Fall TV and Twitter

To keep everyone updated, I'm writing some TV reviews for a site called Slackerheroes.com. Here's my most recent write-up on The CW show The Secret Circle, which I basically summarize as The Vampire Diaries with witches. And The Vampire Diaries already has witches.

Anyway, it's been fun connecting with more TV bloggers and pop culture sites on twitter. For those of you new to twitter, or who might not use it much, it can be fun to search a show's hashtag (such as #TheSecretCircle) and follow the feed when the show is on. It's like a live blog with anyone on twitter who's commenting. #Project Runway's is particularly amusing, so long as you are watching in real time otherwise you will see spoilers. Probably reality shows in general work with twitter since you don't have to pay attention to plot every second and people are so opinionated about the shows. #Survivor is also entertaining.

I barely ever channel surf anymore since I have a DVR that can record 4 shows at once (a technological marvel!) so I always have something I want to watch. A couple weeks ago I discovered Dateline is still on; it's seriously been years since I've had nothing to watch and resigned myself to Dateline. Of course, I was immedately hooked by a premise of a screenwriter acting out a Dexter-like serial killer existence and writing about it (thus his arrest since the police found his script detailing where he dumped the body - Derp!). I wrote a tweet about the obnoxious (but somehow effective) voiceover and used the #Dateline hashtag. Reading the feed was hilarious. It's like the water-cooler conversation you have the next day at work about TV but it's happening live. Then weirdly enough, the real life author of a book about the criminal case started plugging his book on the twitter feed. I suppose anything goes, but by the 4th plug it was a bit much.

A couple suggestions of TV blogs & twitter users to follow are:

• Television Without Pity (@TVWithoutPity on twitter) They have recaps which are hilarious although quite long (they now have an abbrieviated feature) and some pretty great feature articles similiar to what Slackerheroes does.
• The Onion's AV Club (@TheAVClub on twitter). Excellent commentary. They even feature past shows like The X-Files and Angel, doing more of a scholarly dissection. You laugh, but it's awesome!

Do you follow any TV blogs or twitter users who write about TV or pop culture? What are your favorites?

Book Review: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer by Michelle Hodkin

Title: The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer
Author: Michelle Hodkin
Genre: YA, contemporary, paranormal?
Published: 2011

The less you know going into this book, the more of an impact it will have. I also suggest skipping the handwritten looking prologue prior to the first chapter, and I'll go into why later.

Sixteen-year-old Mara Dyer survives a building collapse, but three of her friends are killed. She wakes up in the hospital unable to remember what happened. Shaken to the core, Mara is diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, and as a means of moving on with her life, she convinces her family to relocate for a fresh start. Her father makes a job connection with a law firm in Florida, so they move from Rhode Island to Miami in the middle of the school year.

Mara experiences hallucinations of her deceased friends on a daily basis. Some visions seem to be triggered by stress, and other times she will blank out for minutes to hours, losing all concept of time. She is inconsistent with taking her prescription medication which lends to rather trippy storytelling. At night, she dreams in fragments, and finally starts piecing together why she and her friends went to an abandoned building at night and what happened between then and the collapse.

Mara is withdrawn but not afraid to speak her mind when provoked. Right away as the new girl at her small private school, Mara draws the attention of another loner, a rich kid named Noah Shaw who's a transplant from England. Everyone warns Mara that Noah is a player and will use any girl he meets. He's a cocky alpha male who delights in Mara's resistance to his advances. As much as she hates him, she also finds herself drawn to him.

I do have a few issues. I loved the book when I thought it was just Mara's PTSD giving her hallucinations. The truth of what happened to Mara in the building collapse left me a little underwhelmed. Also, her relationship with Noah felt very Edward and Bella at times, with him possessively declaring she was meant for him and belonged with him. Even though Mara is far more feisty than Bella, I wish there had been more resolution to all the rumors that Noah slept with girls and ditched them. Noah tells her it's not true, but it doesn't feel convincing. Events in the last 2/3 of the book really upend the story and I'm not sure I felt like it meshed together. Instead of resolving, the story adds more twists and sets up immediately for a sequel.

The first line of the scrawled note prologue is compelling: "My name is not Mara Dyer, but my lawyer said I had to choose something." Awesome right? This is never touched on in the book. She is not personally involved in a court case, her father is a lawyer but not representing her in any way, and it is never mentioned that she changed her name. This is a really cool intro, but it left me puzzled as to its relevance.  I really had no idea this would be a paranormal romance until mid-way through the book. I was hoping for more of a contemporary thriller with exploration of real-life PTSD. Overall, I have mixed feelings, although it was a real page-turner and kept me guessing most of the way through.