Teaser Tuesday - Afraid of The Dark by James Grippando

Today's teaser comes from a book that... was recommended by one of the blogs I follow. I can't remember which, but I'll look it up when I'm done. I don't want to let anything spoil the book!

Oh, and I mentioned that I was reading the End of the World Running Club in a previous post, but I put it down halfway and that was a huge huge mistake. When I picked it up, I no longer wanted to read it, and rather than force myself (and end up giving the book an unfairly negative review which it probably didn't deserve), I decided to just let it go.

Let it go~

I would insert an Elsa gif, but I'm bad at gifs. Like, really bad. Anyway, I'm reading Afraid of the Dark by James Grippando and I'm really loving it! It's totally got my sucked in. Although my teaser is kind of a downer:

"Jack's voice cracked for the third time. Lengthy eulogies were inappropriate at a Jewish funeral on a Friday afternoon, but delivery of even a short one was painful."

What is your teaser this week?

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Jenn of Books and a Beat. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read 

• Open to a random page 

• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page 

• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!) 

• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale

I first heard of this book in an article about the penny dreadful, and luckily for me, it was available on NetGalley.

The Wicked Boy is a true-crime story, following Robert Coombes, who killed his mother in 1895. At that time, penny dreadfuls, which were serialised adventure stories popular with boys, were partially blamed for the murder. But, Kate Summerscale shows that this may not be the case.

I'll admit, the book was hard to get into. I'm used to the author liberally inserting him/herself into the narrative (the "this is how hard I worked to find the information" shtick), and Kate Summerscale's no-nonsense account was different from what I expected. Plus, she started from the aftermath of the crime, so I had to adapt to a completely different world instantaneously.

But, I quickly adjusted, and I realised that I like this method. True, the style is rather understated, but it helps bring a sense of rationality to the end.

I do wish, however, that there was a bit more investigation into Robert and Nattie Coombes home life. There are hints that they are turbulent, but it's not discussed and proved as conclusively as I hoped it would be. Most of the time, this was a narrative account of the affair.

Oh, and the epilogue was great, because it showed a different side to Robert Coombes (and marked the first and only appearance of the author). It suggested that in the end, the sentence he got might have helped, and that he wasn't a "wicked boy" after all.

And by the way, I really like the way Broadmare (asylum for the criminally insane) works. It's humane, and I think it does help with the rehabilitation.

If you're looking for a nuanced view of a Victorian matricide, I highly recommend this book.

Disclaimer: I got a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.

The Road to Character by David Brooks

I borrowed this book because I read about it in the newspaper, making it the first time the newspaper ever made me want to read a book. However, this was in the opinion section, not the books section, so... I guess the official reviews still have a ways to go.

Anyway, The Road to Character has two premises:

One, there is an Adam I and Adam II in us. Adam I is the career-minded, materialistic self, while Adam II is the internal self. The one that wants to "embody certain moral qualities". These two selves are the reason for a continual tension within us.

Two, society has, in recent times, moved from a Little Me mindset to a Big Me mindset, where we put ourselves first. While this isn't wholly unjustified, Brooks argues that we have swung too far in the direction of self-love and self-centeredness, and that we need to take a step back.

To be clear, this doesn't mean the past is better than the present. Brooks says as much in the opening chapters. There are changes we've made that are for the better. But what he is saying is that there are things we can and should learn from the past.

The bulk of the book are the eight biographies of various people, from Frances Perkins to A. Philip Randolph to Augustine. As Brooks goes through their lives, he pauses to talk about certain characteristics they embodied, which is where I ended up saving loads of quotes from. Among others:

Love is a surrender. You expose your deepest vulnerabilities and give up your illusions of self-mastery. [...] Love depends on the willingness of each person to be vulnerable and it depends that vulnerability. It works because each person exposes their nakedness and the other rushes to meet it.

To be sure, none of these people lead perfect lives. Their characters tended to leave them under-compensated in some ways, so while they might accomplish great things, they had their own personal sufferings.

But taken as a whole, these people point the way towards how we could leave more contented, fuller lives. It is not a life of ease, since it is a life consisting of balancing two eternally conflicting selves, but it is a rewarding one.

I borrowed this from the library, but I totally want my own copy.

Thirty Hours with a Corpse by Maurice Level

Thirty Hours with a Corpse is a collection of short stories by a French writer named Maurice Level. Apparently he used to be super popular, but now he's an unknown.

Anyway, I actually put off reading this book for a few days, because I only had time to read at night and the cover scared me so that I only wanted to read it during the day. But the cover turned out to be the scariest thing.

I actually sort of recognised the first story in the collection. Or at least, I've read something similar - it's about a bank robber that leaves his loot under an assumed name... Then discovers he forgot it.

Oops, that may have been the twist. But the ending hasn't been given away. And there are a lot more stories in the book anyway.

Most of the stories are like the first. They're about the human nature rather than the supernatural or horror.

And they contain a twist.

The twist, and the liberal use of ellipses, are probably the two defining characteristics of the book. Which is why you really shouldn't read a bunch of them in a row, like I did. Sure, they're short and entertaining, but after a while, you learn to expect the unexpected, and the twist loses its impact.

Oh yeah, and the stories are really short. I wish they were longer, because they felt like snapshots rather than fully formed stories.

But overall, this was an entertaining collection. I don't know if the author wrote any novels that have been translated into English, but I would be interested in reading them if they exist.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a free and honest review.