December Reads and Movies:

The Christmas Dog by Melody Carlson: A predictable story, but the writing and characters make it a perfect story for Christmas. I saw the book at a Sam’s Club and needing a little Christmas spirit, I bought it. It’s a story of a widow having a tough time getting her own Christmas spirit up to snuff. She has no giant problem. She’s just lonely, put out by what she views as a collapse of the neighborhood’s friendship and closeness. And it doesn’t when someone moves into the house directly behind her who does seem to care if he’s contributing to the change. It takes a little stray dog to show that things aren’t always what they seem.

This was a quiet, sweet book. I can see it made into a Hallmark program. Has a good message and worth my time.

Lavender Morning by Jude Deveraux: I’ve read Deveraux for years. She always does a great job with her characters. In Lavender Morning, Edilean Harcourt wills all her possessions to Jocelyn Minton, a young neighbor she befriended. One of the possessions was an eighteenth-century house in the small Virginia town of Edilean. That the town has the same name as her friend; is only one of the mysteries Jocelyn uncovers when she moves into the old house. As Jocelyn pieces together Miss Edi’s past, she finds her own history, future, and love.

In general, I enjoyed this read, owing much to the writing of Deveraux, but truthfully, none of them hold a candle to her earliest work, in my opinion. That may be due to my preference for historical, rather than contemporary. In any case, a decent read.

Slow Burn by Julie Garwood: Bombs keep going off around Kate MacKenna and Dylan Buchanan, her best friend, Jordan’s brother, wants to get to the bottom of why. He can’t admit he has noticed her for years and she is in no position for romance. This makes for a great story with a lot of great dialogue. I love good dialogue. It can make a so-so book, great in my opinion. But this book is better than so-so to begin with.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett: Advised by a New York editor to ‘hone your writing by writing what disturbs you,’ Skeeter Phelan begins a daring project during the earliest rumblings of the civil rights movement. In the early 1960’s there was a line between the black women the country club set hires to clean and help raise their children. Skeeter Phelan starts collecting the stories of those black women. Stories that are sad, shocking and sometimes cruel but that give the black community pride and the small glimmer of hope. Skeeter has to cross life-long held rules to follow her dream.


I loved this book. It was so far outside what I know, but I watched during the civil rights movement with horror and yet, I know nothing of what it was to be black in the south. Do I know now, after reading this book? I doubt it. There are too many little tiny nuances I will never understand. I only know I understand a very tiny bit better. I don’t live in the south; I know only a handful of black women or men. I just know that I was proud of the black women that peopled this book, and Skeeter, who took a stand in the only way she saw clear to do. I was moved. I think that’s a great quality for a book. I was changed.

Above all, I loved the characters. They seemed so true, their voices so clear, it was as if I met them. I think that is the greatest quality for a writer to have. A true, clear voice. There were many voices in The Help, all different, all very real to me.

Movies:
The Road: I read the book quite some time ago, but it haunted me for weeks after. Some of it haunted me because it seemed so close to a reoccurring dream I had right after my mother’s diagnosis with breast cancer. The scenes in my dreams were right out of the book, though I had the dreams two years before I read the book. And, as a parent, the emotions tied up with trying to keep your child alive haunted me. I beg my kids to read it, to help me understand some of it. Only one took me up on it. He had to see the film. We went together.

It is not a feel good film. Out during the holidays, I’m not sure how good it will do, but it is just as haunting. Cormac McCarthy’s writing was wonderful and I wondered how that would translate to film. The images burned into my mind as strongly as those in the book. The film haunted me, too. I cannot forget the story, the emotions. Every parent can relate to this desperate man. In the end, he had taught his child what he thought would prepare him for the world and then, in the end, it is in the child’s hands. A thought-provoking movie. I’m glad I didn’t miss it, even if it was sometimes hard to watch.

Avatar: Yes, everything you’ve heard about this movie is true. It is visually stunning, there was a message but not overly done. I think I fell a little in love with these big blue people. In fact, they seemed so ‘real’ that it was almost disorienting when the movie was finished that we wouldn’t be meeting them around some corner.



The story/plot was simple and probably a little predictable but that didn’t distract at all. My one complaint was about dialogue. It was a break-through in so many areas, special effects, set design, the way it was filmed; it deserves to be in the same class as Star Wars and Aliens, but for dialogue. I don’t see any of the dialogue being part of our cultural literacy. Too bad, too. I think there was plenty of chance for that.