Skipping Christmas
Imagine a year without
Christmas. No crowded malls, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no
unwanted presents. That’s just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind
when they decide that, just this once, they’ll skip the holiday
altogether. Theirs will be the only house on Hemlock Street without a
rooftop Frosty; they won’t be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash;
they aren’t even going to have a tree. They won’t need one, because come
December 25 they’re setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But, as this
weary couple is about to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous
consequences–and isn’t half as easy as they’d imagined.
A classic tale for modern times, Skipping Christmas offers a hilarious look at the chaos and frenzy that have become part of our holiday tradition.
MY REVIEW: "Skipping Christmas", by John Grisham, is an entertaining holiday tale
told in a sure, sly manner. This is the story of how Luther and Nora
Krank decide to have a radically different holiday when their daughter
leaves home to work for the Peace Corps in Peru. Members of a very
close-knit community who enthusiastically partake in all things
Christmas, the Kranks meet with much resistance to their getaway plan.
They tough it out though, with Luther fighting the good fight and Nora
going along for the ride. However, when their daughter Blair suddenly
announces that she not only will be home for the holidays, but will
bring along her new fiance', the Kranks have to ditch their dream cruise
and go into overdrive. Somehow, they must recreate their whole
traditional holiday celebrations in an insanely short amount of time. It
takes a village to pull it all off, and as grudges give way and fences
are mended, the spirit of the season is renewed. "Christmas with the
Kranks", starring Tim Allen as Luther, and Jamie Lee Curtis as Nora, is
the film version of "Skipping Christmas". I very much enjoyed both the
book and the film. Tim Allen is a funny guy, and Jamie Lee Curtis has
such great heart and appeal. The film stayed very true to the book,
which made them both even more enjoyable.
When their only daughter Blair leaves the family nest, Luther and Nora
Krank (Tim Allen and Jamie Lee Curtis) decide to book an island cruise
to beat the yuletide blues and just skip the holidays. But their
decision to boycott tradition has the whole neighborhood in an uproar,
and when Blair call son Christmas Eve to announce a surprise visit with
her new fiancée, the Kranks have just twelve hours to perform a miracle
and pull themselves and their neighbors together to throw the best
celebration ever! With fast-paced energy and support from Dan Aykroyd,
Cheech Marin, Jake Busey and M. Emmet Walsh, this hilarious adaptation
of John Grisham's best-selling novel, "Skipping Christmas" has become
"an instant family classic!" (Gorman Woodfin, CBN)
John
Grisham
"Long before his name became
synonymous with the modern legal thriller, he was working 60-70 hours a
week at a small Southaven, Mississippi law practice, squeezing in time
before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his
hobby—writing his first novel.
Born on February 8, 1955 in
Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John
Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player.
Realizing he didn't have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted
gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After
graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice
law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense
and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state
House of Representatives and served until 1990.
One day at the
DeSoto County courthouse, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a
twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring
what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her
assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of
writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A
Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many
publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a
modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.
That
might have put an end to Grisham's hobby. However, he had already begun
his next book, and it would quickly turn that hobby into a new full-time
career—and spark one of publishing's greatest success stories. The day
after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel,
the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law
firm that was not what it appeared. When he sold the film rights to The
Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became a hot
property among publishers, and book rights were bought by Doubleday.
Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm became
the bestselling novel of 1991.
The successes of The Pelican
Brief, which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and
The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham's reputation
as the master of the legal thriller. Grisham's success even renewed
interest in A Time to Kill, which was republished in hardcover by
Doubleday and then in paperback by Dell. This time around, it was a
bestseller.
Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988,
Grisham has written one novel a year (his other books are The Firm, The
Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury,
The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, A Painted
House, Skipping Christmas, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers,
The Last Juror, and The Broker) and all of them have become
international bestsellers. There are currently over 225 million John
Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 29
languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The
Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A
Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an
original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. The Innocent Man (October
2006) marks his first foray into non-fiction.
Grisham lives with
his wife Renee and their two children Ty and Shea. The family splits
their time between their Victorian home on a farm in Mississippi and a
plantation near Charlottesville, VA.
Grisham took time off from
writing for several months in 1996 to return, after a five-year hiatus,
to the courtroom. He was honoring a commitment made before he had
retired from the law to become a full-time writer: representing the
family of a railroad brakeman killed when he was pinned between two
cars. Preparing his case with the same passion and dedication as his
books' protagonists, Grisham successfully argued his clients' case,
earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
When
he’s not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including
most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.8 million
dollars for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He also
keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of
being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little
League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have
played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams.
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