Alone With Night Film and Demon Copperhead

Books mentioned in this episode:

Night Film by Marisha Pessl
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
The Girl From the Well by Rin Chupeco

www.marishapessl.com

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Transcript

 Hello everyone and welcome to In Her Good Books. I'm Jen, and this is a podcast where one friend talks about books. You heard me, Shannon couldn't make it tonight, so I thought, you know what, I'm just gonna go ahead and I'm gonna do it. Because I didn't want to miss out this week. I didn't wanna leave you guys hanging.

So I am here. Honestly, it's probably gonna be a short one because we all know I am not the talker of the group. Also, I've only read two books, which is again, unheard of. But to be fair, these books were both really, really big books, like 600 pages of books, and I'm gonna tell you about it. So first off, on our last episode, Shannon talked about a book called Night Film by Masia Psel.

And at that time I was in a deep book slump and. I decided it sounded really good, so I was gonna try it out, hoping that it would claw me out of the slump and back into regular reading life, and I'm so glad that I read it. It was really, really great. I think that this would've been a really great book to do a full deep dive on, and I wish that we had planned on doing that before reading it.

I mean, maybe we can still do it when Shannon finishes it. Um, for those of you who haven't listened to our last episode, this one is about a popular horror director, a fictional one. His name is Stan Sls Cordova, which is. A great name. I love it. I love it and I'm gonna keep saying it throughout the rest of this episode.

Um, he is a very mysterious guy to the point where there are no pictures of him. No one will speak about him. There are hardly any interviews with him, but he makes these completely terrifying films. And you all know how much I love a terrifying film. Fact, I'm gonna talk about a terrifying film a little later on.

Just you wait anyways, one day his daughter is found dead of a parent suicide. There is an investigative reporter named Scott McGrath. Of course, it's his name. It's perfect. And so he basically lost everything the last time he was investigating Cordova. Now he gets pulled back into that world because there are people, including him, that don't believe that Ashley, the daughter, killed herself.

So he starts a new investigation to find out what happened to Ashley and to find out who this Stannis last Cordova really is. I read somewhere that Maia Pele drew inspiration from Director Stanley Kubrick, who, for anybody who doesn't know is thought to be one of the best filmmakers ever. Uh, he did The Shining, he did 2001 A Space Odyssey.

He did Eyes Wide Shut, and in the book, Stan last. Had a huge estate called the Peak, and that is where he made all of his movies. He had everything he needed there and he would be in control of all elements of production. So he had like a sound stage, he had everything. Um, Stanley Krick had a similar estate in the uk.

In Hartshire actually, which is where my husband's from. So I think that based on what little knowledge I do have of Curick, that fans of his work might also really enjoy this book. It goes deep into the films and the different techniques that Cordova used, and also how far he was willing to go to get that perfect shot.

I thought that the film angle was really, really interesting. My only real gripe with this aspect was that I really wanted to go into the movies that he was making, and there were a few times where we catch glimpses of the movies, but I wanted to experience the horror and that was lacking a little bit.

Shannon had said that she experienced a jump scare in the book, and I. I definitely felt a lot of creep factor, but I didn't have a jump scare. Another thing that I really loved about this book was the atmosphere. We always talk about how wonderful Daphne de Maiers Rebecca is and how it is just the epitome of atmosphere, and I think that this book has the atmosphere of Rebecca.

With the kind of cinematics of the movie Sin City, and those two things meshed together in my mind was so, so good. It was very noir. Um, it could be a little bit tro, but I found that the, the tropes that they used were comforting and familiar, and they just kind of gave me something to cling onto in this crazy world.

That they created. So I didn't mind that at all. I thought it was really, really fun. Oh, and one thing that I almost forgot to talk about was the format. Shannon also mentioned this in the last episode. Uh, the book is a epistolary, so there is a good chunk of the book that is told through things like police files, webpages, news articles, pictures.

Shannon wasn't sure how that would translate on audio. And I've also heard a few other people say that you need to read the physical copy of the book, not even the ebook. Definitely not the audio. You need the physical copy. But you know what, I'm here to say that the audio book was great. The narrator had the perfect voice that you would expect from like an old timey detective.

I mean, he was actually a journalist in the book, but I decided he was a detective and that worked really well for me. Um, the narrator would then read the content of the articles and webpages and police files. So then I wasn't missing any of the information. I knew everything that was happening. Um, also the audiobook comes with a, a PDF of all the complimentary content so I could go into it and see all of these things.

The only thing that was missing was the pictures in the audio, obviously. Uh, I was hoping that maybe they would describe the pictures a little bit. I was also kind of hoping that they would maybe point to the P D F when needed. Um, but I would kind of had to just. When I thought that they were reading a webpage or an article, then I would go to the PDF and have to scroll through to find the, the right one.

Um, so that was kind of annoying. It definitely would've been better to actually read the book, but I didn't feel like I was really missing out a whole lot. Um, I also learned that there used to be an app that you could download with a bunch of extra content. Like audio files and I don't know, probably, I don't know what else.

Let me see. Okay, you can actually go to her website, maia pele.com and click on books and then go down to night film. Um, click on Night Film de Coder, and then they also have bonus content on her website. There's a few things, there's a little bit of audio, there's journal entries, there are, uh, movie posters.

It's really, really fun. I love this. I love, love, love. When a book is so much more than a book, it makes it so much more interesting. It. Really brings it to life and it just really shows how much she loved this, how passionate she was about this story, and. I love it. I absolutely love it. I want more books like this, so if anyone out there knows of any books with this kind of supplementary content, please tell me right away.

And I really, really wish that that app was still working because that would be so cool. So yeah, night film, Marisha Pele, really, really good. Definitely recommend it. I do want to pick up a physical copy and I am curious to see if I was to read it again. If it would be a much different experience. So yeah, pick it up.

And 

just 

while we are on the topic of horror, I watched JK last night, which is the original Japanese version of The Grudge, and I love the grudge. I love it. It really, really scares me. I also like this one too. Though I do think that the American version is scarier. I wasn't really that scared last night, but if any of you are fans of The Grudge, I highly suggest reading The Girl From the Well by Rin Juco.

You'll love it. It goes into the mythology of who the girl with the long dark hair in horror films is and where that trope came from. It was excellent. Um, but. That's not what I'm here to say. After we watched Jujuan, my friend Janelle turned on the trailer for the new Evil Dead movie, evil Dead Rise. And let me tell you, it was so scary.

That I was scared when I got into my car. I kept thinking that someone was gonna be in the backseat or someone was gonna be trying to get into the car, or they were going to walk out onto the road While I was driving, they were gonna be on top of my car. They were gonna be hiding in my carport, like whatever scenario you can think of.

I was scared of it. So yeah, watch the trailer for Evil Dead Rise. I will be watching the movie. As soon as possible. And I think that I'll probably regret it almost immediately because I'm getting old and I scare easily, much more easily now than I used to. But I'm really, really excited. Um, and then I read Demonn Copperhead by Barbara King Silver, and this was another really long book.

Night film was 23 hours on audio. This one was 21 hours on audio. So that is why. I have only read two books, so Demon Copperhead. It was named, uh, one of the 10 best books of last year by the Washington Post and The New York Times. It won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction alongside Trust by Heran Diaz. So this was the first time that the award was given to two authors, two books in history.

So that was kind of cool. Also, demon Copperhead has been shortlisted. For the 2023 Women's Prize for fiction, the winner is gonna be announced. Like the day that this episode comes out is the day that the winner will be announced. So it could be that Demon Copperhead has won, but as of now, still on the short list.

So this one was a retelling of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. I have not read David Copperfield, but now I am. Definitely more interested to do that. Um, I read a summary and it sounds very similar to Demon Copperhead, so it seems like Barbara King solver stayed pretty true to the story. I think if you've read both books, I would love to hear your thoughts.

I have it cued, but the audio book is, 36 hours long. So I'm a little hesitant to start it. I mean, it might be a little bit too much of the same story. Uh, after finishing that one, it would be about 60 hours of poor little boys. So I don't know. We'll see. So in David Copperfield, we are following a young boy named David Copperfield in the UK and in demon copperhead.

We're following a young boy in the Appalachian Mountains, nicknamed Demon Copperhead. It's about a little boy named Damon Fields who is. Born to a teenage mother who struggles with addiction. He grows up learning to take care of her, and uh, eventually he gets taken away and put into foster care where he remains for the rest of his childhood.

We follow him through many different homes and see how he copes with the different scenarios that he's put in. The book is about. Survival. It's about his great big, resilient heart. Ugh. He was a really, really, really great character. You can't help but love him, as does everybody in the book. He just is magnetic and as a little boy, he just broke my heart.

He was so wonderful and had been through so much, and he just always kind of took things as it came and. Was like, well, it's not that bad because other people have it way worse than me. What do I have to complain about? And ugh, I love it. And you know, you know, I love a good survival book. The more you have to survive the better.

And it was just really, it was really, really good. It was really hard. It's not a nice read. It's not cute. I know. I make things sound cute sometimes, and this isn't cute, but it's heartwarming in a really, I feel like unique way. And also the book is about the opioid epidemic that is happening just all over right now and has been for a long time.

And it's about how it started specifically in that area of the states and probably how it started everywhere really, and just mostly rich people taking advantage of the economically challenged people in the world. And trying to make money off of them no matter what, and it was really, really sad to read.

Um, at times it felt a little bit informational. Like the book was like, these are the things that I want you to learn from this story. And sometimes instead of weaving it into the story, it was kind of just said, and I didn't mind that it was really important information, but also kind of took me out of the story a little bit.

So it's not something I'd really complain about, but it was something that I, I noticed and I have heard from other people and, and I really, really enjoyed it. I thought it could be a little bit shorter. But I think that about a lot of books, because I know some people really like really, really long books because if you love a character and you love a story and you love a world, why wouldn't you wanna be in that world longer?

But my personality likes to complete things, and if things aren't completed very quickly, then I. Feel like a failure? I don't know. I feel like I just need to be done it, so I have a, I have a hard time with longer books, so this one could have been a little bit shorter in my mind, but at the same time, I was really enjoying being there with him.

And yeah, I recommend it. I do recommend it. It was really, really good. Some of the people I know that have read it and liked it also, like books like the Lincoln Highway and. Cloud cuckoo land, and I think this one fits in really well with those books, even though I didn't really like those books that much, but I did like this one.

And yeah, I mean that, that's it. That's all. That's all I've read. And hopefully two weeks from now we've read lots of books. Maybe Shannon's read some books. Maybe you guys want us to do a deep dive on night film. I mean, I wouldn't be mad. All right, well, that is all I have for you today. You can find us@goodbookspodcast.com, and we are in Her Good Books podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

So head over there to give us a follow so you never miss out on what we're doing. And while you're at it, Rate and review this podcast. It helps you get into our good books by supporting the show and also helps other people find us. Otherwise, we are gonna see you in two weeks. Bye. I did it. Ah, this is weird doing it by myself.