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I have this self-imposed rule that you don’t buy a book with the movie photo on the cover. I’ve broken this rule twice – once for A River Runs Through It (the one with a silhouette of Brad Pitt), and a few weeks ago for Shutter Island (which, I’ll admit, I bought at the grocery store – I’ve really purchased books everywhere).
It also goes against my general beliefs that one should not read a book after seeing a movie, but after many years of wanting to do this and stopping myself I finally relented (it’s my own rule after all). I really like Dennis Lehane’s books and though I hate most Martin Scorsese films (yes, even the ones with Leo in them), I wanted to see this movie because the author himself said he really enjoyed it. After seeing it I was so intrigued by how it would play out in print form. It was an impulse buy at the checkout line, pure and simple.
So in the interest of alleviating some cognitive dissonance (how’s that for a psychological term?) I decided to change this rule too. My new rule: it’s acceptable to buy the movie version of the book – only if it’s a trade paperback.
I was looking forward to Christmas this year, unlike many years past. It is a children’s holiday after all, and this is the first year I had children in my life (small ones, not the tweens who don’t give a shit unless you give them electronics). The spirit of giving was certainly overflowing, and I enjoyed every new gift (I mean, book, since, as Jesse noted, they make the best presents). So what if I was buying them for babies, they need to get started on the right foot. Yes, even my unborn niece got some, the biggest stack in fact!
Due to some health issues (mental and physical) I wasn’t up for huge amounts of family this year. So despite my new found love for the holiday, Tim and I escaped to Vermont. As I’ve mentioned before, whenever I travel it’s hard to know what books to bring. I’ve been on a historical biography kick lately, but that isn’t very, well, Christmasy. Perhaps it was all the time spent in the children’s section buying for the babies, but I wanted storybooks to read on my mini vacation. But where to find just the right stories? I had a tall order: they had to be 1) smart 2) funny and 3) engaging. That just about rules out all adult books, so off to the YA section I went.
I’ve been reading like crazy lately, so it seems strange that I haven’t had time to blog. It looks like I haven’t done anything, if I assume that anyone’s actually reading this. I may have been quiet, but I was cranking through some serious bookage these past weeks. Unlike the industry, which seems to think that summer reading is more prolific, winter is, for me, the best time to stay inside and warm, snuggle up with some good stories (besides I hate sand in my books).
Here’s a quick summary to keep you posted:
I’m not a huge fan of what may be called Chick Lit, but I did read two books lately which could be considered as such. One is a charming little fantasy novel called Garden Spells. Though it probably borrows too heavily from Like Water for Chocolate and often seems to be a new rendition of the terrible movie Simple Irresistible, it is a cute read, worth it if you borrow it from the library or from a friend (sorry, I gave mine away already). The other, is a deceptively simple novel called The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox. I read this book in an afternoon and enjoyed this story of two sisters and a granddaughter. The Esme of the title resurfaces into society after 61 years in a mental institution, but it’s not about her reintroduction to the world, it’s about delving into the past to see how she got there in the first place. The desultory ramblings of her sister, well within the iron fist of Alzheimer’s, adds the necessary counter opinion. This book is good in the reading, but where it hits you is later, when you’ve put it down and tried to move on. It just won’t leave you. I found myself thinking about the implications of this books for weeks afterward. Is that what reviewers mean by “haunting?”
In retrospect it seems I was trying to cleanse all that estrogen by picking up Dennis Lehane next. He’s someone I summarily dismissed for many years because he’s so popular and well, I’ve seen the movies. But Sacred and A Drink Before the War were all the fun of watching a movie without the $10.00 ticket fee (or Sean Penn’s ugly mug). Lehane obviously writes in a certain genre, with movie dialogue, but I can embrace a good PI story, especially one set in my home state.
Finally I picked up Anna Quindlen. I just finished her book Good Dog. Stay. and of course bawled my eyes out when the dog dies (I didn’t ruin it for you, of course it’s coming). I’ve decided I want her career of writing small books that capture people’s emotions. How Reading Changed My Life isn’t so much about how it changed her life as how it forged her life. In this Anna and I have much in common. We’re both that girl who would rather squish into an over-sized armchair with a book about far off place, then squashed into a plane seat on our way to said faraway place. She’s the kind of reader I was and am and will be and it’s good to know that there are more of us in the world.
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