21 * FIREFLIES IN DECEMBER

I'd been keeping my eye out on the current dvd shelf at the library for ages, and it was never available, so the other day I checked the no longer new all jumbled in with all the movies of all time shelves, and there it was. 21 - Kevin Spacey and his ensemble cast, including the actor who starred in Across the Universe play an MIT professor and 5 students who fly to Las Vegas to win at Blackjack and make lots of money....every weekend. We also watched all of the special features and learned the prevailing method of counting cards. Sort of a Risky Business meets Rainman. I so glad that it was Kevin Spacey playing the prof rather than Tom C, though. There's nothing like Spacey's sarcasm and dry delivery. Lawrence Fishburn's in here too. A good movie.

The Hills - Last night was Lauren's last episode, and Heidi and Spencer finally had that big all out church wedding. I love this show. I don't know whether I'll be able to stay with it if Lauren's practical self isn't there to ground everyone. Without her, there's no telling what these people will get up to. Sometimes this one is all too much to think about. Mind candy.

I recently struck out with three books. nothing worse than reading page after page, hoping that some character will say or do something, anything to make you care to turn the page. Two were some kind of detective mysteries, the third was a Virginia Wolfe and her sister historical fiction kind of a thing. Not many pages into the Virginia book I remembered Mrs. Dalloway and the other one that I read a couple of years ago, and said NO MORE! Is there no more dry and depressing author than Virginia? Oh yeah, a Virginia wanna-be. Then I picked up
Fireflies in December - by Jennifer Erin Valent - Here are the first few lines:
"The summer I turned thirteen, I thought I'd killed a man. That's a heavy burden for a girl to hang on to, but it didn't surprise me so much to have that trouble come in the summertime. Every bad thing that ever happened to me seemed to happen in those long months."
And I was off. Takes place in the 1930s in the south and it's Christian Lit which I didn't realize but didn't mind. Just a great story. However, if you've never read To Kill a Mockingbird, and you're about to read this, let me just encourage you to not read this particular book, but to go straight to To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee. 'Cause that's the book you really want to read. It's the gold standard.