Spring Greetings!At our Daffodils book rec bash last Saturday, Carrie and I recommended our favorite reads for Spring, and one I raved about has bloomed into a new event you won’t want to miss. Readers love to lament the movies made from their beloved books. Does it make us feel smarter to say, “the book was soooo much better?” We are readers after all, which is of course, uber-elevating for us within a conversation of mere-movie lovers. (I’ve done it - that’s why I get it).Well, get ready for this event. For Daffodils, I took on the great Jim Harrison, legendary writer of rugged American epics. I turned early in my immersion to his novella Legends of the Fall*. I LOVED it all - all of it ... it’s a sweeping father/sons yarn with a Montana ranch setting, and Harrison’s impossibly bold yet lyrical writing. How does someone write an epic generational saga (with loads of nuance as to women and Native Americans all the time evoking a bygone era) in less than 100 pages?! Adventures abound, love is found and lost, loyalties challenged, and the Great War fought, leaving each character’s life changed forever. LOVED it.I vaguely remembered the 1984 Brad Pitt/Anthony Hopkins film “Legends of the Fall” and was so curious to re-watch it (NOT for Brad Pitt, no - it was research, you know --for my business) now I'd read the original story. It was in the opening credits I learned that Harrison himself had written the screenplay. What?! I loved the movie too, but NO WAY could I believe the novella’s author had written the script. In the opening, an announcer declares that the three brothers were in love with the same woman .... Ummm, what?!So, of course, I texted my pal and movie expert Lee Shoquist to lead us all in a discussion about the adaptation of the Harrison story into “Legends of the Fall,” the movie with breathtaking cinematography that made Brad Pitt a global sensation. I’ll facilitate any chat about Harrison’s short novel. If you haven’t heard Lee talk movies at one of our events, you are in for a treat: he is one enthusiastic encyclopedia on all things film, and he is contagious.Get your tickets - April 30, Sunday, at 2 p.m.Spoilers: Guests will need to watch the film and read the novella before attending, why not have a watch party!
Get your tickets here
*Among writers and readers -- but writers perhaps most of all, Harrison is a legend: Harrison has said he “wrote” as he walked on his favored remote pathways, whether in Michigan or Montana or on the Mexican border. When he returned to a desk he wrote in pen, on yellow legal pads. Here’s the legend part: Harrison said that when he began the act of writing things down, the words were pretty much fully formed during his walks and that he then simply wrote down on paper the three novellas included in the book -- in nine days and changed only one word from his original handwritten pages. He said so and his typist confirmed. Legend.Fondly, Sandy
One of the many reasons Sing A Song of Seasons: A Nature Poem for Each Day of the Year is a book I think every family needs are pages and poems like today's: for March 31st we have the gloriously illustrated "Daffodils" by William Wordsworth.
