Thanksgiving Prep

Yes, Thanksgiving really is almost here, but there is more to prepare than the turkey and pumpkin pie. We need to get ready to enter a whole new season, and a book or movie from the library could be just the thing to help. Here are a few of each that feature Thanksgiving:

Books

Thanksgiving Night – Richard Bauch

The story is set in the small Virginia valley town of Point Royal in 1999. The novel is a touching and empathetic portrayal of family: the one we have, and the ones we make. The people who populate these pages are flawed, wounded, stubborn, willful, scarred, often wildly eccentric, and all searching, in one way or another, for love.

The Lay of the Land – Richard Ford

After his second wife leaves him and he has been diagnosed with cancer, Frank Bascomb tries to bring his family together for Thanksgiving weekend.

Dear James – John Hassler

“In this warm, uplifting, wryly humorous novel, the town's moral conscience, Miss Agatha McGee, takes the entire population on an adventure of truthfulness, charity, and forgiveness that no … reader will soon forget." The book starts with a funny lonely hearts Thanksgiving dinner scene, during which Miss Agatha wonders how she will ever survive her retirement from teaching with only the support of the strange assortment of semi-functional friends gathered around her table.

“The Thanksgiving Visitor” – Truman Capote (in The Complete Stories of Truman Capote)

In this beloved story, based on Capote’s childhood memories, narrator Buddy tells the story of the Thanksgiving his eccentric cousin invited Buddy’s sworn enemy to share the meal with them.

Patchwork Planet – Anne Tyler

This book includes a disastrous, funny Thanksgiving potluck meal as a key scene.

Audiobook

Thanksgiving - Janet Evanovich
When Megan Murphy discovered a floppy-eared rabbit gnawing on the hem of her skirt, she meant to give its careless owner, Dr. Patrick Hunter, a piece of her mind. But soon the two are making Thanksgiving dinner together.

Movies:

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Neal Page (Steve Martin) wants to fly home to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Del Griffith (John Candy) leads Page on a hilarious, cross-country, wild goose chase that keeps him from tasting his turkey.

Home for the Holidays 

Claudia Larson (Holly Hunter) is a divorced single mom who just lost her job and now has to fly home for the traditional family Thanksgiving in Baltimore. From the plane, she calls her brother Tommy (Robert Downey Jr.), who makes it down from Boston with a little surprise: a handsome friend named Leo. Between dropping the turkey in their sister's lap and a few fist fights on the front lawn, Claudia and Tommy recapture their childhood and Claudia and Leo explore the sweet possibility of romance.

Pieces of April 
Family outcast April (Katie Holmes) lives in a beat-up apartment in New York's Lower East Side with her boyfriend, Bobby. In order to spend some time with her dying mother, April invites her conservative suburban family to her place for a Thanksgiving feast. While she frantically tries to complete the meal, the family drives in from Pennsylvania sharing less-than-pleasant opinions about April's lifestyle. Her dad tries to think positively, while sister Beth flaunts her good-girl status and brother Timmy captures it all on film.

An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving
Things are so bad for recently widowed farmer Mary Bassett and her three children that this Thanksgiving they may not even be able to afford a turkey for their dinner. Suddenly, Mary's wealthy and estranged mother Isabella (Jacqueline Bisset) comes for a visit.

The New World

Set amidst the first encounter of European and Native American cultures during the founding of the Jamestown settlement, this movie 

tells the classic tale of Pocahontas (Q'orianka Kilcher) and her relationship with adventurer John Smith (Colin Farrell).

The Blind Side
Michael Oher is a homeless African-American teenager who is from a broken home. Mike is taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential.