OT Have you read the book "The Help"?

I just got finished reading the book "the Help"  it was a really good book.  I saw the commercial during the BET awards for the movie ( http://www.facebook.com/thehelpmovie) that will be released soon and it struck my interest so I purchased the book and could not put it down.  Here is an excerpt from the net:

Synopsis

Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.

Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.

Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.

Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.

In pitch-perfect voices, Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women--mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends--view one another. A deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope, The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don't.
 

Copyright © 2010 Kathryn Stockett

Read it and loved the characters.
Recently found out that the author was at a book signing in my state at an elite white country club and only members could attend. That is very disturbing to me and the info came from a reliable sourse.

 Guess the author missed the irony of this situation? 

I'm looking forward to the movie & may read the book after, as I'm too much of a critic & would not truely enjoy the movie if I did so before...BUT, smh at the author putting herself in a modern day situation on the very thing the book is about!

I haven't read it yet but you have definitely wet my appetite for it.  Thanx.
Z

 I will definitely have to look into this.  Sounds very interesting.

I saw the previews and it looks like a must see, but I think I wanna read the book before going to see the movie.  Does anyone know the movie release date?

Click on the link above to see the movie trailer which has the release date I don't remember the exact date but it's sometime in August

August 12th

Thanks.  I picked up the book from Sams Club yesterday so I should have plenty of time to fini**** before Aug 12th

I went to target and walmart and could not find this book. I will have to go to boarders and find it. I must read it before I see the movie.