alltheradreads's Reviews (1.9k)

This book is such a classic. I've been struck by how themes in this book and similar injustices and racism are still prevalent now, 55 years after this book was published. It was a necessary reminder that we still have so far to go and I want to be part of that fight for equality.

I can't remember how this one got on my radar, but it had been on my to-read list, and I grabbed it from my library and read it in bed one evening. It's a fun little read, and Palmer's personality really just seeps through the page in a relatable and real way. There are lots of Brene Brown themes in this one, but told more through Palmer's (very interesting and fascinating) life experiences, so it reads more like a casual memoir. It wasn't anything amazing, but it was fun to read more of how it feels to be a street performer, a crowd-funded musician, and an all around good asker of help. If you struggle with asking for help, I can imagine this would be a great nudge to give it a go, because Amanda shows how great the rewards can really be when we let our guards down and just ASK.

I couldn't do this one. Not at all. I was interested to read a very different take on Jesus than my usual Christian books, but I just could NOT get interested in this one. It read almost pretentiously against Christians, and I didn't like feeling like I was stupid for my faith. Sure, there are many historical and cultural elements of the life of Jesus that aren't represented in Scripture, and I love learning more about those, but this book was just impossible to engage with and I don't recommend it at all to anyone.

This one was an airport read when I had 7 hours to kill, and I was never super into it, honestly. It's an interesting premise (a group of unlikely characters are all tenants of the same building in NY, and their aging landlady is slipping and her son is threatening to change everything, so the story follows all the characters as they all navigate life and fight for home) but none of the characters really hooked me. Maybe I was reading it too fast and not paying enough attention, though, because all the Goodreads reviews I read had high praise for these characters.