Little Free Library: Recommending a Book

As part of my morning walks that have replaced morning swims, I’ve been making the rounds of the Little Free Libraries near me. There are about six that are easy to swing by regularly. I drop off books, see if anything has appeared I want to read, and tidy the shelves.

This book has been in this Little Free Library since March. I’ve read it, it’s the second of a multi-book series about a family living in California that begins with the San Francisco earthquake. I read the series in the 90s and really enjoyed it. The last book is memorable because there was a major typo near the end that had a character dying three weeks before the book killed her off.

Clearly the book’s presentation wasn’t turning any heads, so I wrote up a recommendation, added it to the book, and set the book front and center when I tidied.

Reporting from the future, I can tell you that even with my recommendation this book sat around for a few more months before it disappeared.

If you are interested in reading the series, the first book is called The Immigrants. I’ve just looked at the original cover of that book, and it has a similar style of cover, but with a half-naked woman among the mix. Apparently (and perhaps because of that?) The Immigrants was adapted into a miniseries in 1978.

Welcome to Me Was Not a Winner for Me

A picture of Kristen Wiig in the film Welcome to Me.

Welcome to Me

Directed by Shira Piven
Written by Eliot Laurence

The review:

I wasn’t having a great mental health day when I watched this film that attempts to find humor in a mental health crisis,* which made it hard to appreciate this story. Though it was packed with actors I’m always happy to see** and Kristen Wiig’s deadpan performance was exactly what the character needed, I think this movie is best left on the shelf. I suppose you could watch this for the set design, if you were into that.

The verdict: Skip

Cost: free via Kanopy, the Library’s streaming service.
Where watched: at home

Consider watching instead:

Interestingly, the National Alliance on Mental Illness lists Welcome to Me as a movie about mental illness that gets it right. Their other recommendations are:

Further sentences:

*It also had a layer of people taking advantage of a person experiencing a mental health crisis, so I suspect I wouldn’t have liked this even on my best mental health days. I’m not a fan of stories where a person’s weaknesses are exploited for someone else’s material gain.
**Kristen Wiig! Wes Bentley! Linda Cardellini! Joan Cusack! Loretta Devine! Jennifer Jason Leigh! I’m even happy to see James Marsden! Plus both Tim Robbins and Alan Tudyk were in this.

Questions:

  • What parts of Alice’s life rang true to you?
  • What do you think is the best film that depicts an aspect of mental illness.

Favorite IMDB trivia item:

The actress playing Kristen Wiig’s mother is actually director Shira Piven’s mother.

Other reviews of Welcome to Me:

Orange background with text: Come with me. Into another time that happened to me. —Welcome to Me. Read the three sentence movie review. 3SMReviews.com

My Vision, Manifested

As I walk around my neighborhood, I make plans for the houses I encounter. The tiny house in this picture, I’ve always planned to buy, move into, and then use the huge open space in the lot to grow a million vegetables.

Mostly those plans are scrapped when the property is sold, the small house is torn down, and what is built leaves no room for gardening. You can see that has happened on the lot next door, where the blue house dominates.

So you can imagine my thrill when these marigolds appeared in this lot. It’s not oodles of vegetables, but it’s close.