Book Review: Schooled by Anisha Lakhani

What I'm Listening To: Any Way You Choose To Give It by The Black Ghosts

I love to read. I visit my neighborhood public library every week. (They should know my name by now, but they never greet me personally. Damn it! You'd think by now they would!!!)

If I see a book somewhere that I want to read, I don't even have to buy it. I usually go online and reserve it through the public library internet site where you can request that books be held and sent to your own neighborhood library...for free! How sweet is that?

So, I have just finished this pretty interesting novel, and I thought I'd share it with you, bc hey, it's super book. Ha!

You know, with all the "Gosh, aren't those wacky upper east side New Yorkers' a trip?" books that have flooded the literary market in the past couple years, you'd think that the genre would just peter out somehow by now, huh? Not a chance. I've read "The Nanny Diaries", and "The Devil Wears Prada" (and seen the movies, duh!), and practically every other book with a primary plot line that consists of "look at these big city weirdos but you're jealous, right?". And I am rarely bored with the freaky "wow, we've got a ton of cash and more panache and style in our earwax than you have in your whole body" women that seem to inhabit these books. From the high-end clothing/accessory references to the hot celeb gossip and whatever other junk they pack into these books, I'm hooked. It's pretty pathetic, but I'm a sucker for a dropped name.

Okay, I'm getting to the point here, prom! Recently found another fun New Yorkers and their freaky lives book, albeit with lots of designer labels thrown in and little tidbits of gossip about what these richrichrich people like to do with their kids. It's called "Schooled", by Anisha Lakhani. It was pretty good, and I came to that conclusion because I read it in like, two days. And I wasn't rolling my eyes every other chapter, or tossing it down on the floor after 3 pages. That's about 90% of my personal reading experiences with new books I pick up off the shelf at the library. Sad.

In fact, I actually liked the main character, Anna Taggert, and her descent into her educational and emotional hell. See, she's a newbie teacher at a swanky private school, and it turns out that the teaching habits at these said private schools are a little more "progressive" than she's used to. Little Robin and Ryan Rich New Yorker have tutors who do their homework for them, can you believe it? So Anna has to go to hell and back to get her own integrity back regarding the situation. This book did pull out some of the worst novelistic cliches, and I'll be honest I wasn't sure if Anna was going to end up showing us her gleaming heart of gold or just descend further into her own dark hell of broken rules and guilty birdseed, but in the end Anna comes to a happy conclusion everybody is happyhappyhappy! Bc that's how Hollywood likes it!!!

See you at the movies, Anisha! (or should I say, Anna?) :)