This is even better then the movie, even better then listening to Shep tell the story yearly on his radio show. If you enjoyed the movie you really owe it to yourself to give this a read.


The fight

I had woven a tapestry of obscenity that as far as I know is still hanging in space over Lake Michigan. And my mother had heard!

Santa

Every evening immediately after supper we would pile into the car and drive downtown for that great annual folk rite, that most ecstatic, golden, tinseled, quivering time of all kidhood: Christmas shopping.

The lamp

That night, for the first time, our home had a Night Light. The living room was bathed through the long, still, silent hours with the soft glow of electric Sex.

Every Christmas the husbeast puts this movie on for all to see, on replay, all day.
So, when no one had a December pick for our book club: Ralphie to the rescue!


Or not.


Ralphie's rolling narration fills the house with background noise as we go about our day until I cry "Uncle, Uncle!" and we get to listen to something else.
I do enjoy the movie, a leg lamp (a, blessedly, smaller version that is) sits in our living room during the holiday season.
The book was, sadly, a bit of a miss for me. This disappointment was due mainly to then inevitable comparison of book to movie throughout the experience.
The timeline is slightly skewed and one of the biggest events (the Bumpuses dogs vs. the turkey) was drastically changed to an Easter Ham. (Ralphie's mother has very questionable safe food handing practices I must say.)
There was a sizeable section about the Bumpuses, giving us an unsavory taste of how it was to live next to them.
The focus of the book was less on the 'Christmas season' and more on how it was to be a kid growing up during the depression. Not exactly what I was going for in this read.
For seasonal reading you only get about 50 pages, the rest are off topic. I did not enjoy the jumps to 'Ralphie now' (or Jean) during the story. I don't feel that they added anything at all to the book.

It was a cute read but I wouldn't necessarily suggest it again for holiday reading.

Now, off to find some more 'Christmas Spirit'!

Marvelous! I had never read Jean Shepherd. I've barely SEEN the movie A Christmas Story. I knew it involved a BB gun, a leg lamp, and "shooting your eye out." This is actually a series of short stories about Shepherd's childhood with his gruff father, stay-at-home mom, and younger brother.
Shepherd's writing is so rich with description. I loved this. Maybe I'll start a new Christmas tradition of listening to these delightful stories.
Oh, and the narrator was Dick Cavett. His reading added just the proper amount of ascerbicness to add to the humor.

The movie was better!

I had no idea the movie A Christmas Story was based on a book until I saw this while scrolling through Scribd.

If you love the movie, you'll love this book. There are a few differences from the movie (dogs ate the Easter Ham instead of the Christmas Turkey. It's very well written and I enjoyed consuming the same story in a different medium.

I am not a fan of the movie. I thought I’d give it a shot. The writing is actually technically good (sentence structure, word usage, grammar, etc) but I am so incredibly bored. Perhaps the movie is influencing my opinion of the book, but either way. I couldn’t get into it.

This book is a collection of short stories taken from the larger collection In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash by Jean Shepherd. These are the stories taken from In God We Trust to create A Christmas Story, the movie that has become a Christmas staple. One day, I intend to read the original book, but I picked this one up cheap at a bookstore so I could have at least part of it. Might make reading this a Christmas tradition as well.

My first interaction with the stories in this collection was in middle school. My English teacher read the Red Ryder story to our class right before Christmas break. I don't remember if it was that year or the next that I first saw the movie, but I know it was soon after. I've watched it every year since.

Here we have the Red Ryder story, the tale of the leg lamp (which makes a bit more sense after reading that the company giving away the prize used that leg as its logo), the fight with Grover Dill (who was the little toady to Scut Farkas in the movie), and the story of the Bumpuses (much more involved and taking place at Easter, not Christmas, originally).

Even if you've never seen A Christmas Story before (but if you haven't, what's wrong with you?), you will enjoy this collection of stories that are perfect slices of Americana during the Great Depression. Shepherd paints such a vivid word picture, it's no wonder someone wanted to turn these tales into a movie.

I really liked the book, but I enjoyed the movie more. The movie tells more of a cohesive story, while the book is a memoir of events that don't exactly tie together . . . I was surprised that the Bumpus hounds stole the Easter ham, not the Christmas turkey in the book. And the wonderful scene is the Chinese restaurant where they have the roast duck is not in the book at all. It was fun to read, though, and the author's storytelling is strong.

While a very nicely written and classic-sounding audio book, this is one case where I say "WATCH THE MOVIE." The familiar movie plot is all here as originally intended, but there's just something about that wide-eyed, bespectacled young boy and the interweaving comedic plot that works better on screen.

- The movie narrator is superior. Albeit the audio book reader is good, too, adequately speaking of a time lost to modern children.
- The movie feels more Christmas-y (Maybe b/c it IS more Christmas-y. In the book, the story about the neighbor's dogs actually takes place at EASTER time, and it is also the story that concludes the book. Just like that. The fact that the movie ends with the receiving of the gun is such a wonderful touch and more appropriate closure.)
- The characters simply come to life on screen. The father, mother, siblings, everyone... In the book, they all... well, they all just sound like the narrator.

All in all, I never thought I'd appreciate the movie A Christmas Story as much as I do now - but I do. And with this new-found appreciation, I am so glad it's the holidays once again and I can watch it as much as I wish without feeling guilty (aka. weird.)

"A Christmas Story" is my all time favorite holiday movie. Christmas hasn't begun until TBS starts it's 24-hour marathon. So, I was a little surprised when I read this. Not only is this basically a collection of essays, but a lot of the popular scenes and phrases in the movie are not within the book's content. Yes, we have the red rider bb gun, the leg lamp, the Bumpuses, but Hollywood added in a lot of familiar details. In addition, the book's timeline isn't set only in December leading up to Christmas, it's year round. I found that to be really interesting. All in all, it was an enjoyable read.

I love Jean Shepherd's reminiscences on his childhood in the steel mill country of northern Indiana. This grouping of stories, originally published in In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash, were cobbled together to create the script for the classic 1983 movie A Christmas Story. Watching this has become an annual ritual for many of us. Shepherd's humor is laugh out loud and his writing is so vivid that you can picture the scene even if you've never seen the movie. If you are a fan of the movie, reading these can be disorienting because they provided the fodder for the movie, but are not exactly like the movie nor presented in the same order. But don't let that stop you from listening or reading these stories. They are likely to transport you to you to your own childhood; the themes are universal even if you didn't grow up in the Great Depression in northern Indiana.

Not only were "Shep's" stories published in books, he had a radio show on WOR, New York City, in the 1960's-70's where he read his stories. When I lived in Chicago in the 1970's, WBEZ the local NPR outlet, played his radio show at 6:30 in the morning. For a couple of years, I woke up in a good mood having listened to these programs before getting out of bed. Such a great way to start the day.

I listened to Dick Cavett narrate this book and thought he did not hold a candle to Jean Shepherd. His narration lacked the type of pacing and energy needed to bring this to life and the included sound effects were sometimes distracting. You can hear Jean Shepherd read the central story that became A Christmas Story here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkicE...

As a side note, two other films were made from Jean's stories. Phantom of the Open Hearth, his experience working in the steel mills as a teen, and The Great American 4th of July. Both highly recommended.

The writing style is great. I really enjoyed reading the stories that created one of my favorite Christmas movies.