Teaser Tuesdays: Another Teaser from Night Film

I finished this book over the long weekend, and this must be the creepiest, scariest book I read this year.

Here’s a fairly innocuous teaser:

Darkness. I know it’s hard to fathom today, but a true artist needs darkness in order to create. It gives him his power. His invisibility. The less the world knows about him, his whereabouts, his origins and secret methods, the more strength he has.

The more inanities about him the world eats, the smaller and drier his art until it shrinks and shrivels into a Lucky Charms marshmallow to be consumed in a little bowl with milk for breakfast.

Did you ever really think he’d ever let that happen?

Night Film ~ Marisha Pessl

I have to say I don’t quite understand the need for so many italics in this teaser (the italics are bolded in the above quote for emphasis). For some reason, Pessl peppers her prose with italics. It bothered me at times.

Are you bothered by unnecessary italics?

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

  • Grab your current read
  • Open to a random page
  • Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
  • BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
  • Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

18 comments

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  1. April @ My Shelf Confessions

    Adding this one to my to read wish list! It sounds fantastic, although I agree.. those words don’t seem like they need italicized.. in fact they almost seem like you’d pick different words altogether IF you were going to emphasize them. Odd her editor didn’t pick up on it and tell her to ixnay the ilalicsay.. (I don’t know my pig latin that well haha)

    April @ My Shelf Confessions

  2. Jenny @ Reading the End

    WHAT is with the italics?? I kept thinking it was going to turn out to be something important to the story, but it never did! Why didn’t Marisha Pessl’s editor put a stop to that nonsense?

    • Nish

      @Jenny: Yes, those italics were so unnecessary. That said, I loved the book, but weren’t there too many plot points that went nowhere, and goes unexplained? For example, we keep getting mention of Hopper seeing something when they broke into The Peak to explain why he suddenly lost interest in the quest, but there was absolutely no explanation. I found these bits odd…

    • Nish

      @Udita: Is it? I don’t know. I’m very much a light person myself 🙂

  3. Laurel-Rain Snow

    Too many italics can be distracting…and I also don’t like the overuse of certain words (she SCREAMED, or he SMIRKED)…or exclamation points.

    This does look like a book I might enjoy, though. Thanks for sharing…and here’s MY TUESDAY MEMES POST

    • Nish

      @Laurel: Oh,yes…and after reading 50 Shades, I so hate the word smirked. I think it should be banned for the next ten years or so 🙂

  4. Al

    I don’t like over use of italics. It draws you out of the book as you have to emphasise the words and that kind of detracts from what you are reading. Once or twice is fine, but I would get annoyed with too many and probably give up on the book.

    Here’s mine

    • Nish

      @Al: Yes, this teaser particularly seemed to emphasize the wrong words, very random

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