I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their house pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.

Their faithful Friend and Servant,
C.D

One fine day I finished my book on the way to work and had nothing to read on the way back — serious problem, because one way trip took me almost an hour.

I was in panic mode for a while before I got an idea to print out a few pages of a free book from the net. I was looking for something short and could fit into any of my challenges. A Christmas Carol was pretty much the only one that sprang to mind (as a bonus it counts for at least three of my challenges!).

I read the first chapter and decided to continue the rest with audio-book performed by Patrick Stewart, as recommended by Sarah Miller. She said the audio book is abridged but it’s one of the best she ever listened to. Believe it or not, I had NEVER tried audio book before. About time. It worked perfectly since it’s short and Patrick Stewart delivered the atmosphere and mood very well.

Reading or listening however, I had a hard time not to picture it as comical. I watched the Disney adaption of it when I was small and that was the only version of A Christmas Carol that I knew for the longest time. It doesn’t help that the main character’s named Scrooge. For me any Scrooge is Scrooge McDuck, especially when he’s stingy and grumpy.

From this short story, I could tell that Dicken’s is not easy one to read. I found the use of the language or words were quite odd. Or maybe just old.

I watched the Disney short of Mickey’s Christmas Carol after finishing the book and enjoyed it immensely. Who plays Ebeneizer Scrooge better than his namesake, Scrooge McDuck? He’s perfect! All the characters cast really well. Mickey as the poor clerk, Donald as the nephew (nephew! What a coincidence!), and Goofy as Marley – Scrooge’s dead partner (not generally scary, but Goofy can be anything if he wants to). Jiminy Cricket is the Ghost of Christmas Past, Willie the Giant (from Mickey and the Beanstalk) as the Ghost of Christmas Present, and evil Pete as the Ghost of Christmas Future. Daisy Duck plays Scrooge’s youth love and Minnie Mouse as Mickey’s wife (with mini Mickey as Tiny Tim).

I imagine that if I read the story by itself, I may have not liked the fact that the moral lessons are too ‘in your face’. That’s why the cartoon works perfectly as the medium, because the whole thing is comical — the premise, the characters, the ghosts.

The short is nominated for Oscar in 1984 for Best Animated Short Film.

This book and movie would be my first entry for Disney Literature Challenge. Following Sarah’s lead, I’ll give my verdict for each battle.

Disney Literature Challenge Round 1

Disney vs. Dickens
on A Christmas Carol

*drum roll*

.

.

.

This time I can easily give my vote to Disney.

Please. No crying. There will be more battles to come!

Score
Disney – 1 vs. Authors – 0

Ratings
Book: (1843, 88 pp)
Movie: 9/10 (1983, 26 min)

First line
Marley was dead: to begin with.

Last line
And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!

Also reviewed by
Rebecca Reads | Aneca’s World | Dreadlock Girl | Book Nut | Vulpes Libris | One Persons Journey Through A World of Books | Bobbi’s Book Nook | MariReads (audio book – Jim Dale) | at home with books (Mickey’s Christmas Carol) | 5 Minutes for Books (The Muppet Christmas Carol)

Did I miss yours?

ps: I’m going to save The Muppet Christmas Carol for this Christmas.

Challenges
R.I.P. IV (book #3), (Another) 1% Well-Read (book #7), The Spice of Life (book #3), 1001 Books Before You Die (book #25), Disney Literature Challenge (book #1)

Holly is all charm — the type that men want but can’t have, free as a bird. Along the story I could feel Fred, there’s a want and need to get closer to her, but never could. Breakfast at Tiffany’s IS Holly. We get a glimpse of her captivating life and adorable personality, but couldn’t get more. There’s a sense of loss when she’s distanced.

The thin ice that she and Fred play on was interesting — friendship though not without a doze of attraction and jealousy, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling it romantic like the back cover states.

Quote

“Perhaps, like most of us in a foreign country, he was incapable of placing people, selecting a frame for their picture, as he would at home; therefore all Americans had to be judged in a pretty equal light, and on this basis his companions appeared to be tolerable examples of local colour and national character.” ~ Fred on a foreigner, p54

Truman Capote could be my next favorite author, though for me it’s mainly for the next three short stories that come with the book I was reading. For the first time in the longest time, I actually enjoyed short stories.

House of Flowers
Ottilie is the favorite girl of the bar she’s working at, until one day a young man captures her heart. They get married in two days and she moves to his house. Unfortunately he has an evil mother who bothers her to no end. I thought the story as a whole was a bit odd, because it’s 3/4 love story and 1/4 creepy story, complete with witchcraft. Pretty good short story for the RIP Challenge.

A Diamon Guitar
The theme is freakishly similar with the movie Shawshank Redemption which I just watched in the same week: story of two inmates. Mr Schaeffer is an old resident of the prison to where Tico Feo is sent to. They grow to become close friends. Some days Tico Feo starts to put some ideas to Mr Schaeffer that escaping to freedom is better than to merely accept their life in prison.

A Christmas Memory
This is my favorite short story of the lot! A Christmas Memory tells a gentle relationship between a 7 year-old boy and a 60ish woman. Bound by circumstances, they live together and take much joy in each other’s company, baking fruitcakes and gathering flowers and herbs.

Please, somebody make animated short out of this story! I could picture it in my head so much it’s not funny. If I didn’t read the book at a public bus stop, I would cry a few tears over this odd couple.

IT’S SO GOOD! SO GOOD! To add to my gush, this story is autobiographical. I never imagined I would ever find a 5 STARS SHORT STORY!

I read that A Christmas Memory has also been made into a short movie (non-cartoon), which I might check out later. But I’m worried that it might ruin my perfect experience of this cute little story. Anyhoo, let me disrupt this review a bit by showing you a short by Disney/Pixar of The Little Match Girl. I imagine something with this style would be a perfect medium to adapt the story.

Overall rating for the book:

1958, 157 pp

First line
I am always drawn back to places where I have lived, the houses and their neighbourhoods.

Last line
African hut or whatever, I hope Holly has, too.

Challenges
(Another) 1% Well-Read Challenge (book #6)
The Spice of Life Challenge (book #2)
Orbis Terrarum Challenge 2009 (book #9 1/2)
1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Challenge (book #24)

Also reviewed by
Reading and Ruminations | Shelf Love | Life and Times of a “New” New Yorker | Life is a Patchwork Quilt | In Spring it is the Dawn | book-a-rama | Reading Matters | The Bluestocking Society | Ready When You Are, C.B. | Ticket to Anywhere | Orpheus Sings the Guitar Electric | 5 Minutes for Books | Nonsuch Book | casual dread | Books for Breakfast | The Magic Lasso | katrina’s reads

Did I miss yours?

The Guardian Digested Classics of Breakfast at Tiffany’s (not recommended. Go read the book!)

The Movie

The book and the movie is different in a good way. I’d say each has its own merits. But this is one of those rare cases where I think the movie adaption could actually surpass the book, even though the relationship between the main characters and the ending were changed! I loved Audrey Hepburn as Holly Golightly. Gorgeous, captivating, vulnerable. She was perfect. Unlike the book, yes, you can call the movie romantic.

Apart from the changes I mentioned above, “Fred” is portrayed as someone who accepts money for companionship (did I just say gigolo in a very nice way?), which I found oddly forced to balance Holly. Talking about accepting money for companionship, some people blatantly label Holly as prostitute. I refuse to label her that. She’s a much more complex character, both in personality and in ‘profession’, which is what makes her so iconic and memorable.

Below is the trailer to the movie. Beware that there are some spoilers in it. (Why people put spoilers in trailer I would never understand.)

I loved Audrey Hepburn! Did I say I loved her? I really want to watch her other movies now! Do you have any to recommend?

1961, 115 min
Rating: 8/10

The Guardian – Breakfast at Tiffany’s: When Audrey Hepburn won Marilyn Monroe’s role (great article!)

Have you read Capote before? What do you think of his works?

Have you watched the movie? Which one did you like more?

Written in fable style, Silk tells a story of a silk merchant in southern France who is appointed by people in his vilage to make a long voyage to Japan in search of good quality of silkworms, as there’s an epidemic that ruins the regular supply of silkworms in their neighbourhood countries.

And so begins his long journey — which is comically told in a couple of paragraphs, back and forth every year from France to Japan. With every trip he gets a little more glimpse of a young woman that he meets in Japan — a concubine of the warlord he makes the business deal with. Meanwhile he has a wife who is ever so loyal waiting for him at home.

Without giving anything away, I bet you could already sense that where ever it’s going it’s not going to somewhere pretty.

Silk is a short and sweet novella with a tinge of sadness. It is a story about unhappiness in everyone of us, no matter what we already have.

It’s satisfying read for such a short book.

1996 (Italian), 1997 (English), 91 pp

Read for: Lost in Translation Challenge (book #3), Orbis Terrarum Challenge 2009 (book #9), (Another) 1% Well-Read Challenge (book #5), 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die Challenge, Reading the World

The Movie

Silk (2007)

Being the book-to-movie buff that I am, I couldn’t wait to check out the movie almost straight away.

The biggest difference with the book is that the girl in Japan is not a white girl as in the book, though she’s said to be Chinese in the movie, not Japanese too (in real life she is Japanese). I don’t know why this was made so, but I guess a Japanese chick in the poster and trailer would be a much better attraction (because then it’d be white chick vs Japanese chick kind of movie).

Positive points: gorgeous setting, pretty girls (I’m always fond of Keira Knightley and the Japanese girl was gorgeous).

Negative points: Michael Pitt as Hervé Joncour didn’t work well (who is he anyway? never heard of him before), the hairstyle of the Japanese girls looks very modern which didn’t go well with the 1800s setting.

The colorful birds that Hara Jubei (the Japanese warlord) is supposed to keep in his backyard was not portrayed in the movie. I guess that would cost quite a bit to do. But what a shame. It would have been a stunning shot. I remember the colorful birds clearly from the book because I thought it was a great symbol of the Japanese girl role as his concubine, his pet.

Somehow the story felt a bit more unsatisfactory by watching the film, even though it stays true to the book. The tale became the old obsession-with-what-you-can’t-have and it left me and hubby somewhat discontent.

Rating: 7/10

Book also reviewed by

Hey Lady! Whatcha Readin’? | A Striped Armchair | 1morechapter | Bart’s Bookshelf | Stuff as Dreams Are Made On | Big Book, Big Evil | Jules’ Book Reviews | Reading Matters

I’m not sure if I really “got” it. Their world seemed a bit too far off for me. I was intrigued by the details of tattooing and body modification that the book covers for a bit, but I wasn’t fond of the characters. The setting felt very Japanese, with details like buying hair bleach from a 24-hour convenience store and “companion” job for young girls (they basically need to look pretty and pour drinks for high corporate workers). So the book does have some interesting bits, but the main storyline felt a bit shallow. It reminded me of Banana Yoshimoto’s books. Most probably because the authors were both young and they wrote about young Japanese people and their problems.

Do prepare for a rough ride. You know how Japan is a world of two extremes? Old and new, reserved and outrageous, polite and crazy. Well, Snakes and Earrings is the darker extreme. The book however, is very short, so most probably it would finish before it disturbs you.

Hitomi Kanehara moved out of home when she was 11 and dropped out of high school when she was 15. She then regularly emailed her stories to her father — a literary professor. Honestly I can’t imagine writing this kind of book and have my dad read it.

I think this book could easily be semi-autobiographical. The back of the book shows her picture with various sizes of earrings on one ear, which the main character has as well. The heroine is also described as “barbie-girl” and has lived away from home since young.

2003 (Japanese), 2005 (English), 128 pp

Award
2003 Akutagawa Prize

Also reviewed by
booklit | Book Haven | In Spring It is the Dawn | Bookphilia

“I think of literature, she wrote, as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but will never reach. And I have started too late. I will never catch up.”

The Uncommon Reader tells the story of the Queen who stumbled upon a mobile library one day. Kind of obliged to borrow something from it, she ended up going from one book to another, until it attracted the attention of the people around her, who were not quite happy about the fact that she loved reading. They think it somewhat distracts her from her duties.

This is a delightful tiny novella. I enjoyed reading it. I’d say the most interesting about the story is the setting, with the Queen as the character. It’s nice for a change to enjoy a story with royalty setting that is not that serious. Humorous even. I like all the references to various books that she read as well, though I’ve only heard of a fraction of them.

I read many blog reviews that said the book took only about an hour to finish. That’s quick! I took about a few days to finish (didn’t sit for more than half an hour at a time though).

I can’t remember where I first heard about the book, but it could very well be from Dewey’s blog. There’s a challenge going on in the remembrance of Dewey, which I have not joined, but found myself have already read 2 books that I knew from Dewey for this year. Might as well join the fun, yeah? I guess I can join unofficially… (I just avoid challenges these days to take the pressures off my reading list.)

Rating: 4 out of 5
Pages: 124
Publication year: 2007

First line
At Windsor it was the evening of the state banquet and as the president of France took his place beside Her Majesty, the royal family formed up behind and the procession slowly moved off and through into the Waterloo Chamber.

Last line
‘But… why do you think you’re all here?’

Quotes

“Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.” ~p22

Also reviewed by

Dewey | Nymeth | Chris | Rebecca | Eva | J.C. | S. Krishna | Kailana | Maree | M | Bluestocking | Julie P. | 3M | Melody | Matt | Tricia | Tammy

ps: Somehow I found tons of blog reviews! Is this a popular book or what?