James

this book made me feel every human emotion possible in a span of ~300 pages - anger, heartbreak, unease, but overall pride. i never read Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn growing up so i just did cliff notes of both of them before starting this (i know i know dont yell at me.) but yeah, i loved this. the endi......more

the library hold i've had on this book for 6 weeks coming in the same week it wins the national book award...i feel so alive. even better: the award was deserved. i've been seeing some negativity around this book lately. maybe backlash that it's been nominated for and/or won what feels like every awar......more

**WINNER of the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction WINNER of the 2024 National Book Award!** ‘With my pencil, I wrote myself into being. I wrote myself to here.’ In his novel Green Hills of Africa, Ernest Hemingway declared that ‘all modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called......more

I am surprised at how highly rated this book is. Not that I can see no reason why readers might like it— I can —but it does not come across as a crowd-pleaser. Had I read this book before it became a hit, I would have expected it to be divisive. The reason being that it's hard to explain or categori......more