book update: the help

so i got a chance to finish reading the help over the weekend.

hands down, the book is so much better than the movie--and i loved the movie. it's a lot more detailed and has more exciting moments than the movie did.

i have a few favorite parts in the book, but the one that still sticks with me is when skeeter's mom said, "don't let him cheapen you."

leading up to that, skeeter was dating stuart, the local senator's son. he'd just gotten out of a relationship where his ex-fiance cheated on him and then moved to california (from mississippi). they'd been dating a few months when his parents invited skeeter and her parents to the house for dinner. it didn't go all that well because stuart's mom talked about patricia (stuart's ex) the entire evening, directly and indirectly, making it awkward.

afterward, skeeter told stuart to go find himself (paraphrasing) and that she knew he still had feelings for patricia. she didn't hear from him for a while, considering they'd been seeing each other twice a week for months at this point.

out of the blue, stuart calls skeeter. after the phone conversation, that's when her mother (mrs. phelan) says, "don't let him cheapen you."

in a nutshell, it meant that she deserved better from someone who claimed to love her. she's not a "piece" and she shouldn't make herself available just because he is. also, he doesn't get to have his cake and eat it, too, and that he needed to choose where he was going to place his efforts because skeeter didn't need to settle.

all of this coming from her mother, was really amazing. mrs. phelan rode skeeter about shoes, accessories, her height, her hair, her clothes, the fact that she smoked cigarettes, the fact that she wasn't ready to get married...pretty much everything. and there was always a negative connotation to anything she said to skeeter. so to hear her build skeeter up, telling her that she could do better, was really touching.

there are so many great things about this book, especially the fact that the book help was published (within the book), and exceeded the publishing company's expectations so much, that they printed a second run of 5,000 copies. pretty awesome.

so, i would highly recommend the book! and the movie!

i also saw columbiana over the weekend. amazing.