingly odd behavior.
Is the jury somehow being manipulated, or even controlled? If so, by whom? And, more importantly, why?
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Do LOVE LOVE LOVE a good ole court room drama, and I remember the film being really clever.
Different Seasons: Four Novellas by Stephen King
Also by this author: UR, In the Tall Grass
A "hypnotic" (The New York Times Book Review) collection of four novellas--including the inspirations behind the films Stand By Me and The Shawshank Redemption--from Stephen King, bound together by the changing of seasons, each taking on the theme of a journey with strikingly different tones and characters.
This gripping collection begins with "Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption," in which an unjustly imprisoned convict seeks a strange and startling revenge--the basis for the Best Picture Academy Award-nominee The Shawshank Redemption.
Next is "Apt Pupil," the inspiration for the film of the same name about top high school student Todd Bowden and his obsession with the dark and deadly past of an older man in town.
In "The Body," four rambunctious young boys plunge through the facade of a small town and come face-to-face with life, death, and intimations of their own mortality. This novella became the movie Stand By Me.
Finally, a disgraced woman is determined to triumph over death in "The Breathing Method."
"The wondrous readability of his work, as well as the instant sense of communication with his characters, are what make Stephen King the consummate storyteller that he is," hailed the Houston Chronicle about Different Seasons.
I think it is obvious why this book is in here. Stand by me and The Shawshank Redemption are two of the most iconic films (in my opinion) but will these novellas ruin it for me?!
So what stays and what goes? You decide
Until next time xxx
Jenchaos says
Different Seasons is definitely worth it! I love old King books.
Zoé says
I think I will be keeping that one.
Vanessa Schelfhout says
Why don’t You just throw them all away this week…
likeherdingcatsblog says
Different Seasons 8s a good one too
Zoé says
I think that will stay ?
likeherdingcatsblog says
?
Zoé says
??? you are learning from Eva
Davida Chazan says
I did not really care much for The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. You can see why here. https://wp.me/pauSsa-bn
Zoé says
Just read your review. And I think it has jogged my memory and I think I have already read it !
Davida Chazan says
It was hugely hyped when it was released, but… not everything that gets hyped is for me!
Kelly says
I’d keep The Running Man and The Killer Inside Me.
Zoé says
I have to keep the Running Man just for my love of Arnie ?
nickimags @ The Secret Library Book Blog says
I’d say Different Seasons because of Shawshank and The Runaway Jury because Grisham is good although I’ve never read any of his books, just seen the films. Have a great time at the Bloggers Bash xx
nickimags @ The Secret Library Book Blog says
Sorry that was meant to say ‘keep’ those two books!
Zoé says
?
Zoé says
Grisham does write a good book. The bloggers bash was good. Nice to meet new people and catch up with old friends ? xx
noveldeelights says
Keep Grisham, chuck the rest.
Zoé says
I love it! I was expecting something like that from you!
Hayley at RatherTooFondofBooks says
I’ve only read The Memory Keeper’s Daughter out of your selection this week and I can’t remember whether I enjoyed it or not so I’d say get rid of that one. My husband read The Running Man and very much enjoyed it so I recommend keeping that one.
Zoé says
I am going to keep that I think, mainly for Arnie x
FictionFan says
The only one I’ve read this week is the Grisham, which was good but not quite his best, if I remember rightly. But I think you should keep The Killer Inside Me – it sounds great!
Zoé says
Yeah that one quite intrigues me and I want to watch the film so I should read the book x
Rae Reads says
I think I’m in a ruthless mood today but I’ll be nice and I’d say just keep The Running Man and The Runaway Jury ?
Zoé says
They are the two I want to keep ? x