How to be Single – March’s Book and Movie Review

Dorlana Vann ♦ March 26, 2016 ♦ Leave a comment

Quick Book/Movie Summary:

Novel – by Liz Tuccillo (summary from Amazon) How to Be Single is about one woman’s attempts to navigate a world filled with ever-evolving definitions of love.

Movie – Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein, and Dana Fox (Summary from Rotten Tomatoes) A young woman searches for love in New York City in this romantic comedy…

Book/Movie Club Set Up:

Our group (women ages 23-47) pick a book that has been made into a movie. We read the book and then get together for thematic food, to discuss the book, and then to watch the movie.

On the menu:

Each of us are to bring either a drink, dessert and/or appetizer and it is fun to use the story for inspiration. This month, we changed it up a bit (again) by going to eat at Onion Creek in Houston to discuss the book, and then going to the movies to watch the film. We had cocktails afterwards – to discuss the movie, of course. Below is the spread for both pre-movie and post-movie.

Food: French Fries, Onion rings, cheese sticks, Chips and chile con queso, cheeseburger, chili dog, artichoke and feta pizza

Drinks: Craft Beer, Bud Light, Margaritas, Long Island Ice Tea

Thoughts about the Book:

The book was okay. It was kind of depressing, the characters were cliché, and one of the single women in our group called it total bullshit.

But there were some interesting parts and characters who we liked more than others. One person mentioned how she was glad that it wasn’t all tied up with a pretty bow at the end.

To me, it started out slow but picked up interest in the middle.

Oh, and we had some alternate titles:

“How to get Laid While Single”

“How to get Laid While Single, Around the World”

“Men are Jerks”

“How to Validate Yourself Based Solely on your Romantic Relationship”

“How to Validate Yourself Based Solely on your Romantic Relationship, Around the World”

Thoughts about the Movie:

Everyone liked the movie better than the book, which is really unusual.

Normally, we are trying to figure out the differences in the movie from the book but this time we had to rack our brains to come up with things that were the same – Completely different story. And we were trying to figure out why they would they even say it was inspired by the book – they didn’t even use the same characters. (I think it was just so they could use the names of her other bestsellers and movie hits.)

The movie was funny (laugh-out-loud parts), had a nice balance of sweet/sad scenes, and I think it had a deeper meaning of being single than the book had. I would call it a relationship comedy instead of a romantic comedy.

But of course, all movies have their issues – One lady from our group had an alternate title for the movie: “How to be Comfortable with Yourself if you’re Affluent, White, Educated, and Heterosexual.”

The Girly Discussions:

We thought how nice it would be to be able to jump up at any time and travel around the world just like the characters in the book. (The movie stayed in New York)

We wondered if Liz Tuccillo (author) really traveled around the world to research for the book or only used her creative license to make stuff up.

Some of us thought the men in the movie were a little too much on the sweet side (although we did like most of them), and the men in the book were complete jerks.

Interesting Discoveries:

Liz Tuccillo did do actual research! “For the research for this book, she traveled to eight different countries interviewing single men and woman. She had a really great time.”

Well, that makes the book even more depressing …

The Group’s Average ratings:

Book: 3.5 glasses of beer out of 5

Movie: 4 glasses of beer out of 5

The bottom line:

I saw the trailer for the movie before I read the book so I might have been expecting more of a comedy instead of a woman on a mission to find out how all the single women in the world are faring. And I was actually happy that the movie was nothing like the book.

Next month’s Book and Movie:

Drive by James Sallis

Love and Laughter,

Dorlana