Musing Mondays - What I'm reading & what book I think should be a movie

Musing Mondays - September 12, 2016

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

• I’m currently reading…

• Up next I think I’ll read…

• I bought the following book(s) in the past week…

• I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…

• I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…

• I can’t wait to get a copy of…

• I wish I could read ___, but…

• I blogged about ____ this past week…

I'm currently reading: 

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix

I've had my eye on this novel off and on ever since I first heard about it in 2014. It popped up again on my radar a few weeks ago when I was browsing Goodreads for something else and at the time I was looking for a 3rd book to add to a Chapters order so I could get free shipping so I decided to pick it up finally. As an obsessive fan of Ikea and their catalogue, and a lover of satirical and irreverent horror (the Scream franchise is one of my favourites) the entire premise and appearance of this book appeals to me. It's published by Quirk Books, which is the same publishing house that puts out books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Android Karenina, and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters so that should give you an idea of what this book is about.

Personally, I think one of the best parts of the book, which is set in a knock-off Ikea wannabe called Orsk, is that the actual physical book has been laid out and designed to look like an Ikea catalogue, right down to the fact that the page numbers associated with specific products on the cover actually feature diagrams of those products:

Why yes, I did just happen to have the new Ikea catalogue sitting on a shelf on my desk...

I started reading it yesterday afternoon and now I'm about 80% done - it reads fast - but between it and all the Supernatural I've been watching lately, needless to say I didn't get the greatest night's sleep last night. Here's the summary from Goodreads:

Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland, Ohio. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring bookshelves, shattered Glans water goblets, and smashed Liripip wardrobes. Sales are down, security cameras reveal nothing, and store managers are panicking.
To unravel the mystery, three employees volunteer to work a nine-hour dusk-till-dawn shift. In the dead of the night, they’ll patrol the empty showroom floor, investigate strange sights and sounds, and encounter horrors that defy the imagination.
A traditional haunted house story in a thoroughly contemporary setting, Horrorstör comes packaged in the form of a glossy mail order catalog, complete with product illustrations, a home delivery order form, and a map of Orsk’s labyrinthine showroom.

          THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION:  What obscure book do you think should be turned into a movie?

BERLIN GAME! Well *ALL* the Bernard Sampson books actually, and not a movie but a TV show where each book takes place over the course of a single season which would make for 9 seasons which would be perfect, just so perfect. I've even done a fan!casting for this in my head as I was reading it. I want to see David Thewlis as Bernard, Alex Kingston as Fiona, Ian Holm as Uncle Silas (based on the fact that he played Bernard in the original, obscure TV mini-series from the late 80s that I would LOVE to get my hands on) and Matt Lewis as Dicky Cruyer among others.


I feel like this is a missed opportunity, I really think that if they picked these up as a BBC or HBO series now it could be really, really well done and popular. I mean it's got everything politics, espionage, sex, murder. infidelity, chase scenes. And Bernard is a much better character than James Bond - don't get me wrong I do love the James Bond films, but my god he was and still is pretty damn sexist and I am so over that...

But that's not entirely within the scope of the question that was asked. We were asked to discuss an obscure book we would want to see made specifically into a movie and I have a choice for that too, but I've been looking for an excuse to bring up my fan!casting of Berlin Game ever since I finished reading it for the #ReadThemAllThon.

I've mentioned Daughters of Eve by Lois Ducan a few times on this blog already. I'm pretty sure this book of hers is actually still pretty much considered obscure. I think it would make a fantastic movie in the same vein as Heathers, Jawbreaker, and Mean Girls.

The story itself is set in the 1970s in Modesta Michigan but I think for a movie that could easily be changed to a modern day setting with the addition of modern technology and not have it affect the message and action of the story overly much. It's about a group of teenage girls and the impact and power that one strong willed role model can have on them. It is also about the trials of peer pressure, the importance of feminism, and above all the nature of friendship.

It really does have a lot going on, and a lot of characters (11 main/POV characters, and about an equal number of very important supporting characters) which I actually feel is what would make it an even better movie than it is a book and it's a pretty darn good book in my opinion. It continues to be one of my favourites to this day. If they did make it into a movie I'd love to see them cast Viola Davis as Irene Stark, that would be so badass, and another great way to bring it into the 21st century by adding some really much needed diversity (of which there is none in the book...). It would be really interesting to see how much diversity and interest they could bring to the girls themselves through casting as well. Oh man, I wish so bad I could make this happen now haha.