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Ellie Kemper recommended Cold Spring Harbor in Books (curated)

 
Cold Spring Harbor
Cold Spring Harbor
Richard Yates | 2018 | Fiction & Poetry
(0 Ratings)
Book Favorite

"As in all of Yates’s books, the characters are modeled after people in his life, and this book is primarily about his mother. It’s like August: Osage County, if it were set on Long Island in the 1930s. The story may be bleak and hopeless, but Yates’s prose is unpretentious and irresistible."

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Lindsay (1779 KP) created a video about I Hate, Hate, Hate This Time of Day in Books

Apr 25, 2020  
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I hate, hate, hate this time of day!

A great story about the elephant and his mother. There is a bedtime story about the time that children do not like so much. There is a goodnight story for toddlers about the time when you have to say goodbye to your favorite toys.

  
Good Me, Bad Me
Good Me, Bad Me
Ali Land | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
9
8.0 (21 Ratings)
Book Rating
To say that this is a chilling story would be a gross understatement. I think my heart was in my mouth for the whole time I was reading this, and I really resented having to put it down.
This is the story of 15 year old Milly, and how she copes with her life after she informs the police that her mother is a serial killer. A killer of small children. She has also been horrifically abused by her mother. We follow her in to her foster family, a family where she is not completely welcomed. The teenaged daughter of her foster parents is a troubled, bullying, frankly rather horrible teenager. It's interesting to look at the similarities and differences between these two characters. How a child who has lived a terrible life seems to outwardly cope better than one who has had a loving (if rather distant) family.
Milly's inner voice, that of her mother, is a chilling reminder that she was controlled completely by this evil woman, to the extent that she finds it difficult to cope without her. The story shows the love of a child for their mother, even though they have been terribly abused by her and seen her do abhorrent things to other children.
I don't want to say too much more - I'd hate to spoil it for anyone else. I will say that this was an excellent story though, and it’s a book that I’ve recommended to a lot of friends.
  
Murmur of the Heart (1971)
Murmur of the Heart (1971)
1971 | International, Comedy, Drama
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"This film takes place in Dijon, France, in the mid-’50s. It is a coming-of-age film about a boy in his early teens named Laurent Chevalier, who is from a bourgeois family. He has two older brothers who are always teasing him and who introduce him to a prostitute for his first sexual experience. Laurent has a beautiful mother and a successful father who is a gynecologist. After getting scarlet fever and discovering he has a heart murmur, Laurent must stay in bed for several months to recover. When he is better, he travels with his mother to a very fancy resort (sanatorium) in France. The second and third acts of the film are about his coming-of-age experiences at the sanatorium with the other young people who are staying there. It is also about him developing a strong personal relationship with his mother. This film is so daring and touches on many taboo issues—it’s astonishing that it could be made then (1971) and even now it would be considered to be pushing too many boundaries. In the end, it’s a beautiful, deep love story between adolescent children growing up in a privileged life, and about the closest relationship between a mother and son. I wish more films today could push boundaries like Louis Malle did in Murmur of the Heart. This film reassured me how important it is to push boundaries and to pursue issues that are considered by some to be untouchable. It is a truly inspirational film."

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