Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Divine Secrets of the Y-Ya Sisterhood & Water for Elephants

I recently went to the library and got a pretty good sized stack of books. Among them were Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Water for Elephants.


I saw the movie version of Divine Secrets a long time ago-when I was just a kid. I didn't even know it was a book! I did, however, love it. I loved the glamor of the Southern Ladies and the fun everyone seemed to have on those warm Southern Nights. On the one hand I saw the tumultuous mother-daughter relationship of Vivi and Sidda and paralleled it with what I saw of my own mother and her mother, my grandmother. On the other hand I think I also recognized the unhappiness and drama of the great Vivi Walker. I've always had a fear of growing up and not being able to be truly happy and to love people fully. And I'm not over it. Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is a great book and in my opinion, an equally good movie.


Water for Elephants is a really good book. I loved it. It's about a young man in the 30's who works as a veterinarian on a traveling circus and falls in love with a married woman. There is romance, history, sadness, drama, debauchery, performance and even murder. It's beautifully written and very well researched. I highly recommend this book. However, I can't quite say the same for the movie. It's not a bad movie really. It lacks flow and some events were shifted around-to speed things up I guess-but it just made things choppier. Most of the acting was pretty good, Robert Pattinson in particular. (It turns out he's a good actor! For more proof, check out How to Be. . . So what does that really say about Twilight?) Maybe I would have enjoyed the movie more if I hadn't read the book and loved it so much. In conclusion, I suggest you go out and read both Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood and Water for Elephants. They are both fantastic books, and the movies aren't bad if you'd like to prolong your enjoyment of the stories. Next on my list is The Last Tycoon by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 
       
      
                     


                                                             Be seeing you.