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Movies/Books by the same name: AtonementThe Bridge Over the River KwaiThe Call of the WildThe Color PurpleCrazy Rich AsiansDivergentThe Fellowship of the RingForrest GumpThe GodfatherThe Great GatsbyThe HelpHidden FiguresThe Hunger GamesThe Last of the MohicansLittle WomenThe Lion, the Witch and the WardrobeThe MartianMe Before YouThe NotebookOne Flew Over the Cuckoo’s NestThe Perks of Being a …

The Happiest Man on Earth | Eddie Jaku Summary: Eddie Jaku, a Holocaust survivor, takes you through the story of his experience. He tells the horrifying experiences he encountered in Buchenwald, then Auschwitz, and finally on the death march. Through his story you learn lots of valuable life lessons.  Recommendation: I thoroughly enjoy reading any …

The Last Thing He Told Me | Laura Dave Male: This husband and father takes off in a suspect manner when the business he works for goes under. Female: Wife and stepmom researches her husband’s activities when the public announcement is made that the business was a failure, leaving plenty of people without their investments. …

The Music of Bees| Eilen Garvin Summary: This book is about hope and change for three different people who are unexpectedly thrown together. You come to like and root for this characters who take you through their problems and traumas. It is a very uplifting and heart felt story as will as teaching you more …

Birds of Prey | 2020, starring Margot Robbie Summary: If only criminals were more trustworthy… ehh! Harley Quinn is finally done with the Joker, so she claims her independence in a big (boom) noisy way. Anyone after her for retribution or payback now knows she’s without protection. Except there are these accidental teammates that keep …

Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda | Albertalli, Becky Summary: When sixteen-year old Simon Spier accidentally leaves his email open on a school computer, he’s met with a blackmail attempt that threatens to expose him to his entire town. As a closeted gay kid, Simon fears nothing more than having to come out before he’s …

Ophelia | (2019) starring Daisy Ridley, Naomi Watts, Clive Owen Summary: Based on the novel by Lisa Klein, this movie is the story of Hamlet shown from Ophelia’s point of view. There is so much more to her from beginning to end, you’ll feel like you’ve experienced a completely new Shakespeare play by watching it. …

Stillmeadow Sampler | Gladys Taber Summary: Gladys Bagg Taber (1899 – 1980) produced a large body of work during her lifetime. She wrote over 50 books, including fiction, nonfiction, cookbooks, children’s books, plays, poetry and more. Her best loved books are in her series about her life at Stillmeadow, her farm in the then rural …

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Tenet (2021) with John David Washington, Robert Pattinson Summary: A CIA agent is forcibly recruited into the most hush-hush of special units. Their goal is to identify and minimize ‘inversion’, a catastrophically damaging element of entropy brought to the regular world on purpose by a megalomaniac. There are manipulations overlaid atop and across each other …

The Talk: Conversations about race, love & truth | Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson Summary: What are we teaching our young ones about race? Having ‘the talk’ might mean introducing a child to the perils of being different or discussing why “treating everyone the same” isn’t the ultimate solution under systemic racism. Gathering works …

Believe Me | Eddie Izzard Summary: I anticipated comedy in choosing Izzard’s memoir. I had no idea what I was in for! Izzard’s use of ‘footnotes’ had me screaming with laughter. Other reviews confirm that the audio version is the BEST method of listening to the rambling unapologetic style used by Izzard, so familiar from …

Chew: the Omnivore Edition, Vol 1 | John Layman Summary: Tony Chu is a good detective – but his particularly unusual ability to get impressions from what he eats is why he works for the Special Crimes Division of the FDA, the most powerful law enforcement agency on the planet (think near future or alternate …

Snuggle Puppy!| Sandra Boynton Summary: A great big hug in book form, Snuggle Puppy is a year-round valentine from parent to child. It is bright, chunky, a pleasure to hold, and has a die-cut cover that reveals a glimpse of the joy inside before it’s even opened. Best of all, it’s packed, of course, with pure Boynton: …

Much Ado About You | Samantha Young Summary: Visit a quaint English village bookstore after life kicks you when you’re down! That’s what one Chicagoan does when too many disappointments pile up at once. She’s attempting to rediscover herself and that means avoiding tangled relationships like new love. But her stay becomes more than melodrama …

I’ll Give You the Sun | Jandy Nelson Summary: Nelson’s work is a character study that skips not only through time but between points of view as the teen years of twins and the reasons for their enmity are revealed. Jude settles for her mother’s attention through standard teen-to-parent fights about how she is possibly …

Thumpy Feet | Betsy Lewin Summary: Preschoolers will celebrate a wondrous, energetic creature in this story. The only character shown is the playful, frisky ginger tabby so named Thumpy Feet. His behavior is that of a sprightly and easily engaged pet, made fully fleshed with eager use of brushed paint upon white pages with little …

Patricia Brent, Spinster | Herbert George Jenkins Summary: Twenty-four-year-old Patricia Brent is upset after overhearing her neighbors discussing her lack of dates. Determined to prove them wrong, she tells them that she is having dinner with her fiancé on the following evening. When they show up to the restaurant to see what he looks like, …

Guess Who (DVD) Summary: Theresa (Zoe Saldana) is a young woman who is about to introduce her fiancé to her father, Percy Jones (Bernie Mac). Percy is eager to meet his African-American daughter’s businessman beau, but is shocked to learn that she is engaged to Simon Green (Ashton Kutcher), a white man. Staying with the …

Rain Reign | Ann M. Martin Summary: Rose Howard is obsessed with homonyms. She’s thrilled that her own name is a homonym, and she purposely gave her dog Rain a name with two homonyms (Reign, Rein), which, according to Rose’s rules of homonyms, is very special. Not everyone understands Rose’s obsessions, her rules, and the …