A beloved, bestselling classic of humorous and nostalgic Americana—the book that inspired the equally classic Yuletide film and the live musical on Fox.
The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family’s typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It’s a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.
This edition of A Christmas Story gathers together in one hilarious volume the gems of autobiographical humor that Jean Shepherd drew upon to create this enduring film. Here is young Ralphie Parker’s shocking discovery that his decoder ring is really a device to promote Ovaltine; his mother and father’s pitched battle over the fate of a lascivious leg lamp; the unleashed and unnerving savagery of Ralphie’s duel in the show with the odious bullies Scut Farkas and Grover Dill; and, most crucially, Ralphie’s unstoppable campaign to get Santa—or anyone else—to give him a Red Ryder carbine action 200-shot range model air rifle. Who cares that the whole adult world is telling him, “You’ll shoot your eye out, kid”?
The pieces that comprise A Christmas Story, previously published in the larger collections In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories, coalesce in a magical fashion to become an irresistible piece of Americana, quite the equal of the film in its ability to warm the heart and tickle the funny bone.
3.5 stars
Like many others watching a Christmas story is a Christmas must each year, so when I found out it was a book I knew I needed to read it.
A Christmas Story follows Ralphie like the movie does in the lead up to Christmas, however, this book follows him after and the majority of what happens in the movie happens after Christmas in this book.
After I got past that part of the story I enjoyed it and was able to separate the two a little bit from each other.
Overall the book was enjoyable and was pretty close to the movie besides things being out of order. I will say we get to see far more of the neighbors and why they were so frustrating to live next to. I can't wait for the holidays now and to be able to watch the movie again on Christmas eve.
Reading updates
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5 August, 2020:
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5 August, 2020:
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