Rating: 
Summary: Rivals "A Christmas Carol"
Review: The story is a keeper! The kind of story you want to read again. We will definitely see it again in the form of a Christmas movie for 2003 or 2004!
Rating: 
Summary: This book will only take you about an hour to read...
Review: ...and you will never get that hour back, unfortunately. This book is flat-out awful, and the message it was apparently intended to convey is: you have to celebrate the holidays exactly the same (expensive) way your small-minded neighbors do, or they will mock and ridicule you. Blatant consumerism.
Rating:
Summary: Skipping "Skipping Christmas"
Review: I thought this book had such potential. It started out with the unique and unheard of idea of skipping Christmas because of the expenses, busy shopping malls, phonyness and shallowness that our culture has turned Christmas into. I was really enjoying the story until Luther and his wife buckled under the pressure of their daughter coming home for the holidays and succumbed to the very idea that they were so against previous to her phone call. This was a big disappointment!
Rating:
Summary: SKIPPING CHRISTMAS is a must-read book!
Review: This is a WONDERFUL Christmas story. I checked the book out of the library earlier this year. I bought the audio CD from Amazon for my CD library this holiday season. Like Dicken's "Scrooge" and Seuss's "Grinch," this story is destined to become a holiday classic! This is a great read ANY time of the year!! JK
Rating: 
Summary: Read it now or you¿ll have to wait for next year
Review: This was my first Grisham novel, and I'm happy that I find he can write not only about though lawyers. Skipping Christmas ends up being a light and funny read, perfect for this season of the year. Luther Krunk has a very original idea, for this year, he and his wife will avoid all that crazyness -- a.k.a. Christmas-- that most of us have to face in December. Instead of sending cards, buying lots of food, inviting many people and having to prepare them a party, the Krunks will travel to a sunny and beautiful place. Well, sort of. Throughout the novel he will deny all the Christmas costumes, but later on... well, it is more or less what you are predicting from page one, but, in my opinion, that is where most charm of the novel is. Grisham deliveries a Christmas story with all you expect from it. He can easily talk about all that expectation we have in the days before December 25, the feeling that waiting for the party and preparing it is more exciting than the real thing. Plus, between the lines you can read that Christmas has changed a lot through years. It is much more about buying gifts and food, and trying to show how rich you are, rather than the of Christ itself. One last thing, I think this is the best time to read this novel, I don't think it works in the same way if you read it in, say, June or September. In order to really have fun, we must be in Christmas mood.
Rating:
Summary: Read it now or you will have to wait for next year
Review: This was my first Grisham novel, and I'm happy that I find he can write not only about tough lawyers. Skipping Christmas ends up being a light and funny read, perfect for this season of the year. Luther Krunk has a very original idea, for this year, he and his wife will avoid all that crazyness -- a.k.a. Christmas-- that most of us have to face in December. Instead of sending cards, buying lots of food, inviting many people and having to prepare them a party, the Krunks will travel to a sunny and beautiful place. Well, sort of. Throughout the novel he will deny all the Christmas costumes, but later on... well, it is more or less what you are predicting from page one, but, in my opinion, that is where most charm of the novel is. Grisham deliveries a Christmas story with all you expect from it. He can easily talk about all that expectation we have in the days before December 25, the feeling that waiting for the party and preparing it is more exciting than the real thing. Plus, between the lines you can read that Christmas has changed a lot through years. It is much more about buying gifts and food, and trying to show how rich you are, rather than the birth of Christ itself. One last thing, I think this is the best time to read this novel, I don't think it works in the same way if you read it in, say, June or September. In order to really have fun, we must be in Christmas mood.
Rating: 
Summary: Missed it's mark
Review: I was instantly [pulled] into the book when I sat down to read it. However, the more I read the more it seemed predictable, and at the same time lost it's way. I was hoping for a better ending, but instead got exactly what I thought would happen. It seemed Mr. Grisham couldn't think of any other way to end it, or forgot where he was originally headed with this book. It could have made such an impression on people if he had stuck with his idea, but instead he bent to what our culture deems normal....putting the Frosty up on the roof..God forbid we do anything else by our own free will. Too Bad.
Rating:
Summary: light Christmas diversion.
Review: This book is a nice fast read about the yearly insanity known as Christmas. The books subject matter and length should be enough to tell anyone to expect nothing that smacks of Grisham's thrillers. After sending their daughter off to Brazil The Krank's decide to go on a cruise instead of observe the yearly rituals and trouble ensues. As far as I was concerned there is no great insight here it's just a light deversion. I do not see it as a lesson on how to observe christmas or the making of a case for not observing it at all. Just a good book to spend a little time with.
Rating:
Summary: A modern Christmas tale that delivers...
Review: Grisham delivers a modern Christmas tale that is fun, quirky and delivers it's moral message with a perfect touch!!
This is the story of an accountant and his wife and what happens in their lives when they decide that they would like to do something different from their traditional Christmas celebration.They choose instead to celebrate by going on a cruise with the money not spent on their traditional Christmas celebration. While they acknowledge the importance of the birth of Christ, they have decided not to decorate, do gifts or the myriad other things people do during the Christmas season. As they strive to accomplish their goal, the pressure they get from their friends, neighbors and co-workers mounts steadily, yet they stay strong in their resolve. Manners evaporate and kindness seems to be in short supply on all sides. Feelings are bent and bruised and attitudes take a turn for the worse!
Suddenly an unexpected event occurs and the manner is which Grisham works out the situation is wonderful. This is a terrific Christmas story that shows the importance of tolerance, friendship, faith and generosity.
Rating:
Summary: A yuppie suburbanite's dream come true
Review: Did John Grisham really write this piece of ill-conceived, unrealistic, cheesy, made-for-the-WB nonsense? I had to double-check the jacket to make sure. This is not only completely unlike John Grisham, it's completely unlike anything fit to publish. It amazes me how anyone can possibly rate this trite drivel as "the best Christmas story ever", or "utterly hilarious." One other reviewer commented on how true-to-life this book is. What world is THAT guy living in? This warm and fuzzy yuppie community *might* have existed in some vaguely similar form in a 1920's rural town, but not in the present. And the utterly inane deus ex machina ending only serves to drive home the point that the story had no direction in the first place. The concept is inspired and creative, but falls by the wayside to instead reinforce a standard and fluffy peace-on-earth-good-will-towards-men moral by the end. The idea of skipping out on Christmas is not really that weird, and the fact that an entire community would arise in an outraged uproar over one family's choice to forgo the celebration is so absurd it borders on lunacy. Add to that the fact that the two main characters are one-dimensional and completely undeveloped, and all the supporting cast members serve absolutely no purpose other than for scorn and ridicule, and you have a story that could literally make you angry while reading it. Where to start? Luther's change of heart in the last chapter doesn't make sense (Counting his blessings? WHAT blessings? All your neighbors ridicule you because you don't do what they do!). Nora's completely ... behavior throughout the story doesn't make sense (not to mention the fact that she turns on her husband in literally one second and is suddenly just as bad as the rest of the cruel neighbors). Not even their daughter falling in love with a Peruvian doctor in one week makes sense. First of all, in this day and age, the community's response wouldn't happen as it does in the book. Why? Because, honestly, NO ONE CARES THAT MUCH about other people's personal business. Half my neighborhood could skip out on the holiday and I would never even know, let alone care. Other people's business is other people's business; it's ridiculous to think that an entire community could exist anywhere in the universe where every single man, woman, and child becomes enraged because one man decides not to decorate his chimney with a huge plastic snowman. What's truly odd is that other characters who are mentioned in passing have what would be considered unconventional plans for the holiday, yet no one seems to care about THEM. Luther's travel agent who books the cruise for him leaves for a resort in Mexico on Christmas Eve. Luther's next-door neighbors skip Christmas Day altogether to head up to a ski lodge for a week. Does anyone care that those people aren't sitting in their homes on Christmas day unwrapping Hallmark commercialism to "celebrate" the birth of the savior of the human race? Nope. This short story spanks the reader with the disgusting notion that your friends will turn against you, your wife will turn against you, the world will turn against you, if you don't conform to the masses. I couldn't finish this book fast enough, and you'd be well-advised to avoid it altogether. It took me two days of off and on reading to finish this book. I think it must have been written in a quarter of that time. It's appalling that John Grisham, an excellent author, could have penned this nonsense. It's even more appalling that so many people think it's a beautiful story. It just goes to show you that a celebrity could poop in a bag, call it gold, and sell it for a million dollars. Don't be fooled by the name on the book: this isn't John Grisham in any form that is fit to read or fit to have his name affixed to. "A Painted House" proved Grisham could write good fiction that isn't law-related. "Skipping Christmas" does a 360-degree turn and proves that Grisham CAN'T write fiction that isn't law-related. But even the writing style itself is trite and simplistic. It isn't enough that the plot and characters are absurd, they're not even well-written! If the book hadn't been so short, there is absolutely no way I would have read the entire thing. It really, truly is horrible. If this type of writing is the future of Grisham's career, maybe he should consider skipping novels and write scripts for "Dawson's Creek" and "Gilmore Girls" instead. You can't get much more unrealistic and inane than that.
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