DVD Review: All My Life

All My Life

(DVD All)

 

If you pay any attention to trending romance stories in pop culture, you may have heard about the experience of Jennifer Carter and Solomon Chou, whose friends and family initiated a GoFundMe fundraising campaign to help them pay for their wedding and honeymoon, after Sol was diagnosed with inoperable cancer only months before their original wedding was to have taken place.

 

All My Life tells their story. Jessica Rothe plays Jenn and Harry Shum Jr. plays Sol, with an extensive cast of supporting actors as their friends, co-workers and physicians. The film telescopes some of the real-life events in the couples’ life, shortening the timeframe of some of the actual events. Yet, the feel of the film isn’t rushed. Rothe and Shum have marvelous chemistry as the ill-fated couple, with Rothe particularly shining, the more stress she’s placed under.

 

Despite the sad ending that most viewers should know is coming, this was an uplifting and life-affirming movie. I enjoyed it very much and give it a strong recommendation!

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official All My Life Facebook page ]

 

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Services

 

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide Blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Book Review: When Life Gives You Pears by Jeannie Gaffigan

When Life Gives You Pears
by Jeannie Gaffigan (Biography Gaffigan)

Every time I think I have it bad, I find out I don’t have it so very bad compared to a lot of people. Take Jeannie Gaffigan, for example. The actress/writer/producer/director is married to award-winning comic Jim Gaffigan. Her life with her husband and their five children was going along quite busily but wonderfully for the most part, until she noticed she was losing the hearing in one ear. And she felt like she had a cold she couldn’t get over. And she was suffering from a lot of bad headaches. She put off making an appointment for herself but when she took her children in for their checkups the family physician referred her to get some hearing tests. From there, the chain of diagnoses that followed revealed that a tumor which was roughly the size and shape of a pear was pressing against her brain stem!

Through everything she experiences after that, she maintains a healthy faith and unfailing humor. I thoroughly enjoyed learning her story and I laud her coping mechanisms and her willingness to share so much of her personal life with the rest of us.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Unstoppable by Nick Vujicic, Tough as They Come by Travis Mills or The Great Eight, by Scott Hamilton]

[ publisher’s official When Life Gives You Pears web page ] | [ Jeannie Gaffigan on Twitter ]

Recommended by Becky W.C.
Walt Branch Library

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New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!

Customer Review - The Fault in Our Stars

The Fault in Our Stars
by John Green [YA Green]

I'd say this is one of the best books I've ever read. Mainly, I wanted to read this before the movie comes out. But, my friend did recommend this to me, because it's an awesome book. I believe that this book has an excellent plot and storyline, great for teens. It's an amazing love story between two cancer patients. -- review submitted by Amilia B. - a customer of the Gere Branch Library

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New Customer Reviews appear regularly in the pages of the BookGuide web site, particularly during the Summer Reading Program. You can visit the Customer Reviews page to see them all and/or submit your own, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually as we receive them.

Customer Review - Under the Mesquite

Under the Mesquite
by Guadalupe Garcia McCall [YA McCall]

An expression that comes to mind about Under the Mesquite by Guadalupe Garcia McCall is that "the whole is greater than the sum of all its parts". The main storylines to this verse novel are the immigration of a Mexican family to America and the death of a parent. Thematically, the story is also about family, friendship, and identity. All of these parts interconnect to make an emotional experience that will have long-lasting impact. The immigration experience forms one storyline to Under the Mesquite. However, this verse novel is not about the difficulties which can happen to immigrants in crossing the border or when trying to avoid deportation. Instead, Under the Mesquite is about an altogether different struggle: one which I call dual homesickness. Basically, when she's on the American side Lupita misses her former life in Mexico, but when she's on the Mexican side she eventually finds herself longing for her new home in Texas. Because Lupita looks different and has an accent, naturally she also faces discrimination. And yet to my surprise, its Lupita's Mexican friends who harass her the most, accusing her of talking "like you wanna be white". Because of these different takes on immigration, I found Under the Mesquite to have a fresh approach. The death of a parent forms a second storyline to Under the Mesquite. When Lupita enters her freshman year in high school, her mom is diagnosed with cancer. Despite the rallying times when it felt as if her mom would recover and life would return to normal, Lupita and her sisters receive the dreaded middle-of-the-night call. It's often said that there are no new stories. You could view Under the Mesquite in this way, for death of a parent isn't a new tale. But how McCall develops the relationship between Lupita and her mom, down to the symbolism of the mesquite tree, is original, and therefore makes for a memorable read. A story told through verse has a strong chance of turning ones off who are not accustomed to the format. However, I love the emotional punch McCall creates with her intense visuals. I also appreciate that the poetic form allows her to provide the perfect emotional distance from one of the most painful experiences anyone can face. Which means Under the Mesquite has further sold me on the merits of verse novels. -- review submitted by Allison H.-F. - a customer of the Bennett Martin Public Library

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New Customer Reviews appear regularly in the pages of the BookGuide web site, particularly during the Summer Reading Program. You can visit the Customer Reviews page to see them all and/or submit your own, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually as we receive them.

Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe

Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe

by Tom Batiuk [741.5 Bat]

Call me a softie, but sometimes I can be "moved" by the oddest things. Including the fates of comic strip characters. For years, I've been more a fan of the organic comic strips than the static -- I've liked strips like "For Better or Worse" or "Doonesbury", where the characters are aging more-or-less in real-time, rather than the vast majority of strips where the characters never age at all. Because this inevitably leads to real-world issues coming to life in such strips, I can get choked up when a comic strip character meets their end. It happened in For Better or Worse when Farley the dog was written out of the strip in a sad but meaningful way. And it happens again in Lisa's Story: The Other Shoe, a compilation of storylines from the Funky Winkerbean strip. I grew up with Funky back in junior high and high school, and have only occasionally touched base with it again in the years since. A storyline began in the late 1990s in which Lisa Moore, the wife of the series de facto central character, Les Moore, develops breast cancer. After initially beating the cancer with a mastectomy and chemotherapy, the cancer returned in a new storyline in 2006. Writer/artist Tom Batiuk, channeling his own issues after facing a prostate cancer scare, forewarned readers of Lisa's ultimate fate, but reading the entire storyline in an almost graphic-novel format is still a wrenching experience. This book's approach to exploring the topic of cancer is sensitive, emotional, serious, humorous and frank...all at once. It's hard to say I "enjoyed" this book, but, in the end, I did. -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library

[ official Funky Winkerbean web site ] [ Reuter's news story about this storyline ]

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide web site. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month.