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I read "The Help" in one day.....


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I spent all day yesterday and about 15 minutes this morning reading The Help. I could not put it down. I laughed and I cried. I got nothing done yesterday and my husband kept asking me if I planned on doing anything, including taking a shower. I intended to eventually do something but I could bring myself to. I finally had to close my eyes at 2am becuase I couldn't make it that last 15 minutes. I am looking forward to the movie.

 

I may not have gotten anything done, but now I am caught up on the 52 Books in 52 Weeks and have started book 4/week 4 - The Book Thief, but I can't get into it so far.

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Yay! Good for you!!! I read The Book Thief after The Help, and it was hard to get into at first... give yourself some time off after The Help. It will help you to enjoy The Book Thief, especially since you are probably still digesting the first book. Both are incredible novels, but SO incredibly different. They will stay with you for a long time.

 

You may like to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks now since it is also about that time in history & deals with an AA family.

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Our family went to Great Wolf Lodge in December with our homeschool group. I brought The Help and started and finished it during our time there. I was so glad for as much uninterrupted time as I got there (and always quite annoyed when someone would interrupt me!).

 

I really wish I could have gotten my grandma's perspective on the book. She was born and raised in rural northern Mississippi, which is where she met and married my grandpa. He was a career Air Force officer starting in the middle of WWII, and when the Air Force desegregated, he and my grandma were very helpful to the black families that were now in their squadron. In New York, they even had one family live with them for several months because the family couldn't find anyone who would rent to them at first.

 

But as my grandma in particular got older (and I was an adult around her--we were stationed in Colo. Springs, which is where they had retired), I could see more and more of the attitudes and prejudices that she must have grown up hearing come back out again. She would be very worried when a "colored" family would move in on their block, that they wouldn't keep their yard up or whatever. And she reverted to calling them "Negros", which drove me crazy. After my grandpa died, she showed even more fear and prejudice. It was hard. When I read the book and thought about what Abileen (sorry, I know that's not spelled correctly!) thought as she listened to the mom talk to the little girl and fill her mind with prejudice, I thought about my grandma. I know that is what happened to her, and it was horrible to see it come out at the end of her life. So I wonder what she would have thought about the book and its message. It was very moving for me.

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I tell friends: DON'T read The Help. It'll ruin whatever you had planned.

 

I couldn't put it down for two straight days.

 

I pretty much gave up reading fiction b/c of The Help -- I'm just too busy w/ homeschooling and a 1/4 time job I do.

 

Good for you for giving yourself a full day to have a blast.

 

Alley

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I spent all day yesterday and about 15 minutes this morning reading The Help. I could not put it down. I laughed and I cried. I got nothing done yesterday and my husband kept asking me if I planned on doing anything, including taking a shower. I intended to eventually do something but I could bring myself to. I finally had to close my eyes at 2am becuase I couldn't make it that last 15 minutes. I am looking forward to the movie.

 

I may not have gotten anything done, but now I am caught up on the 52 Books in 52 Weeks and have started book 4/week 4 - The Book Thief, but I can't get into it so far.

 

Wow! It took me three days and my eyeballs just about rolled out of my head. I had a book club deadline I had to meet. (but the book was so good I read every single word, inlcuding the afterword)

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If you get a chance, I encourage you to download the audio version from Audible.com or borrow it from the library. I do a LOT of audiobooks because I have a one hour commute each way, and The Help is HANDS DOWN the best audiobook I've ever heard. GREAT actresses, and SO wonderful in dialect. It's won numerous awards.

 

Even though you know how it ends, I think it's definitely worth listening to it performed vocally.

 

astrid

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Loved The Help (and agree that the audio of this one is almost a must-listen-to).

 

Another book I highly recommend in audio-version is the Book Thief. Listening to that book vs reading it was an entirely different experience - the audio is brilliant and it haunted me for a few weeks. I h ad trouble reading anything else until I had gotten that book mentally out of my system.

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I have such a hard time putting a book down and usually will read it in one setting as you did.

 

YEARS ago when dh and I were newly weds we were cooking dinner. He was outside grilling and I was steaming cauliflower and making a starch, what ever that was. I was reading my book and smelled something and thought to myself, "Gee, what is he DOING to that meat?" When he came inside the house in what appeared to be minutes later, he asked what the smell was. Then he saw it - the cauliflower that was steaming was out of water and the pot had actually melted into the burner! My mother always told me as a kid that the house could be burning down around me and I'd still be sitting there reading my book. Well, I nearly experienced her prediction. :blushing:

 

I have The Help on my list. It's the first I'll download on my kindle (or buy if it's not available) but I promised myself not to buy anymore books/kindle downloads until I've read all my current ones. I'm going to stick by it.

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