All About Bette

Quite possibly my favorite movie!

Get Your Read On: Wait Until Twilight by Sang Pak

From harpercollins.com
Book Description

A hauntingly strange and powerfully affecting debut novel that heralds the arrival of a unique and captivating literary voice, Sang Pak's Wait Until Twilight is a coming-of-age story that explores the complex darkness infecting a damaged psyche in a small Southern town.

Not long after his own mother's death, sixteen-year-old Samuel discovers a set of deformed triplets hidden behind closed doors in his sleepy Georgia community. The babies—whose shut-in mother believes they were immaculately conceived and whose menacing brother is a constant threat—take control of Samuel's every waking and sleeping thought. His only escape, he realizes, will be to save the monster children. But to do so, he must rein in his darkest impulses as he undergoes a profound transformation from motherless boy to self-defined man—because sometimes the most terrible monsters are those that live inside us all.

When I first read the description I was expecting a dark, Southern-Gothic type tale, perhaps along the same line as the short story Children of the Corn by Stephen King.
The book actually reminds me more of another King short story titled The Body.(Many of you will recall that novella was later made into a movie titled Stand By Me.)

Unlike the King story which focused on the coming of age of 4 friends, Sang Pak's novel hone's in on the loneliness and depression of one young boy on the brink of adulthood.
Sixteen year-old Samuel Polk lost his mother to cancer, and has neatly compartmentalized his life in the year since her death.
He lives with his father who although loving, is obviously dealing with his own grief, and there is a mostly absentee older brother named Jim who is away at college, and avoids the family.

It becomes obvious that this is a family that is simply going through the motions, and that no one has really come to terms with losing the mother.
Samuel is carrying around a load of guilt to boot, because he feels that he let his mother down during one of her final requests.

It is during a school project that Samuel discovers the Greenan babies-a set of triplets with profound birth-defects, whose own mother believes them to have been "immaculately conceived". What enfolds from this meeting is a sequence of events that evolves into Samuel's own soul-searching journey to salvation.

This is the first novel by Sang Pak and I found it haunting in his descriptions of the rural south and the characters were not unlike people from my own past.
For better or worse, we all grew up knowing about a family similar to the Greenans.
This story evoked memories of whispered secrets behind old ladies fans after Sunday School, and I appreciate Mr. Pak's portrait of teenage angst verging on adulthood.

This was a thoughtful, engaging book, and I look forward to more by this talented young author. A special thanks to Harper Collins for sending me this ARC. This book has a scheduled release date of August 4th

About the Author:

Sang Pak is a Georgia-raised writer with English and psychology degrees from the University of Georgia. He is currently on hiatus from New York University's graduate program in psychology. He divides his time between Georgia, southern California, and Seoul. Wait Until Twilight is his first novel
To learn more about this book and author, visit his website by clicking HERE.

Do You Think She Knew?

My friend sent me a copy of this photo.
As I studied it I was reminded of why I will only get on the back of a Harley
as opposed to the back of a "Crotch Rocket".

On a Harley you can sit back just like you are in the saddle, with your knees bent, lightly embracing the driver.
The contoured seat makes for good posture,
thus greatly reducing road fatigue as you tool about the countryside.

Now riding a Crotch Rocket, while although "breezy looking" appears rather painful.
I think it would bother my back to be all hunched forward like that.
And what about the driver of this machine?
Notice how his or her body is bent forward with his or her upper torso engulfed in hanging bosom, and their spindly little legs are bent forward?

But who am I to judge?
I could be all wrong.
Maybe it all made for an enjoyable, comfortable ride.
I'm glad to see that they observed the helmet law.

Book Review: BoneMan's Daughters by Ted Dekker

I won this title from a giveaway, and I dived right in with relish a couple days ago when it arrived.
I have always enjoyed a good suspense thriller, but lately I've felt immune to a lot of them, probably because I've read so much True-Crime, and the sheer ugliness of how one human being can treat another has left me numb and a little detached.
Now that in itself must be some kind of defense mechanism-probably so I don't wind up having nightmares.
Well, enough of my amateur self-psychoanalysis.

I want to tell you about this book.

It's main character is a career Navy Intelligence Officer named Ryan Evans, who after witnessing brutality of the most barbaric kind in Iraq, has returned to the States a broken and changed man. He is determined to win back the affections of the wife and daughter that he had emotionally abandoned years before.
Too bad, so sad though.
He is too late. His wife Celine, has moved on, and his daughter Bethany totally rejects him.
Not exactly a hero's welcome home.

Enter the Boneman.
At least, that is what the press has dubbed him due to the fact that he tortures and kills his victims by methodically breaking practically every single bone in their bodies without so much as breaking the skin.
So far he has claimed six victims and has set his sights on the daughter of Officer Evans as his next.
Ironically, Evans himself has become the FBI's prime suspect for the slayings, due to the methods of torture he endured in the desert of Iraq.
The real thrills begin when Evans is forced to go on the run from the Law while at the same time trying to track down the madman who has his daughter before it's too late. In this he becomes both the Hunter and the Prey.

This book was gripping. It had the psychological edge that I think makes for a great page-turner.
Now of course I'll have to read something light and fluffy before I can tackle another thriller. You know, kind of like cleansing the palette.
And those are my thoughts.