The Godfather Returns…Again

by Dee Ernst

Last Thanksgiving, while sitting down for three free minutes between working and feeding the masses, I turned on the television to see what Christmas specials were being aired way too early. In addition to Rudolph, I found that there was a ‘Godfather’ marathon running. The Godfather? Is that what was considered holiday fare? But of course, the movies sucked me right back in, to paraphrase Michael, and a few weeks later, I hunted up the original novel by Mario Puzo and gave it another read.

Man, what great book.

The Godfather was a prime example of the perfect book at the perfect time. In 1969, when people all over the country were questioning authority and protesting against ‘the man’, here was a classic American story of a struggling immigrant who, by working hard and staying true to his family, carved out a piece of All-American apple pie for himself. Except that, in the case of Vito Corleone, he did it by being an outlaw, a Mafioso, a completely unrepentant criminal. By finding a way to live the American dream by staying on the wrong side of law and order, he became something of a cultural icon.

I’m not going to tell you about the story – all of you should know it. If you don’t, have you seriously been living in a cave for the past 40 years? What I want to talk about was how it felt to read it again after all these years.

The first thing that struck me was how timeless the characters were. History puts the novel in a specific time and place – New York after World War II – but Puzo wrote nothing to make it seem ‘old fashioned’. The dialog was fresh and contemporary. There were no descriptions of the characters, what they’re wearing, or how they look, that dated them in any way. In fact, if it weren’t for the glaring absence of cell phones, this could have been written last year about a Mafia family living and breathing here in the new millennium.

A few things occurred to me that hadn’t before. Michael was quite cruel to his wife, Kay. Nothing physical or emotional, but his casual lying to her throughout struck me as very cold and vicious. There was not a great deal written that made me warm up to Sonny, although the author told us he had a kind and loving side, I never got that. Sonny was brutal from start to finish. (Maybe it was James Caan that made me warm to the character on-screen?) Tom Hagen became my favorite character – honorable, brave, loyal to his ‘Family’, he was the most rounded and sympathetic character in the book.

It didn’t bother me that there were no significant women characters. Michael’s two wives had small parts, as did Lucy Mancini, the former lover of Sonny Corleone who starts a new life for herself out in Las Vegas. When I first read this novel, in the midst of the women’s movement, I was outraged (hey, women can be hardened killers too). But I realized that the world Puzo was writing about was rooted in hundreds of years of Sicilian history, and there was simply no role for women in that world, then or now.

As for the Godfather, Vito Corleone himself, he seemed physically smaller in the book. Marlon Brando on-screen was then and always had been an overwhelming presence. In the book, Vito Corleone seemed a man you might ordinarily overlook. Although Brando was magnificent, in the book version of the character, his power came through his iron will and total fearlessness, and it was a much more compelling portrait.

It’s almost impossible to talk about the book without talking about the movie as well. Both helped define a certain time and place. Everyone talked about the book. Everyone talked about the movie. This was storytelling in a new way – raw, unfiltered, matter-of-fact. The movie made household names of almost everyone involved – Francis Ford Coppola, Al Pacino, Diane Keaton, Robert Duvall. Although the books Puzo wrote after The Godfather never achieved the same popularity, those movies made believers out of all those people who said there was no such thing as ‘a good sequel.’ They still stand today as great cinema – great enough to have their own marathon on Thanksgiving weekend.

You can still find copies of the original paperback in used bookstores. The ebook version is available. Or maybe, like me, you have that original copy stashed somewhere because you knew that someday you might like to read it again. Find it. Read it. Seriously, it will be like reading it for the first time.

Review: Ramona and Beezus

Reviewed by Sandy Nachlinger

I’ll admit this probably isn’t the sort of book or movie review you’d expect to find on a Boomers and Books website. But two Boomer women enjoyed the heck out of this film.

The movie is based on the series of children’s books by Beverly Cleary. These are classics, with the first one (Beezus and Ramona) published in 1955. Altogether, Cleary has written forty-one books, eight of them in the Ramona and Beezus series. My co-author, who watched the movie with me, worked as an elementary school teacher for many years before retiring. She remembered Beverly Cleary’s stories fondly and enjoyed seeing the well-known characters on the screen. She was pleased with the way the characters were presented. I’ve never read the books so I had no preconceived ideas of what to expect from the film. I enjoyed it too.

The story: Ramona Quimby is a misfit girl with a creative perspective of the world. Her imagination gets her into all kinds of trouble. Her father loses his job as an accountant, a career he pursued to provide for his growing family. But his real love lies in art. The story follows his search for work, paralleled by nine-year-old Ramona’s misadventures at school, at a beauty pageant, and around her neighborhood, all a result of her attempts to earn money to save her family’s home. Of course, all ends well. The take-away lessons are that it’s okay to be different and that perseverance pays off.

The film stars Joey King as Ramona and Sandra Gomez as her big sister Beezus. John Corbett plays Robert Quimby — Beezus and Ramona’s dad. Corbett is better known as the love interest in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding;” as Aidan Shaw, one of Carrie Bradshaw’s men in “Sex and The City;” and (my favorite) as the DJ on TV’s “Northern Exposure.” In “Ramona and Beezus” he did a great job portraying the Quimby dad. Seeing him in a different kind of role was a joy.

This is a movie you can safely watch with nieces, nephews, and grandchildren and still be entertained yourself. I hate to use this term, but I’d have to say the movie was “cute,” and I recommend it.

Why you need to read A Game Of Thrones

By Dee Ernst
I’d had the book, A Game of Thrones, by George R.R. Martin, on my shelves for a couple of years. A friend of mine had suggested it and told me I’d love the whole series, but I never got around to reading it. You all know the story…so many books, so little time. But when I saw it was going to be a mini-series on HBO, I thought I should read it before watching. So I started reading. Then I read the next in the series, A Clash of Kings. Then I found out the best thing about owning an eReader – if it’s one o’clock in the morning, and you’ve just finished a book, and you really need to find out what happens next, you don’t have to wait for the bookstore to open in the morning. You can just download keep on reading.

These books are that good.

Now, I’m not a big Sci-fi/Fantasy fan. I loved Lord of the Rings, and I’ll read pretty much anything that Neil Gaiman writes, but that’s about all. I’ve never been a fan of dragons and elves, swordplay and sorcery. And these books are very much true to the genre. There are dragons, castles, knights, evil wights, red witches, shape-shifters – your basic Epic In An Imaginary World. So, if you’re thinking that you don’t like to read that sort of stuff, so you shouldn’t bother reading this series, I’m begging you – give it a try. You won’t be sorry.

These books are also about power, greed, lust, betrayal, love and corruption. Anyone who thought the Tudor dynasty was interesting will be blown away by the Starks and the Lannisters. This is, above all, nothing less than a struggle for control of all of Westeros, where the crown comes up for grabs and everyone wants it. The story is the star here, and it is sweeping, grand and very real. The war that is fought here is brutal, and favorite characters are killed off, brought back, make terrible decisions and suffer horrific consequences. No one is safe. I suggest you buy the paperbacks, so when your favorite character meets an unexpected end, you can throw them against the wall in anger and frustration without doing too much damage.

The cast of characters makes War and Peace look easy. There are families and Houses, kingdoms and alliances. Every character is beautifully drawn, and you love them, hate them, watch them change and grow, lose their heads and lose their honor, find love, power, and redemption. Just don’t get too attached. In Martin’s world, everything and everyone balances on the blade of a knife.

I galloped through the first four books, just in time for the release of the fifth. To be honest, I skimmed through most of the battle scenes. I don’t care about how the battle went, just who won and who was killed off. Apparently, there are two more volumes in the works, and it could be years before this mythical war comes to an end. Which really makes me angry, because I’m kind of a geek when it comes to books in a series. Take the Harry Potters – when each new book was released, I had to read the whole series from the very beginning before I would read the new one. So it looks like I’ll be re-reading ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ at least two more times, from Book One through to the final chapter. But that’s fine with me. I’m sure I missed a lot the first time around, because I could not wait to see what happened next. Now that I do know, I’ll be able to go through the first books at a slower pace. I’ll be able to enjoy the writing more, because these are very well written, and Martin has a great sense of language. I’ll be able to pay more attention to the details of time and place. Maybe I’ll even remember who all these characters are without having to refer to the cheat sheets author Martin so obligingly provides.

There is genre fiction, and there is great fiction. This is both. Please don’t let the ‘fantasy’ aspect of these books keep you from reading them. Good storytelling can live anywhere. Maybe there are those of you out there who wouldn’t read Young Adult until The Hunger Games came around. Maybe you didn’t care for vampires until Sookie Stackhouse fell in love with one. Well, here’s your opportunity to learn to love dragons, dwarves and evil queens. You won’t find a better chance than A Game Of Thrones.