Book and Movie Reviews

This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper

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This is Where I Leave You is a novel by Jonathan Tropper mainly about how life is always a bit more complicated than we imagine it will be. This book is mainly a comedy but it certainly does have its share of tragedy and drama as well. The novel is set-up to be a classic dramedy with many funny moments mixed in with some sad and pensive moments. This is how life goes, right?

The book follows the main character, Judd, as he deals with his marriage falling apart due to infidelity, the death of his father and having to live with his family for a week to observe the Jewish practice of Shiva. While my life is not as dramatic and funny as the lives of the family members in this book, I found myself relating to the characters on some level, which made the book rather relatable to me as well.

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Wild by Cheryl Strayed

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Wild: from Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail is a memoir written by Cheryl Strayed that recounts her 1,100 mile hike and explains how her life had gotten her to that point. As Cheryl gets ready for her trip, takes her first steps on the trail, treks through desert and snow and reaches her destination, she thinks back on her life and sifts through what is a very traumatic past. A book where the main lesson is acceptance, Wild definitely challenged my perspectives on life and made me think through my approach.For me, it is hard to believe and grasp that there are people out there who have lives as traumatic as Cheryl’s. Since reading the book and watching the movie, I have also viewed an interview between Cheryl and Oprah about the book and the thing that I was reflecting on while watching the interview was how incredible it is that the story is actually the way that it happened. Often I watch movies and get bored with how much bad stuff happens to the unfortunate main character, and I think enough is enough. Towards the end of the book, I was thinking something similar in that I just wanted Cheryl’s journey to be over because enough is enough. From the interview, I have realized that life really is like that sometimes for some people where trauma after trauma can break a person and then help to build that person back up. Oprah asks Cheryl why she only sent herself $20 at each stop on the trail and her response, which seemed to be beyond Oprah’s understanding, was that $20 sent to a handful of posts along the trail was all that she could afford.

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Emily Flury’s 2014 Best of Books and their Movies

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The following is my list of the books and their movies that I enjoyed reading and watching the most this year. In looking back over my reviews for these books, I recall that I also had a lot of fun doing the background research for these books. Many of them had a rich history surrounding the book or the making of the movie, or there is simply a lot of chatter about the book and its movie to look over. The list is chronologically ordered according to when I reviewed them. Click through to the reviews to see them again. (Adam’s fiction list is tomorrow and non-fiction Wednesday).
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden 
Although the validity of the story has been brought into question by the geisha whose life the story is based on, both the book and its movie beautifully, tragically, and intriguingly describe what life might have been like for a woman in Japan during the early to mid 1900s. This title stands as a favorite because I was impressed to find that the book painted just as wonderful picture in my mind as the movie does.
Dr. Sleep by Stephen King 
As a fan of Stephen King, Stanley Kubrick, Jack Nicholson, it is no surprise that I loved the book and movie, The Shining, which preceded this book. This book, which is unique on my list because it doesn’t have a movie associated with it yet, was amazingly just as solid as the book that came before it. In a world where the majority of sequels fall flat or are an excuse for the writer/director to get another money grab, this book was awesome in the fact that it could easily stand-alone and still be great. I guarantee that this book will be made into a movie.
Howl’s Moving Castle by Dianna Wynne Jones 
My husband introduced me to Japanese animated films, specifically Studio Ghibli movies, and I have to say that, for the most part, they do not disappoint. I was curious to see if the book that Howl’s Moving Castle was based on is as fun to listen to as the movie is to watch. While the book was different from the movie, they are both great in their own ways. And, those differences don’t detract from each other but they add to each other’s greatness. I was also excited to discover that this book and its movie would be a great way to get a younger listener interested in literature.
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote 
This title comes with a great deal of nostalgia for me as it is one of my mother’s favorites and I even listened to the movie’s soundtrack on record a bunch growing up. I really enjoyed listening to this book because it was narrated by the great Michael C. Hall, who starred in Dexter, a favorite show of ours. What most surprised me was how rich of a back-story I discovered when I dug into the life of the author of this short and sweet story. The research led me to want to watch the movie, Capote, which is based on Truman’s life and was pretty amazing in and of itself.

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To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Movie and Audiobook Review)

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To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic and well-beloved fiction novel by Harper Lee.  The novel is from the perspective of a young girl, Scout, growing up in a small town in Alabama during the 1930s.  Aside from experiencing some of the usual adventures of a small child during that time, Scout and her brother Jem must navigate life as their father, Atticus, defends a black man who has been falsely accused of raping a white woman. Seen in some way as a story within a story, the trial shows the true character of Atticus and how some bravery and standing up for one’s beliefs and dignity really does matter.

To Kill a Mockingbird is not a perfect novel but it is about as good as it can get.  It is my impression that critics of the novel had to really search for problems with the novel.  Apart from the social lessons to be learned from the novel, the true beauty of the novel is how wonderfully descriptive and visual Harper Lee makes it.  I would credit this aspect in part to the fact that many of the characters and the events in the novel are autobiographical. It is a lot easier to be descriptive about people you know and events that you experienced. I am not sure whether I read the novel or saw the movie first, but, when reading the book this time, I would have sworn that some of the scenes from the book had made it into the movie that didn’t because they left such a strong visual impression when reading them. This might be like the chicken and the egg conundrum where the question is was the book so well-written that it was easy to visualize the scenes as if they were a part of the movie, or were the actors in the movie so adept at portraying the characters of the book that it made it easy for me to visualize them in the scenes from the book.

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Unbroken: A Movie Review

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Once upon a time, I used to work as a denominational staff person (13 years ago) and was ordained. I must still be on some clergy mailing lists because I was invited to a clergy and ministry leaders advance showing of the upcoming movie Unbroken (releases Dec 25).

I really thought that Unbroken was an important book to read, and Bookwi.se has three separate reviews of it because it is one of those books that you just want to tell people about.

However the story is hard. This is a subject matter that you can’t enjoy, although you want to tell everyone about it.

I am not going to worry about spoilers here, this is a movie based on history and a best selling book. (I am using Wikipedia to supplement my memory of the specifics of the history.) I am sure there will be some that walk into the movie with no background, but I doubt that is true of many.

If you do not want to read spoilers, know that the movie is very well done, but I do have a few quibbles. For those that willing, keep reading.

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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

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The Book Thief by Markus Zusak is novel that shows the reader what many Germans (Jewish, Communist or otherwise) might have felt and experienced during World War II. Liesel, a young girl at the beginning of the novel, is the center of the story and we mainly follow her around as she attempts to navigate through a very painful and trying time. Through the use of Death as the narrator, the author gives us a window into the soul of Liesel and the other characters in the novel and makes us think about how we, as humans, might have reacted if we were a “œregular” German in a time when our friends, family, and strangers were being mistreated and taken away to their deaths.

The value of humanity: this is the theme that kept going through my head as I digested this novel and its movie. It could be that my brain is more finely tuned to this line of thinking because I had also recently finished To Kill a Mockingbird (review soon-to-come), a novel that takes place during this same time but in the United States where there was also a group of people who were being devalued due to their “œrace”.  What is it that gives us, as humans, value and what is it about us that makes us think that we can assign different levels of value to others? What makes a German less of a German because they celebrate Hanukkah or have a last name that signifies their background is other than simply German? To Kill a Mockingbird reminds me that it is not just Hitler’s Nazis who are guilty of these crimes of devaluation. And, it makes me think am I guilty of devaluing other humans?

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl

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This is a joint book and movie review written by Bookwi.se Contributor Emily Flury with Jack, a fifth grade student.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a novel by Roald Dahl that is about a magical factory of sweets and surprises. Willy Wonka sends out five golden tickets in chocolate bars to invite five kids to his factory. The five children consist of one that eats too much candy, one that is constantly chewing gum, one that is a spoiled brat, one that watches too much television and Charlie, who is a sweet boy from a poor family. During their visit, the children tour the factory and get to see all different kinds of amazing ingredients and inventions.
We liked the book a lot because there are a lot of fun songs and funny jokes in the book. The Oompa Loompa’s songs were really great because they were fun poems with an excellent beat. Dahl included a lot of weird characters and strange events. Willy Wonka was described in a way that made him seem cool and funky. We especially liked the chocolate room with the river made entirely of chocolate. Every detail made us feel like we were there. It was fun to imagine eating the grass just as the kids did. Our only complaint is that Dahl did such a good job of making the other kids into bad nuts that it got annoying at times.
While we liked the book, we didn’t like the movie as much as the book.

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Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

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Gone Girl is the third and most popular of Gillian Flynn’s published works. Like her previous two novels, Gone Girl is a rather dark novel about how people may not be who we seem. After a woman, Amy, goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, suspicions turn towards the husband, Nick, and as the story unravels we learn quite a bit about the couple. As we uncover more and more clues as to her disappearance, we discover that perhaps we don’t really know our spouses as well as we think, and we question our own facades that we put up in our marriages. With many twists, this novel will keep you guessing until the very end.

This is a somewhat difficult book to review because to say too much is to majorly spoil the book, which would be a shame. I will say that in the midst of the disappearance of Amy the novel does a great job of exploring two different topics: (1) the parts we play in society in order to fit in or be liked and (2) the effects the media can have on our mindsets. When we meet someone for the first time, do we act like ourselves or do we act in a way so that person would like us? If that relationship endures and we were, in a way, acting like someone other than ourselves, at what point do we drop the act, if ever, and at what point does the act become the person who we really are? These are some intriguing questions to ponder and, while I wouldn’t go as far as the characters in this book go, the book has made me think about these questions within my own marriage.

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The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

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The Maltese Falcon is a detective novel written in 1929 by Dashiell Hammett and immortalized in film in 1941 by director John Huston. The detective in the novel, Sam Spade, is a hardened man whose characterization becomes a model for many detectives to come. In this novel, Sam Spade is hired by a woman, Miss Wonderly, to follow a man who has supposedly run away with her sister. From here out, Spade encounters a number of intriguing characters, learns that things and people are not whom they seem and ensures, in the end, that justice will be served no matter the cost.

It is my humble opinion that the reputation of this novel and its movie has become greater than it deserves. I am a huge fan of classic films and understand the importance of firsts, of which this novel and movie has many, but I am not sure it would stand up as well against some of the great detective novels and films of today. Now, would those detectives be as clever and biting if it weren’t for the existence of Sam Spade? Probably not.

Sam Spade is a great and complicated character, and I have learned from my research that Hammett, who was himself a detective, described and created Spade as the type of detective that many strive to be. He is the type of detective who can sleep with his clients and yet not let that cloud his judgment nor stray him from his goal. He often works alongside the police, but he never works with the police because their motives are at times not inline with his own. He is an impressive character, but perhaps I am just jaded by the super clever masters of deduction that we encounter more often these days.

The audiobook that I listened to was an actual dramatization of the book. Similarly to the recording of 12 Angry Men, this production had practically a different actor for each character. It was not a performed dramatization, so some of the smaller characters were played by the same actor or actress. There were some big names involved such as Michael Madsen (Reservoir Dogs) playing Sam Spade, Sandra Oh (Grey’s Anatomy) playing Miss Wonderly/O’Shaughnessy and Richard Gilmore (Gilmore Girls). I enjoyed listening to the different narrators even though Sandra Oh didn’t sound like her usual snarky self.

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