Oy! (I never use that expression, but it fits today.) I’m SO totally… Grrr. Let me explain.
Last night, Hubby took the older girls on a campout, leaving me home with Baby (well, Toddler) K. We had fun, watched Dora (she loves Dora), ate, played, and I got her to bed around 8:30. I had started The Traveler’s Gift, by Andy Andrews (poor, unfortunate man. What were his parents thinking?), earlier that evening (during Dora), and realized it was an easy read. I figured I’d finish it before popping in my movie, which a friend said I was sure to love: The Inheritance.
Yes. That Inheritance. I have to say, though, I liked the movie better than the book. The screenwriters took the disaster that was published and turned it into… a cheesy, sappy, maudlin movie. But I did like it better. Just not enough. It didn’t help that the acting was terrible: Merideth Baxter and Thomas Gibson were just showing up for the money. And no one else could act. They had to dress Ida in low-cut costumes so we could tell she was the “bad girl”. At one point — supposedly the climax — I laughed. Um. I don’t think that was the reaction they were looking for. The one thing I did like was that they got rid of the Insufferable Older Brother, and brought back the Father Figure. I liked him; he was genuinely funny (and I think he was meant to be). They killed him off near the end, though. By the time I was finished I was sick of the whole lot. (It didn’t help that they had those notes — what do you call them? — at the end where you get to find out what happened to all the characters. Ida ended up in a mental institution. Serves her right for being a desperate, snitty wench. At least I guess that’s what we’re suppose to think.)
And the book…. let’s just say it’s not been a good month for my in-person book group. David Ponder is 46 years old, with a wife and daughter, who has lost his job. Hit rock bottom (which really isn’t all that rock bottom if you think about it): credit cards maxed, behind on mortgage, daughter sick (with tonsillitis of all things. I figured “daughter sick” would mean leukemia or something important). He’s worthless. He’s failed. He’s going to kill himself. But, no. He gets a second chance: he gets to travel throughout history learning life lessons from dead white guys. (Oh, except he meets Anne Frank, so it doesn’t quite work out.) The back of the book says “The Traveler’s Gift effectively combines self-help with fiction.” Yes. Beware books that effectively combine self-help with fiction. They’re lame.
As a self-help book, this may have been okay. David does learn some good lessons (I’m going to give them to you so you don’t have to read the book, and you still get what you need to change your life. Okay?): I am responsible for my past and future; I will seek wisdom and be a servant to others; I am a person of action; I have a decided heart; I will choose to be happy; I will greet the day with a forgiving spirit; I will persist without exception. See? Not bad lessons. But the situations he receives them in are completely overdone. He meets (in order): Truman, King Solomon, Joshua Chamberlin (who is really cool, but you shouldn’t learn about him from this book!), Columbus, Anne Frank, Lincoln and Angel Gabriel. They lecture a believably disbelieving David on what made their lives great. It wasn’t bad…. but it wasn’t great. It was when he got to Gabriel that I really lost patience with the thing. Gabriel says that David is the last person to take this “trip” (others included George Washington and Martin Luther King, Jr.) and that is was up to David to change the world. Oh. Okay. Then, as an added bonus, David gets to see his future where he does change the world by becoming… wait for it…
A motivational speaker. At this point, I threw the book across the room. I’ll take my self-help from legitimate sources, thank you. Bleh.
(Now to go to book group and face people who actually liked these books. And express my displeasure without sounding snobby. Any suggestions?)
The Book Nut 
Can I just say that I LOVE your reviews! 🙂
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Thanks, Becky. I enjoy reading yours, too. 🙂
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How to shred your book club’s opinions? Take the story apart mechanically — focus on the plot holes, the improbabilities, the places where you couldn’t suspend disbelief, and illustrate WHY. Are the characters poorly constructed? Is the dialogue bad?That sort of thing. I’ve done it to my own group before and man, they couldn’t argue.But they didn’t stop liking the drek, either. Still, I felt better. And I did it without resorting to “this book sucked” and leaving it at that. Show, don’t tell is what we writers are told. It works in real life, too.Good luck!
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Thanks, Susan. I’ll try… (Though, I suppose that kind of means that I have to actually THINK about it, rather than my initial gut instinct.)
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That book sounds awful. Thank you for saving me from a terrible accident.As to your dilemma: Though it reads better with the sarcasm and book-hurling, I’d tell the group what you say here–that the book is a forced marriage of two genres that don’t go great together, at least not in this instance. Of course, if the group can handle sarcasm and book-hurling, then by all means . . . The bit about Gabriel showing David his future as the Messiah of motivational speakers reminded me of something a music teacher at my former school, a Baptist-affiliated school, told some of us. He said a student came up to him and told him that God had placed it on her heart to change her instrument and become an oboe player.
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Oh my. This IS horrible. Good luck with being nice about it. I usually fail miserably. In fact, today on Shelfari, someone wanted to become my friend because I “liked” Paul Coehlo books. Umm . . . maybe he didn’t read my one review. That was a hard book group to be a part of . . . But still! A motivational speaker??????
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Have you been to book club yet? How did it go? I’m dying to know!
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It’s not until Tuesday night, Dewey. I’ll post something on it Wednesday. Though I don’t suppose anything *really* scandalous will come out of it. 😉
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I can hardly wait!! Just for the online record… not everyone in Melissa’s book group loved the Inheritance… and I think the meetings are more interesting when there are different opinions. I’ll probably pass on “The Traveler’s Gift”. Thanks for the tip.
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Now Sarah, I didn’t mean to insinuate that YOU liked Inheritance. Just that SOME people liked these books. (I think Linda liked this one…) Though I should insist upon you reading this so I have someone else to back me up in my dislike of it. 🙂
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Oh, geez. I’m pretty sure I bought this one at an 80%-off salvage sale. I hope I didn’t pay more than $1.50 for it. You’ve really got me frightened, now.
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I LOVED your review.
I do have to add what I continually thought of while reading ~ Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
Party on! And thanks for your review!
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Oh finally! Someone who has the same perspective on this book that i do! My book club read it, and they looooooved it. I was starting to think that there was just something wrong with me. Surely, I couldn't be the only one in the world who didn't like this book! Thank you for your comments. Thank you for making me feel better. 🙂
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