The reason I'm forking over cold hard cash is the copy in the catalog:
In the spring of 2007, a brilliant computer programmer named Hans Reiser stands accused of murdering his estranged wife, Nina. Despite a mountain of circumstantial evidence against him, he proclaims his innocence. The case takes a twist when Nina's former lover, and Hans's former best friend, Sean Sturgeon, confesses to eight unrelated murders that no one has ever heard of.
At the time of Sturgeon's confession, Stephen Elliott is paralyzed by writer's block, in the thrall of Adderall dependency, and despondent over the state of his romantic life. But he is fascinated by Sturgeon, whose path he has often crossed in San Francisco's S&M scene. What kind of person, he wonders, confesses to a murder he likely did not commit. One answer is, perhaps, a man like Elliott's own father.
So begins a riveting sojourn through a neon landscape of false confessions, self-medication and torturous sex. Set against the backdrop of a nation at war, the declining year of the Silicon Valley tech boom, THE ADDERALL DIARIES is at once a gripping account of a murder trial and a scorching investigation of the self."
And a blurb from Roddy Doyle clinched the sale: "You don't just read THE ADDERALL DIARIES, you fall right into them...It's a brilliant book."
I'm perplexed by the choice of cover and title for this book but that's a topic for another day!
12 comments:
The alliteration doesn't help either.
The title makes it sound as if it's only about addiction, while the subtitle says that there's a lot more going on.
Plus the cover looks like something we'd get on the cover of a junior high sex-ed textbook printed in the 1970s. The story sounds interesting, and I'm amazed that they didn't come up with something better.
I guess you really can't judge a book by its cover.
Yeah, not the most exciting cover.
I wonder how the author feels about the cover. If a publisher wanted to use something like that for a book of mine, I think I'd cry.
I actually don't hate it. I just, oddly, wrote a blog post about how I like things to be simple in my books.
I know I'm in the minority here :)
Wow. The description IS interesting. But the memoir of moods, masochism, and murder makes it sounds like it's a graduate school report or something. Lame lame lame.
Good thing you're here to point out the goodies that would otherwise get passed by.
I guess I'll be the one to stand up and speak differently here...
I think it's a clever cover (say that ten times fast). It simultaneously portrays both main aspects of the story, according to the blurb. If you look at it one way, you see two people in the woods with flashlight beams shining ahead of them. This reminds me of people searching for dead bodies...uh...at night...obviously. So that would take care of the murder side of the story. If you look at it another way, it looks like two people within a broken heart (complete with throbbing veins, of course), which would take care of the odd romantic conflict.
It's perfect (in a not quite perfect sort of way). But I do agree the title is misleading. *shrugs* Can't win 'em all.
The title does make a great earworm, which is a nice benefit, plus it's the whole "diary" image of being just full of secret goodies. No, couldn't pass this one, even with the fugly cover.
Dear Ms. Reid and friends,
Call me old-fashioned but my immediate reaction to this -
"So begins a riveting sojourn through a neon landscape of false confessions, self-medication and torturous sex."
- is "Yick".
I mean, I can get this at home.
dylan
well Dylan, perhaps YOU should be writing a memoir as well!
I'd buy a phone book if Roddy Doyle recommended it. The man gave us Paula fookin' Spencer!
Dear Ms. Reid,
You wrote: well Dylan, perhaps YOU should be writing a memoir as well!
Interesting suggestion, that, with one debilitating caveat.
It has been my understanding that the 'memoir' requires that one is able to 'remember'.
And willing to, as well.
I'll stick with the chimeras that arise within my artificially induced fog.
Thanks though.
dylan
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