The Beginning of the End (Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I)

The bookworm went to the movies!

Anyone who knows me knows that I LOVE Harry Potter. I've been reading HP since I was 11 (half my life) and I feel that I grew up with Harry, Hermione, and Ron. I was at the midnight releases for the last three books, and most of the midnight releases for the movies. So obviously I had to go last night when Deathly Hallows was released.

In my opinion (and we all know I have one), this was the best of the films. I have a few minor critiques that I'm not even sure are worth mentioning. My only real problem was with the handling of the way Harry was moved from Privet Drive to the Burrow. In the book, it was a huge deal that they would be breaking Lily's protective charm when Harry and the Dursley's parted ways. The emphasis in the movie was instead on the way the six decoys transformed into Harry. Although funny, I would have liked more emphasis on the actual fighting. Furthermore, they didn't go to any of the safe houses before taking portkeys to the Burrow (that's one of my minor critiques- it didn't bother me quite so much).

The film was as bleak as the book, and in many ways, a lot more shocking; seeing Charity Burbage suspended above Voldemort's table, then avada kedavra'd was intense. The other most shocking moment was seeing "mudblood" carved into Hermione's arm, and, of course, Dobby's death and Hedwig's death. And when Ron had to kill the horcrux...it was slightly disturbing.

Overall, this was a perfect way to start the end of Harry Potter. The last film comes out in June...it seems like a long wait, doesn't it?

Until next time, everyone go watch HP, Happy Thanksgiving, and Happy Reading!

I get by with a little help from...the help? (The Help by Kathryn Stockett)

I was recommended The Help by Kathryn Stockett several months ago by a lady I sat next to at a training class for my after-school tutoring job. She said it was the best book she had read in several years, which I doubted I would say since I read a lot of great books. But I decided to give this book a chance, and I was not disappointed. It was a fantastic book.

I love historical fiction, despite the fact that most of it is terrible. The Help focuses on one of my favorite periods of American History, the Civil Rights Movement. It takes place in Mississippi, a hot bed of civil rights activities, in 1964. The story revolves around a young Ole Miss graduate named Eugenia but called Skeeter, who was too tall and too immersed in her education at Ole Miss to catch a husband, which was her mother's greatest desire (my mother's too, I suppose). Skeeter wants to be a journalist, so she starts out by writing the weekly housekeeping column in the Jackson newspaper. Unfortunately, Skeeter knows nothing about keeping house, since she grew up with Help.

So Skeeter asks her friend Elizabeth's maid, Aibileen, to help her write the column. From there, Skeeter gets the idea to write a book about what it is like to be The Help in Mississippi. She asks Aibileen to tell her stories, and it takes a lot of convincing. 1964 Mississippi did not look highly upon those stirring up the status quo, particularly white women.

It's hard to imagine a world where segregation and racism so pervades the daily lives of everyone. I did grow up in the South, and vestiges of that racism still exist. People down here still call it "The War of Southern Independence," after all. This book, however, gives a different look to the impact of the Civil Rights movement. You hear in school and in American History classes about all the important civil rights leaders- Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers...you can list as many as you want. What you don't hear in history class is the impact of the civil rights movement on those who had to go to work everyday for white women or white men. The hotter the civil rights movement got, the worse they were treated, at least in the Deep South.

Stockett provides an interesting perspective, by telling her story from the points of view of Skeeter, Aibileen, and another maid named Minny. From the very beginning, the consequences of breaking the status quo is clear, and by the end of the book those consequences are made real.

Go read this book. RIGHT NOW.

Until next time, Happy Reading!

I should be tired of Swedish Fish by Now (The Girl Who Played with Fire)

I went to the redbox again!

If you haven't figured it out by now, I adore the Millennium trilogy by Steig Larsson (although I haven't read The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest yet). I outlined the plot of this in my post about the book The Girl Who Played with Fire, so I won't do that again, but I finally got to see the Swedish film this weekend.

I, obviously, loved it. The movie had an excellent pace, and despite being in Swedish (and thus having to read subtitles), it was a fun movie to watch. If I didn't know what was going to happen, it would have been suspenseful, and Noomi Rapace plays Lisbeth Salander perfectly.

I can't wait to both read and watch Hornet's Nest. And I really hope that the American version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is not completely screwed up. Go watch these movies if you have a few spare hours, it's an excellent way to spend an afternoon.

Next time, I'll have a post about Allen Ginsburg's Howl, and the film Howl, based on the poem and the obscenity trial surrounding its publication. Until then, Happy Reading!

Attraction and Alienation (Prep by Curtis Sittenfield)

This was another re-read for me. I went home for the weekend and left without any for-fun reading materials, so I had to pick something from my extensive collection of already read books.

Prep follows the experiences of an Indiana high schooler by the name of Lee Fiora who decides to attend the prestigious Ault School in Massachusetts. It is Lee's first experience away from home, and she soon finds herself as a fish out of water. The classes are hard, and she had trouble making friends. Furthermore, she finds herself nursing a crush on the star basketball player, Cross Sugarman, and desperately wishing that she could be one of the popular kids.

Prep chronicles all four years of Lee's experiences at Ault, and the reader witnesses her grow from an awkward 14 year old to an awkward 18 year old. At times, Lee can be tiresome, constantly worrying and doubting herself, and I see bits of Holden Caulfield in her. The first time I read this book, after I had been away from home at college, I identified a bit with Lee. Now, several years later, I have a hard time relating to her and I found myself annoyed by the end of the book. Teenage angst is harder to understand the older you get, I suppose.

Filling in a Hole (Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut)

So I've been told recently that there are some holes in my reading since I had never read a Vonnegut...so I decided to correct that. I picket Vonnegut's most famous novel, Slaughterhouse Five. Looking back, I really am not sure how I made it through two years of AP English in high school without reading this novel.

I'm sure most of you have read this, so I won't spend much time rehashing the plot. It's an absurdist classic that relies on autobiographical details from Vonnegut's experiences in WWII. I rather enjoyed reading it, best of all, it was fairly short and I read it it in a couple of nights.

I'll repeat what I was told: if you haven't read Vonnegut, GO DO IT. You have holes in your literary experience.

Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? (So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger)

It's definitely been a while since I've posted! I've read a few books, and watched a few movies, so I'm going to try to update my readers on all of that...

First up is a book I read a couple of months back, So Brave, Young, and Handsome by Leif Enger. Anyone who knows my reading habits knows that I love Enger's freshman novel Peace Like a River- I recommend it to pretty much everyone. His sophomore effort, while it doesn't have the same magic quality at the first, is still an excellent read.

The story follows an ex-train robber, outlaw, and boat craftsman by the name of Glendon Hale, as told by his friend and companion Monte Becket. It hearkens back to the westerns that were popular in the 1950's, and it has a pleasant, lyrical quality to the writing that makes it a pure pleasure to read. The book is about suffering, loss, love, and in the end, redemption, as all good cowboys stories are. It made me long for the days where you could hop on a horse, ride west, and have an adventure.

The book also incorporates Charles Siringo, a non-fictional Pinkerton agent who has been on the trail of Hale for years. I actually didn't know that until I looked the book up on Amazon (which offers it on Kindle, if you have one of those or the iPad app). I definitely recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good adventure novel, or anyone who enjoys a poetic, light touch to prose that Enger employs with great success:

"You can't explain grace, anyway, especially when it arrives almost despite yourself. I didn't ask for it, yet somehow it breached and began to work. I suppose grace was pouring over Glendon, who had sought it so hard, and some spilled down on me."

Until next time, Happy Reading!

Swedish Fish...again. (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo)T

The Bookworm went to the redbox again!

So yesterday I was faced with a weekend of rain and plenty of reading to accomplish, and after my trip to Kroger to stock up on groceries, I made a detour to the redbox and checked out a couple of movies, one of which was the Swedish version of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. You'll remember I read the first two books in the series over the summer, and I recently found out that a version of the film had been made in Sweden already. I found it at redbox, yay!

So this afternoon, after I cleaned my apartment and finished reading The American Voter, I curled up in my papasan with some raspberry lemonade, hummus, and a toasty bagel to watch the movie. As it was rainy outside, and I was slightly sleepy, I turned off the subtitles and instead put the English dubbing on the movie. That was a bit disconcerting; none of the words matched the lips of the actors when they spoke.

Otherwise, the movie was awesome! I definitely wouldn't watch it without reading the books first, because obviously the books are just so much better and you wouldn't want to ruin it. But it was a great film, and did follow the events of the book fairly closely. Obviously there is more exposition in the books so it's a bit easier to follow, and not as much emphasis is placed on the Wennerstrom affair in the movie. Other than those minor quibbles, I would say rent it.

Until next time, Happy Reading (and movie watching)!