Angle 1:
For my unit 3 book, I read Down Around Midnight by Robert Sabbag.  This book is a memoir.  This book is about the life of the author during and after the airplane crash of Air New England flight 248.  It digs into his meet ups with the survivors of the crash, the first responders of the crash scene and the times his has spent at the FAA/ NTSB place.  Robert Sabbag uses the pronoun “I” a lot.  In fact, in almost every line that is about him, he will use “I” because this is a memoir.  Memoirs are in the category of non fiction but not exactly fit the category of autobiography.  That is what makes a memoir different; they go into the life of the person in that specific time period.  
Robert writes in an interesting way.  He uses a technique I saw in my last book I read, Airport by Arthur Hailey.  He uses this technique called ‘pot boiler’.  “The flight was an hour and a half late out of LaGuardia: Air New England flight 248, the last of the night, bound for Cape Cod” (Sabbag, 1).  “It had been more than six years since we had seen each other… Our delight at seeing each other after so much time was tempered by the sadness she was doing her best to hide” (Sabbag, 80).  It was first brought up with popularity with Airport but it did not get any more popular.  Kids my age would not like this type of writing style unless they are familiar or very interested in ‘pot boiler’.  Some other books that use the ‘pot boiler’ style are Whirligig and Airport.  I can sometimes put myself in his shoes because he uses “I” a lot.  The situations could happen to me anytime if I meet an old friend.  The theme of the book is shown clearly throughout the book by the author’s texts.  You should meet up with people that mean something to you is the message stated in the story.  “I called the number I had for the copilot several times and received no answer.  I left voice mail messages twice.  I placed calls at various times of the day, all of which were met by a variety of theatrical outgoing messages” (Sabbag, 194).  He made all tries to contact everyone he could, even if they did not answer them because he cared about them. I would do this to keep in touch if I was a survivor because we would have something in common that most people would not have in common and would not want to have in common.  He kept that touch and did the best he could. The main character is obviously Robert and the less important characters are the immediate family that is mentioned, the survivors and the emergency crew.  Robert visits with former colleagues which is great because I love hearing about great reunions and that he meets with the survivors and exchange the lives while they have not met each other.  I do not like the parts where Robert moves around his life a lot.  Most of the book, he goes back and forth, in a non smooth way.  It does not flow well and the story is hard to keep track of.  That is what I do not like about this book.  Not all ‘pot boilers’ are like this but the book is just not all that great type of ‘pot boiler’.  There really is not a clear plot to this book.  The book is non fiction memoir book.

                I would say the book is very close to Whirligig in terms of writing style.  The impacts of the events were revealed later in the book.  I did not enjoy Whirligig nor Down Around Midnight even though it was airplanes and survival.  I would give this a C-.  Overall, it was not good.  I think it was the style or type of writing that brought its grade down.