Summer List Review {The Storyteller + The Silence of the Lambs}

This is the first installment of me reviewing a list of books and movies I set out to read, watch, and enjoy throughout the summer. You can check out the list I made here.

The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult was the first book I tackled on my list. I kept seeing a good bit of talk about this book by other bloggers and random articles that I stumbled upon during those weird hours on the internet. This is also the first book I've read from Jodi Picoult who's written her own fair share of books I must say. I had no clue she had written My Sister's Keeper, which is a great movie (I love anything with Cameron Diaz), although I hear the book/movie adaption did not keep true to the book very much (which is why I added the book to my list as well).

Anyways, back to The Storyteller.

It was definitely a great book. It follows a baker who unknowingly befriends a Nazi who not only asks for her forgiveness, but for her to kill him as well. Also might I add, the baker has Jewish ancestry, but does not practice Judaism herself.

When I was in fourth grade I read Hidden Child  by Isaac Millman and I remember I checked it out over and over again throughout the year. As someone who never re-read books it was quite peculiar for me to do such a thing and ever since then I've been entirely intrigued in Holocaust books.

That being said I've read a ton of books written about the Holocaust time and most follow the same storyline (young person in concentration camp, loses family, suffers hardships, etc.) and granted a lot of Holocaust books are memoirs of their time spent and this is truly what happened, but when I read a fiction book about this time period I hold it up to a different standard. I expect there to be twists and turns and connections to the real world today, something that holds it apart from the usual autobiographies written by Holocaust survivors.

Don't get me wrong, I L-O-V-E real life accounts of the Holocaust, but I enjoy turning to the fiction side of things and hearing about events that could almost be too drastic or coincidental to happen to some one's real life. I must have to say the Storyteller was probably one of the best fictional accounts of the Holocaust that I've ever read (alongside The Book Thief). It weaves a survivor's story into today's world and I'd highly recommend it.

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The first movie I watched was called The Silence of the Lambs. I'm a big horror movie fan so I might as well give you the forewarning that most of the movies on my list are indeed horror movies.

The movie was mostly a psychological thriller, although I wasn't nearly as scared as I thought I was going to be. This is definitely a movie you can watch at one in the morning and be okay to go to sleep after (at least for me).

The story follows an FBI agent by the name of Clarice who is still in training. She's put on the task of interviewing the serial killer Hannibal Lector (who ate his victims) for another detective, Jack Crawford, who is doing a study on psychological behaviors of serial killers. He's doing this study in hopes of catching other serial killers, specifically one who is currently active by the name of Buffalo Bill, who skins his female victims.

It had quite the excellent storyline, although I had this slight irritation with the main character's voice. Clarice (the main detective) had this sort of weird Northern/ West Virginia accent that irked me throughout the entire movie, although this is probably my own pet peeve that not many of you will share.

I was also pleasantly surprised by the fact that the main character was a female FBI agent (kudos for women in leading roles and more specifically roles that are deemed "manly").

Overall these choices were good picks to start my summer reading/movie watching list.

Have a fabulous day.