Dear John

May I just say, Nicholas Sparks is one of my favorite authors as of a few months ago. I first read a Walk To Remember and absolutely fell in love with him. I've only cried that hard while reading in a couple of books. I then proceeded to read The Last Song, which, was absolutely stunning. And following that, The Notebook.
Now, keep in mind, he is STILL one of my favorite authors.
I just finished reading Dear John. I HATED the movie. It was a huge disappointment to say the least. I hated the ending. I hated the choices they made. I hated so many things about the movie. But I had a friend tell me that she loved the book and that I should give it a chance.
I was already planning on reading it, but I wanted the movie to be fresh in my mind while reading it.
Usually, I find books to be by far better than the movies they loosely base their stories off of.
And I did give it a chance, but it was still a fail.
Now, I liked the book more than the movie...but only marginally. They changed a lot of things in the movie that would have made it so much better. They never try to get his dad to go to a party. They don't have sex in a barn. John Tyree doesn't get shot in Iraq.
And this is a story ruiner...so skip down the part after the big break if you don't want to know.
Tim tells John in the hospital to take care of Savannah after he is gone, effectively giving John permission to go right on ahead after Tim is gone. John realizes the gigantic thing he is getting into. And not that he doesn't want it...but he doesn't want to break up a marriage. He realizes what an important thing that is and he doesn't want to get in the way of that. So, John sells all of this dad's coin collection and gives it to an attorney to give to Savannah and Tim.
Tim recovers for the most part and they move on with their lives. They never see each other at a cafe years later, supposing that Tim had died.
That would have made a much better ending to this attempt and a heart wrencher.






BUT, the book did have one redeeming quality. It had this amazing quote. And here it is.

"He sounds interesting. I've always loved people who have this...passion for life."
"It's a passion for coins, not life." I corrected her.
It's the same thing. Passion is passion. It's the excitement between the tedious spaces, and it doesn't matter where it's directed." She shuffled her feet in the sand. "Well, most of the time, anyway. I'm not talking vices here."
"Like you and caffeine."
She smiled, flashing the small gap between her two front teeth. "Exactly. It can be coins or sports or politics or horses or music or faith...the saddest people I've ever met in life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all. Passion and satisfaction go hand in hand, and without them, any happiness is only temporary, because there's nothing to make it last. I'd love to hear your dad talk about coins, because that's when you see a person at his best, and I've found that someone else's happiness is usually infectious."

And the movie did have one redeeming quality as well.
Channing Tatum.