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hillysreads's Reviews (381)
Ah this book is so good. Second time reading it and it’s still good, especially the ending. Yeah I changed my rating from a 5star to a 4star but this book is still amazing. Lale is taken to Auschwitz where he becomes the Tattooist. The atrocities and horror Lale faced takes a toll on him but when he meets Gita, the love of his life, he begins to see a bright side to life in all the horror. This book is about love, history, war, overcoming and beating death. The love story between these two is beautiful. Highly recommend you read this! ❤️
A Good Neighborhood is merely about a biracial boy, Xavier, and his momma, Valerie, living in an all white neighborhood in the south. He ends up falling for his neighbor, Juniper who is a white girl that has a purity vow and can’t date. Her stepdad is rich, overly obsessive and racist.
This is what this book is: a perspective of racism from a white author and she got it all wrong.
So I bet you can put the pieces together. The biggest issue I have with this book is how unrealistic it is.
I noticed it right off the bat with the character development and the structure of the story. The build up that lead to a tragic ending was so...cut & dry. The book was definitely a slow build but part 3 (final part) of the book was so rushed and missing so many details that it didn’t even make sense how the story ended the way it did. And I absolutely hated the ending. Horrible.
I feel that the author made Brad (the stepdad) so blatantly racist that is was too unreal. I don’t think I have been so disturbed by a character but Brads character DISTURBED me.
Valerie and Xaviers characters are what bothered me the most, these characters just didn’t seem real to me either. Xavier at the beginning of the book was a different character by the end of the book. The typical & obvious stereotypes throughout this book
This is what this book is: a perspective of racism from a white author and she got it all wrong.
So I bet you can put the pieces together. The biggest issue I have with this book is how unrealistic it is.
I noticed it right off the bat with the character development and the structure of the story. The build up that lead to a tragic ending was so...cut & dry. The book was definitely a slow build but part 3 (final part) of the book was so rushed and missing so many details that it didn’t even make sense how the story ended the way it did. And I absolutely hated the ending. Horrible.
I feel that the author made Brad (the stepdad) so blatantly racist that is was too unreal. I don’t think I have been so disturbed by a character but Brads character DISTURBED me.
Valerie and Xaviers characters are what bothered me the most, these characters just didn’t seem real to me either. Xavier at the beginning of the book was a different character by the end of the book. The typical & obvious stereotypes throughout this book
Conjure Women takes place in the Civil War era and the chapters are broken up by freedomtime/war time/slaverytime. Rue and her mother Miss May Belle were healers and would conjure up magic heal, help, or hurt people; Miss May Belle was a healer on the plantation during slaverytime and after she died, Rue took the healing powers she learned from her mother into her own hands during freedomtime.
Miss May Belle was a strong, powerful and wise women - everyone, white and black came to her for healing. The magical things this women did people to heal them and help them escape were amazing.
Miss May Belle was a strong, powerful and wise women - everyone, white and black came to her for healing. The magical things this women did people to heal them and help them escape were amazing.
James Baldwin was always one of my favorite civil rights activists to study in college but I never got around to reading his books. Well, wth was I waiting around for? If Beale Street Could Talk is phenomenal.
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstances was such fun book to read. It’s full of wolves, nature, love, weirdness and magic ✨Weylyn’s parents pass away and he is placed in foster care but he ends up running away to live in the woods to be raised by wolves. Weylyn is not your average person, he can do magical things like stop a tornado
This book is perfect for those who need a reality check. James Baldwin’s, The Fire Next Time, is of two raw but passionate letters that are so deep, so meaningful, so real and true. America has lived in two separate realities for hundreds of years; a white and a black one.
I think in order for you to understand what I mean by “reality check”, I must provide you with a couple quotes from this book because no one says it more eloquently than James Baldwin.
“There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.”
“...the so-called American Negro who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being.”
Throughout this book, James talks about an “awakening” in America, about what would happen when white people finally wake up and realize that they have been blind to racism and oppression, that most of the history they have been taught, is a lie and what would happen to their minds once this realization is upon them.
“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For those innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”
The Fire Next Time shook me to my core, the way James Baldwin discusses these two realities is eye opening. Racism is not only systematic but it’s psychological. The very last page of this book was like; mic drop
I think in order for you to understand what I mean by “reality check”, I must provide you with a couple quotes from this book because no one says it more eloquently than James Baldwin.
“There are too many things we do not wish to know about ourselves. People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal (equal, after all, to what and to whom?) but they love the idea of being superior.”
“...the so-called American Negro who remains trapped, disinherited, and despised in a nation that has kept him in bondage for nearly four hundred years and is still unable to recognize him as a human being.”
Throughout this book, James talks about an “awakening” in America, about what would happen when white people finally wake up and realize that they have been blind to racism and oppression, that most of the history they have been taught, is a lie and what would happen to their minds once this realization is upon them.
“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For those innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”
The Fire Next Time shook me to my core, the way James Baldwin discusses these two realities is eye opening. Racism is not only systematic but it’s psychological. The very last page of this book was like; mic drop
I won’t be doing a full review of this book but it took me a while to read this one. I started it back in May and never finished it. Finally got to finishing the last 100 pages. This is a great book, the author did a great job writing this story of Jesus and Ana.
This is a book that has been sitting on my bookshelf for a long while and I kept saying I was going to read it and then I never did. So I FINALLY got around to reading it even though it took me a bit to finish it.
Short synopsis:
Ernt is a Vietnam POW vet with severe PTSD; he can’t keep a job, he moves his family from place to place because he wants to find a home for all of them to be “happy”. Well, this opportunity arises for Ernt and his family to move to Alaska. He feels that this is their moment to finally find their happiness. So Ernt, his wife Cora and their teenage daughter Lenora (Leni) move to Alaska. Now, let me just say that a POW Vietnam vet with PTSD living in the long month’s of cold and wintery, snowy darkness do NOT mix. From the beginning, I could tell this was going to be a heart-wrenching story.
The first half of the book was a slow start, it didn’t start getting interesting for me until midway through the book. I had to get the audiobook to keep me engaged in the story because I would read a chapter or two and put it down because it just wasn’t catching my attention.
About half way into the book, the pace quickened and I got really interested in the story. One thing happened after another, the characters and the intensity of the storyline is what kept me hooked for the 2nd half of the book. This book is super emotional
Short synopsis:
Ernt is a Vietnam POW vet with severe PTSD; he can’t keep a job, he moves his family from place to place because he wants to find a home for all of them to be “happy”. Well, this opportunity arises for Ernt and his family to move to Alaska. He feels that this is their moment to finally find their happiness. So Ernt, his wife Cora and their teenage daughter Lenora (Leni) move to Alaska. Now, let me just say that a POW Vietnam vet with PTSD living in the long month’s of cold and wintery, snowy darkness do NOT mix. From the beginning, I could tell this was going to be a heart-wrenching story.
The first half of the book was a slow start, it didn’t start getting interesting for me until midway through the book. I had to get the audiobook to keep me engaged in the story because I would read a chapter or two and put it down because it just wasn’t catching my attention.
About half way into the book, the pace quickened and I got really interested in the story. One thing happened after another, the characters and the intensity of the storyline is what kept me hooked for the 2nd half of the book. This book is super emotional