It's been awhile since I've done some book reviews but I've been reading some good ones lately. Incidentally all of these are also movies which I have (almost all) seen so I'll touch on that as well.
Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kauffman- oh man, this book is incredible. It's about a first-year teacher at an inner-city New York City school and is a must read for every teacher. I empathized with absolutely everything- the ridiculous bureaucracy of schools; slightly incompetent administration; the banding together of teachers and their mutual disdain of other teachers; ridiculous memos and meetings for no reason; real lack of supplies; bizarre suggestions in the suggestion box that are anonymous but you can totally tell who wrote them; the most awful papers that you don't know where to begin with the grading. These things are funny but at the same time you also really feel for Sylvia who quickly gets discouraged. I was right there with her so many times, especially when you teach the lower-level students. You do everything that you can in your power to motivate, inspire, encourage them, and they still don't come to class or everything seems to go in one year and out one ear. To be honest, I'm not exactly finished with this book yet but I'm more than 3/4 of the way through and absolutely love it and know I will read it many more times.
I haven't seen the movie but it's on my Netflix and I can't wait to see what they've done with this hilarious and too close to the truth story.
I watched the movie first and don't remember too much about it but I did enjoy Michelle Williams and Ewan McGregor in these two roles of the unnamed narrator and Jasper Black. Incendiary is a novel-length letter to Osama bin Landen written by this unnamed narrator who has lost her husband and her four year old son in a huge terrorist attack at the Emirates Stadium at a Arsenal/Chelsea game. Her sadness is compounded by the guilt that she feels about sleeping with Jasper while the attack was happening. To try and make up for this guilt, she starts to work at the Met and dig into what happened in this huge terrorist attack. As a very scary side-note, this book came out of 7/7, the day of one of the largest terrorist attacks in Britain when several Underground stations were bombed. I don't want to reveal too much but this is a very cleverly written book and I really liked the idea that it was a letter to Osama. There's a lot of stream of consciousness writing within this letter and I really liked the unnamed narrator. Now with Osama bin Laden dead, it's got an new interesting twist. I really wonder how the narrator would react to this news....
Never has one book made me switch back and forth between laughing and crying so often. O Jerusalem (not the Laurie King one) is a nearly minute-by-minute account of what happens in Palestine/Israel after the UN Vote to Partition, through the end of the British Mandate and the creation of the State of Israel to the end of the War of Independence. The authors took their information from one-on-one interviews, documents, meetings with wives of big names, etc and so there is a lot of personal experience. They also equally interviewed Jews and Arabs so there are so parts that I really didn't like reading about. Some of the things that the Jews did to the Palestinians were tough to read but on the other hand, there were also times when I cheered, beamed with pride and got excited about the triumphs of my family (sometimes literally- Uzi was mentioned frequently!). Of course, at the same time, there were also some parts that choked me up or made me cry. When I read about a son returning years later to make a life for his family at Kfar Etzion where his parents had been killed, I lost it. At some places it's a little over dramatic but the pacing is wonderful, you never get bored about what is happening next or where the story is going. Plus, it all happened!
As for the movie, well, it's not a high budget film at all and so the acting isn't great but again, the heart behind the story is there and I was sobbing by the end. Plus, they are pretty easy on the eyes...
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