The End of Your Life Book Club and Mr. Banks

We’ve had a very pleasant week in Southern California but are headed home on Monday, back to the snows of Alberta, Canada, Bah! With New Year’s coming up, I’ve been thinking of what my reading resolutions will be this year, and I think I would like to: (a) read more from my own shelves or the library instead of buying more books; (b) read more nonfiction in 2014; and (c) read more international fiction authors. So we will see how I do with this. I would also like to boost my reading output in 2014, keeping up a book a week would be fine but I don’t want to slack off in the middle of the year, or get bogged down and lose focus!

This week I finished Will Schwalbe’s 2012 nonfiction book “The End of Your Life Book Club.” It’s written by a son about his mother (Mary Anne Schwalbe) and the book discussions they have while she is undergoing chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer. The book club is just the two of them and includes discussions about books mostly that I had read or knew of, which made it more enjoyable. It’s a book that should attract bibliophiles, being about a book club and all.

But it’s also about the mother’s life and her work, their family and her medical journey at the end. She was quite a remarkable woman as you learn while you read it. She worked on behalf of refugees all over the world with the Women’s Refugee Commission, and helped in the refugee camps in various places such as Afghanistan, Liberia, Sudan, and Thailand. Earlier she had been an educator and director of admissions at Harvard and Radcliffe.

His mother had quite admirable principles and really knew what was important in life. The book’s a moving tribute to her in the last two years of her life. I found her to be an inspiration and the book a valuable lesson on various aspects of life. It’s sad but not too dark, and uplifting in an inspirational way. For anyone who’s lost a loved one to cancer (as my husband and I did when his mother passed away earlier this year), you will recognize the heart strings pulled throughout these pages.

Another poignant story is the movie “Saving Mr. Banks,” which we saw yesterday. It’s excellent and based on a true story about P.L. Travers, the author of “Mary Poppins,” and the making of the film adaptation of her novel by Walt Disney in 1961.

Emma Thompson plays the fussy P.L. Travers, who doesnt want to cede control over her creation to the filmmakers, and Tom Hanks plays Walt Disney who tries to persuade her to let go of it. Interspersed with their meetings in Hollywood, Travers has flashbacks to her painful childhood in Australia, where it becomes obvious in time where her character of Mary Poppins comes from, and why Travers is like she is.

“Saving Mr. Banks” is an immensely entertaining film, at times a bit funny and sad, a look at old Hollywood, its creation of the musical “Mary Poppins” film that won five Academy Awards, and its two icons. Although Disney comes off a bit too unscathed in the movie, P.L. Travers appears quite disagreeable. Apparently she was even more prickly in real life than pictured in this and never really liked Disney’s film of her book. She was especially against his use of animation for it.

What about you — have you seen or read either of these? And do you have some reading resolutions for 2014?