*hey there, it's christa*: Yes, I Finally Got Around to Reading...

When it comes to those "it" books that everyone seems to be reading, I'm usually a little late to the party. And the same holds true for Kathryn Stockett's The Help, which everyone has been oohing and aahing about since it released in 2009.

For whatever reason (and it had nothing to do with the quality, mind you), I'd read a few pages here and there and then moved on to something else. But since the big-screen version of The Help is hitting theaters soon, I wanted to be prepared for the forthcoming film vs. novel debate if I ended up reviewing the movie for Crosswalk. So I decided to finally finish it once and for all.

And wow, I'm sure glad I did...

Not only is The Help quite the page-turner from a pure storytelling perspective, but it was the sort of book where the three-dimensional characters really began feeling like family. Stockett does such a wonderful job of setting the scene and creating memorable, three-dimensional characters with unique voices and perspectives. In fact, if my own writing deadlines hadn't been looming, I probably would've finished in a couple of days rather than a week.

Plus, given that I wasn't alive during this particularly volatile moment in history, I was thankful for the perspective. My heart was just breaking for the maids and their families who lived through such hateful prejudice day in and day out, and reading was such a powerful reminder of where we've been as a nation, how far we've come and the challenges that still lie ahead with the issue of racism.

But like we've been told again and again, it only takes one person to make a significant difference, and I love that an awkwardly tall woman with uncontrollably frizzy hair named Skeeter was able to do that through the power of the written word. An aspiring journalist who hoped to write about something more substantial than simple household tips, she was encouraged by a Manhattan publishing company to tackle something of substance that mattered to her.

Even though she took quite a few risks by doing so, Skeeter decided to write about how black maids were treated by their white employees back in the early '60s—the good, the bad and the ugly. Naturally, this wasn't an easy subject for these women to open up about, considering they'd lose their jobs if their employers ever found out, but with persistence (and Skeeter never, ever gave up), their stories were eventually told in an anonymous book that really shook things up culturally.

To say much more would ruin it for anyone who late to the party like I was. But I will say this, if you were on the fence about reading, I'd definitely recommend it. I don't remember being this moved by something I've read in a good long while.

Don't you love how well-crafted fiction can do just that? Reading books like that definitely motivates me to keep writing, that's for sure.