Thursday, January 7, 2010

A horrible book…

Okay, by now you’ve probably figured out that I LOVE books… I often read psychology or self-help books… Regardless of my past, I’ve been able to read books that may be triggering without problems. My therapist always recommends I DON’T read books about abuse, self-injury, and trauma, because it could be triggering… but I’ve always gone against his wisdom and read them anyway… NEVER had an issue… LOVE these kinds of books. I love them mostly because they give me strength to keep on keepin’ on… But, yesterday I read the book “Push” By Sapphire. The new movie “Precious” (not being shown in Idaho) is based on this book. It is a book about a “learning challenged” student who is raped by her father and births 2 children before 16. I won’t go into details, but it is a GRAPHIC book. I didn’t think it would be too bad, I mean… they made a movie out of it, so how bad could it be?? BAD! This book is triggering!!! I had to finish reading it, because… well, I started it. But it was horrible. It was sad and disturbing and awful. I don’t know HOW in the world they would ever make a movie out of it. I hated the book. It was 10 times worse than “The Color Purple” (which was pretty dang sad!) So, I give it a 7/10 on writing quality, but a 1/10 for substance. Blah!

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P.S. It is COLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLD! It was –19 this morning… It has to be –20 to get out of school/work… and trust me, our superintendent is a STICKLER about it… So we were at work today. I hope tomorrow is EVEN colder so I can SLEEP IN!!! :)

1 comment:

runnermom said...

I saw the movie. I'm sure it wasn't as terribly graphic as the book. But it was more than enough. I was certainly distressed as I watched, knowing that the movie portrayed horrors that girls and women live through every day.

I wondered whether the way the film cut back and forth between Precious' fantasies and her horrific flashbacks undercut the horror to a point where a film audience could just shrug it all off when they left the theater. Was the book like that?

As someone interested in "achievement gap" problems in public schools, I was really intrigued by that angle of the story. I perhaps let messages and thoughts on that subject overpower the more personally disturbing messages about domestic violence.