The First Verse by Barry McCrea. A freshman at Trinity College in Dublin becomes caught up in a strange cult of people who consult random passages from random books for every decision in their lives. I don't know why a book with a plot that seems tailor made for literature fans is so obscure. Plus this book has such vivid descriptions of Dublin's university scene that I feel like I could find my way around just from having read it, and a realistic portrait of a young gay man navigating his first relationships. Definitely an intriguing read.

Alias Grace is my favorite. I absolutely love it for Atwood's wordplay and her use of Victorian writing tropes.

I really like Cat's Eye. I thought it did a great job in showing how the bullying Elaine suffered in childhood continued to affect her negatively for years afterward. Her tendency to sympathize with men, no matter how badly they were behaving toward the women in their lives, for example. Also, her mistrust of any kind of female authority figures. It's unusual to read a book by a female author where male-female relationships are taken much more lightly while female friendships are portrayed as bloodsport. I also thought Atwood did an excellent job showing how little things that might be easily dismissed by some people, like Cordelia's bullying, which really only lasted for a year or so in her childhood, could have such a huge effect on Elaine that she was still wanting to get closure on it so many years later.

I also liked reading about Elaine's artwork. I'm a very visually-oriented person and I could imagine all of her paintings quite easily and found it fascinating how she used the elements of her past in her artwork.

"If You Leave Me Now" in Three Kings.

"The Bluest Eyes in Texas" in Boys Don't Cry.

"Late for the Sky" in Taxi Driver.

All three songs I was completely indifferent to, but now whenever I hear them they take me right back to the emotions from watching the movies.

As a kid I absolutely hated when book covers of illustrated books would be paintings of the kids in the book which looked absolutely nothing like the book illustrations of the same kids. This was particularly common with paperback editions of kids' books back in the day, like some older editions of the Ramona Quimby books, Harriet the Spy, etc. Why not just use the book illustrations on the cover?

More recently, I have basically stopped reading books with the cover image of a woman in old-fashioned clothes with her face obscured. Just way overdone. And I'm almost at the same spot with the colorful abstract collage-style designs covers. Enough already, publishers!

On the other hand, I love book covers that utilize cutouts in their design. I'm convinced that a good portion of the reason V.C. Andrews's books got so much attention back in the day was those eye-catching cutout covers. I also remember when The Secret History came out with that opaque cover overlay -- really brilliant design work.

I thought the book implied that Regan's possession came about because she hated the guy her mother was involved with (with good reason, he was absolutely revolting) and then the demon killed him and she felt guilty about it. But they also implied that the original contact with the demon was through the Ouija board games with her imaginary friend.

The scary parts of Regan's possession were definitely disturbing, but for me none of the rest of it worked. The dialogue was downright ridiculous and so were several of the characters, particularly the policeman.