This is a complicated book about a lifelong friendship between two woman from different stations, but who grow up together in the same house, growing up and making their way in the world together.  What I loved about this book most was the nuances of their dynamic. The dysfunction and inequity of power was realistic and you understood what each of them got from the other and why their friendship continues, even when it falls apart. 

The romance story lines and sex scenes that dot the book are quite lovely and add to the layers of the story.  There is a lot of heartache here, but a lot of joy, too.  I think if I were musically inclined, this book would have been even better. As it was, I found some of the descriptions of samba to be a bit tedious.  One of the things I particularly enjoyed, though, was how sexual orientation, gender identity, race, and class are powerful forces in the novel without ever being directly discussed.  Just part of the backdrop, they cannot be ignored and yet they remain more part of the landscape than the story.  I found this quite impressive.

​Recomment.

This book was a long, long walk. It had a lot of pages, for starters, but also it was extremely detailed. Who knew that Mandela was so verbose?  There was so much to love about this book and, ultimately, I am going to recommend it, but there were some places I really felt like some significant editing would not have hurt and could have improved the experience of reading it substantially.  
But, really, I feel like a jerk even suggestion that after everything Mandela endured that maybe he shouldn't ramble on quite so much...

A couple of thoughts that pertain to reading this at this particular moment in time.

1. Relating to Shelter At Home.  Being on pretty strict quarantine is not the same as being in prison. It is not even remotely the same and I am definitely not even going to think that comparison after reading this book.

2. Relating to Politics and Handing Things Over to the Next Generation. Mandela served one term to help transition the country out of apartheid and then he stepped down.  He was acutely aware that while he was radical when he was young and was an icon for the anti-apartheid movement, making him uniquely qualified to bring the country together in a time where unity seemed impossible, he nevertheless stepped aside with the express intention of letting younger leaders step up.  This is the mark of a true leader, in my opinion, because leading isn't supposed to be forever, it is supposed to be until the next person is ready to take over that role. Success is passing the torch and watching as others thrive. I think this relates to how I feel about the current election cycle.

Thanks for the recommendation, Wendy. I would definitely not have invested the time to read this one if it hadn't been part of the list this year. Despite lulls at times, it was worth the read.

Recommend.

I was not excited about the title of this book and even less excited to see that there was a co-author listed on a memoir.  The subtitle just added to my skepticism because it really felt like, in conjunction with the title, it was more about marketing than about substance.  Moreover, as folks who follow my "reviews" know, I have not had a good experience with the internet famous memoirs in the past few years.

So, I was delighted to find that this book is exceptionally well written.  The prose was lyrical and succinct. The story was compelling and the commentary insightful.  It was painful and empowering--my favorite type of memoir.  The reflections on how the imprisonment of men of color in the narrator's family and community was moving and detailed without being trite or stereotypical.  She doesn't use terms like "prison-industrial complex" and neither focuses on, nor ignores the political landscape.  It is an unusual balance in this respect--not telling us readers what to think so much as telling us a life story in which we can hear the why behind the need for reform. From the forward by Angela Davis through to the end, I found it engaging and well worth reading.

Recommend.

I was really enjoying this story...until I wasn't.  The first couple of twists were cool, but about the fifth major plot twist my neck started to hurt and by the time I got to the twist ending, the ending itself wasn't predictable, but it obvious that there would be another unexpected turn.  I also wasn't thrilled with the gratuitous violence that came out of no where.  All of this was really disappointed because it was off to a great start and middle, but the last third just wasn't my thing.

I was skeptical when I started Harari's earlier book, Sapians, but ended up really enjoying that read a lot.  So, I came into this book optimistic and excited to read something else by the same author. I was disappointed, though, that this book had none of the thorough, thoughtful research and thought that made Sapiens so compelling.  This felt like it was a series of quick essays that were thrown together.  Some were interesting, but mostly they were it was a collection of superficially compelling ideas that were not fully flushed out, which was the opposite of his previous book which felt like it must have take years of painstaking focus to put together.  Not recommended.
Recommended to me by Tiffany.

This book is about a messy divorce between selfish, self-absorbed parents.  For me, a divorce attorney, I just didn't find it entertaining. It is everything that I spend a lot of time coaching people not to do because they will regret behaving that way once they get some distance from the process, so reading about it, particularly about the ineptitude of the attorney and the struggle of the kids was kind of depressing, even though I think it was supposed to be entertaining.  I really dislike books/shows/stories where there are no likable characters and where you aren't rooting for anyone.  No thanks.
Recommended by Sarah. (Sorry I ended up hating on it.)

  There were a lot of reasons I should have loved this book.  It had themes of immigration and survival of abuse and torment. It is fantasy with not-quite time travel undertones with some nuance to it and it is a story within a story, which is a writing technique I am often drawn to. It is set in the Pacific Northwest with locations I am familiar with, which is something I particularly love when I read anything. But, alas, I just did not love it.  I thought that in many places, the author was trying too hard to make the clever title into a coherent fantasy world when the book itself really could have just been a novel without the fantasy component at all.  The melding of the two just didn't pull me in.  Otherwise, it did have a lot to offer, though.  I can't recommend it, but I don't not recommend it, so it is one of the rare books in the Not Not Recommended category.  

Recommended by Erin.