L #13- Water for Elephants

I've seen this book in stores and on lists so many times. But for some reason I haven't wanted to try it. Circus, elephants, and crazy behind the scenes life? No thanks. But now that it's a movie soon to be released, I figured there must be something to it if that many people are reading it and excited about a movie. So here goes...

Finished 12- Sing You Home

Well. I just checked and I started this book on March 19th. That is nearly a month of reading it! Wow. Good thing I know I'm a quick reader and most books will be easier to get through. I just had the hardest time convincing myself to pick this book up. Admittedly, there were days it stared at me while I decided to browse the internet or watch tv instead. Tonight, I forced myself to finish. I guess I should warn that I'm about to write some spoilers. But I can't really get through this review without it. Jodi Picoult writes the same formula all the time. She puts a "shock and awe" moment towards the end of the book almost always. And always has some sort of legal battle of catastrophic proportions. This one was no exception, other than the shock and awe moment being in the front end of the book. The main character, Zoe, turns out to be gay. This is not, however, the reason I couldn't get through the book. It turned into a huge issue with her ex-husband fighting for rights to their frozen embryos because he didn't want them to be raised gay. The ex-husband uses all his newly acquired "Christian" friends (I use that term veeeery loosely as they were all extremely judgmental and that is not a property I personally associate as very Christianlike) to fight Zoe. The things they say about gay people are just not very palatable at all. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to throw this book across the room. I know Jodi was likely trying to get a rise out of her readers, but I just found most of it distasteful. Aside from that, it was also kind of slow.

Movie version of Never Let Me Go

So Matt rented the movie Never Let Me Go. It was interesting to see how they turned the book into a movie. I'm typically disappointed, but I will say that I think they did a pretty decent job with the movie. There were a few things left out, but they stuck pretty true to the story line. Matt hadn't read the book, though. And he kept looking at me with a crazy facial expression. He had a ton of questions, like:

"What the heck?!?!"

"Why on earth......"

"How did you get through this book? What a crazy concept!"

"That's IT?!? Where's the rest of the story? Why didn't they try to get away?"

I have to agree that his confusion is warranted. It is a bizarre concept. But I think that really took some creativity and insight on the author's part to create such a story that evokes anger/sadness/passion in readers. Maybe we'll try some more movie versions of books we have read.