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I already reviewed this book last year, but it was good enough that it's now on my annual re-read list. It definitely got me in the Halloween mood!
I already reviewed this book last year, but it was good enough that it's now on my annual re-read list. It definitely got me in the Halloween mood!
It’s rare to be able enjoy a book and its movie adaptation equally. The characters are so wonderfully drawn, it’s impossible to not have strong feelings about them all, from the skin-crawling creepiness of Norman Bates to anger and impatience for the complacently incompetent sheriff. The story and the pop-psychology it depends on is a little dated now, but not enough to detract from the fun.
Sometimes the best part of a thriller is the big reveal at the end. No doubt Psycho has an excellent one, for the .0001% of readers who don’t already know. But for the rest of us, there’s no loss in reading pleasure for already knowing the book’s secrets. The author has so many tongue-in-cheek references to it, that it’s almost designed for re-reads. Every time I came across a seemingly innocent remark or reference with a double-meaning, I genuinely laughed out loud.
Audiobook, via Audible. Paul Michael Garcia’s narration is fantastic – his Norman gave me shivers, but he voiced every character and their POV perfectly. At only 5 ½ hours of audio, Psycho is just short enough to go on my annual Halloween reading list.
Did she know? Had she known all along, known about the hole in the wall, known that he was watching? Did she want him to watch? Was she doing this to him on purpose? The bitch!
She was swaying back and forth, back and forth, and now the mirror was wavy again, and she was wavy, and he couldn't stand it, he wanted to pound on the wall. He wanted to scream at her to stop, because this was an evil, perverted thing she was doing and she must stop before he became evil and perverted, too.
That's what the bitches did to you. They perverted you, and she was a bitch, they were all bitches, Mother was a -
Suddenly she was gone, and there was only the roaring.
My first read for 2017 and a great way to start the year.
Everyone knows the story about Norman Bates and his mother issues but it was interesting to listen to the audio and view the story through a different medium. The narrator was William Hootkins and I whilst a couple of the character voices didn't work for me I thought he was creepy and disturbing as Norman/mother.
This is a very short book and it only took me just over three hours to finish the audiobook. The pacing is quick without being frenetic, the different povs giving balance to the storyline but it's Normans story that pulls you in. The story skips along nicely until the end and that's when it starts to get really creepy, the end scenes give new meaning to the word disturbing.
Classic horror that was great fun to read.
I tried, I really did. But I just can’t anymore. This story was not wholly without merit, but for the most part it is boring, boring, boring. At least the main female character has agency, but it still reads like a 14 year old boy’s fantasy of the ideal “independent” woman, with the antagonist being a shrill, angry, disrespectful harpy. I thought the story would pick up when he finally got to heaven and hell, but nope. DNF at 89%.
Audiobook, borrowed via Overdrive from my public library. Stilted reading by Paul Michael Garcia.
