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Following along with Boof’s 40 Day Challenge leading up to her 40th birthday, DAY 40! Happy birthday, Boof!
40) A favourite book about a celebration
I’m going to cheat. I looked through my Goodreads list and couldn’t find anything with a holiday theme that I would call a favorite, so I simply thought about my favorite holiday (Thanksgiving) and some great movies that were set around a Thanksgiving theme (and maybe one that isn’t set around Thanksgiving, but another holiday I’ve recently adopted).
Thanksgiving has long been my favorite holiday. I love thankfulness – thinking about what I’m thankful for, telling people what I’m thankful for, and writing what I’m thankful for. That “attitude of gratitude” has been preached to us by Oprah and I really believe that it can change your outlook on life. So, when I started thinking of movies that were centered around a Thanksgiving celebration, a few came to mind.
First, “What’s Cooking?” (In LA’s Fairfax district, where ethnic groups abound, four households celebrate Thanksgiving amidst family tensions. In the Nguyen family, the children’s acculturation and immigrant parents’ fears collide. In the Avila family, Isabel’s son has invited her estranged husband to their family dinner. Audrey and Ron Williams want to keep their own family’s ruptures secret from Ron’s visiting mother. In the Seelig household, Herb and Ruth are unwilling to discuss openly their grown daughter’s living with her lover, Carla. Around each table, things come to a head. A gun, an affair, a boyfriend, and a pregnancy precipitate crises forcing each family to find its center. IMDB) I should re-watch this, but I remember loving it. Loving how it wrapped up and how cleverly the story was told.
Of course, “Planes, Trains & Automobiles” is one of the greatest comedies ever, and just happens to be about getting home for Thanksgiving. I don’t think I need a synopsis for it. My favorite scene is when they are driving down the highway and being told they are going the wrong way (“How do they know where we’re going?”). Hilarious.
“Home for the Holidays” is also a movie I haven’t seen in a while, but I remember loving it. (After losing her job, making out with her soon to be ex-boss, and finding out that her daughter plans to spend Thanksgiving with her boyfriend, Claudia Larson has to face spending the holiday with her family. She wonders if she can survive their crazy antics. IMDB). Ah, family holiday dinners. 🙂 I am thankful that our Thanksgiving dinners are not filled with lots of drama!
A few others that have a Thanksgiving theme that I have seen include “Pieces of April” and “Hannah and Her Sisters.” Good movies.
The last movie about a holiday that has inspired me is the Italian film, “Mid-August Lunch,” a great movie about Ferragosto – the Italian tradition of getting out of the city for a few weeks during the hot weeks of mid-August. It is a great movie and a great holiday that I have embraced in the last few years, having my own “lakeside” vacation with Italian flair, right in the middle of Minnesota.
And as to my list, as I admitted yesterday, it was incomplete. Last night I did some thinking about how I wanted to move forward and here’s what I came up with: You know I love the Satellite Sisters and I have written about their book “Uncommon Senses.” I am going to create a list of things that I want to accomplish based upon the “senses” highlighted in their book.
The Sense of Connection
The Sense of Self
The Sense of Humor
The Sense of Adventure
The Sense of Direction.
As I’ve said about their book before, it applies as well today as it did ten years ago when it was written. And I know that I can find things in all those “senses” that I would like to put out there as challenges for myself. So as well as writing about books, I will be writing about these challenges.
Thank YOU for following along with these daily posts!
Off to read!
Walkie Talkie Book Club 