Reel Reads

Since I saw a flyer for the Reel Reads adult winter reading program with our local library, I have been eating up page after printed page. The Reel Reads program has very simple guidelines: read books which have been made into movies. After reading six books, the reader can submit an entry for the grand prize (a night at the Castle Inn Riverside!) and you will be given a "finisher's prize." I actually made it through 7.5 books in the month that I knew about the program, and believe me, I got that finisher's prize, too. The free night at the Castle (same place we went for the first two nights of our honeymoon) hasn't materialized, though. :< style="font-weight: bold;">

*The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Ooh, this one makes me MAD. I've never known another book to begin with incest. As in, the first paragraph. The book is about a black family in the South in the 1930's, I think. Marriage is looked on as an honorable thing, but then when it's time to leave, the husband or wife can do so, only to return later with "my woman," or "my man." One thing I thoroughly enjoyed about this book was that I borrowed it in audio format, and it was read by the author. Extremely well-written, but an ugly, ugly, ugly book.

Imagine your husband telling you, "You're skinny, you're ugly, and you're not a very good cook, either." That was just a way of life for Celie.

*Dear John by Nicholas Sparks

A romance, of course, as Sparkie tends to write. I did not think it was well-written, and that scared me because, well, I feel like I need to start writing soon (hence, the blog) and what if I turn out to be a poor writer? :( Such an unhappy thought. Sparks tends to "tell" instead of "show," which means that he'll say outright that the person "felt nervous" instead of showing that the person's nails were chewed down to nubbins.

Oh, and furthermore, "John"'s character wasn't very well-rounded (literary term here). He is mostly portrayed as a loser who isn't nice to his dad, and then the heroine enters the scene and suddenly she's seeing all this honor and nobility in him, which is a total surprise because he's still just a jerk.

One thing that made me particularly mad about the book was the amount of infidelity I found in it. I thought Sparks's books were supposedly clean. Besides the outright fornication that happens, after the girl is married to Lover #2, she is shown (and this is supposedly a good thing) hanging on to her love for Lover #1. That's just plain old infidelity, and it ain't cool.

*The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien

What a delight, an absolute joy, to read a tale about small people and tall people and speaking trees and suchlike. Tolkien, who I understand was a linguist, was a true master of vocabulary and character-building. Not character-building as in generosity, faithfulness, peace, etc., but as in building fascinating, interesting characters who live in books and then spill off the page and take up residence in the reader's head for a week or two post-read. Sam Gamgee-- what a darling and loyal, sweet Hobbit. Aragorn-- so brave and watchful. I wish I could see the Elves' houses. I mourned when I realized that the Elves' kingdom (I guess it was a kingdom, of sorts at least) would fall once the ring was destroyed; remember, the queen had an elven ring, held up by the presence of the One Ring.

One of the best things about the Lord of the Rings books is that they are not allegorical. "No?" you may ask. "How so?" Well, first of all, Tolkien says so in the introduction. Read it. Secondly, the allegory doesn't hold up. People try to make it like the Bible, but it just isn't. It wasn't meant to me, and it isn't. Tolkien is just telling a story.

*The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Frankly, I'm a little surprised that this book is often used as a high school textbook. It has a few too many adult themes and references for high schoolers, in my opinion. But my, oh my, Steinbeck is another master of language. The Grapes of Wrath is almost as ugly as The Color Purple, but I also laughed a lot when I read it. For one thing, they called Rose of Sharon "Rosasharn," which tickled me almost every time I read the name. And then the neighbor lady said someone should take the dead baby out and bury it, for it would only cause more "trouble and sorra," and that "sorra" word tickled me, too, even though it was a very, very sad part of the book.

One thing I admired enormously about the characters in Grapes is their eagerness to work. They didn't have this modern notion that everything should be handed to poor people-- that basic necessities are our rights. No, they worked hard and willingly so they could have basic necessities.

*Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming

Delightful book. I listened to this one, and the reader was excellent, with a charming British accent and lots of energy. I did not know that Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was a book before it was a movie. I did not even know that it was a book at all. But in browsing through the children's audio books at the library, I found it and was delighted.

I especially like how the daddy turned out to be such a hero. And I also like how the whole family went together on their adventure.

*Charlotte's Web by E. B. White

Another delight. And I had the pleasure of listening to a recording done by E. B. White himself! He has a very thoughtful voice, a voice well-suited for the farm. I was pleased that he just read the story and didn't give everybody their own voice, because that often does not work well.

My favorite quote from the book, which is about the Goose sitting on her eggs: "Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch."

*A Walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks

I have read this book probably four times before, and I re-read it when I suddenly realized that the program ended on Thursday instead of the following Tuesday. As it turned out, I really didn't need the extra book. (If you counted, you might notice that it's book number seven. This was an interesting re-read, though. Somehow some of these romances don't seem quite so enchanting as they did when I was in high school. A Walk to Remember is a sweet story-- about a guy and girl who fall in love in their senior year of high school, but of course the girl has leukemia and dies... and the guy's hero-gesture is to marry her since marriage is one of her dreams. But really, who wants to read about people who fall in love and die?? I don't like to think about that. It makes me unhappy.