Becca > Recent Status Updates

Taking me back to my social work days and I'm 10 types of mad.

It seems the author got distracted less than halfway through and switched from a history about the Harlem Hellfighters to a history of Harlem from WW1 to...I'm not sure b/c I haven't finished it. I'm disappointed.

Gonna try to focus on the history and not getting angry at the thieves.

Y'know when all your library holds come through at once and the book you were hoping to savor is among them? I'm giving this time when I can but I'm sorry I can't read it leisurely. As before, Osman writes like he really enjoys these characters and I love that.

Something about this feels herky-jerky as if the author has a theme she wants to use/tell and she's making these characters do it.

Good God, this book

The trope of "I'm gonna secretly break all the rules behind my friend's back for my friend's own good, IMO...what do you mean no one trusts me anymore?" is so puerile to me. And dismissing classics as a whole (when you've barely explored the genre) while working in a bookstore *that sells classics* is bananas to me. I think I get what the author is trying to do but it's a cringy path.

So the MC is terrible, huh?

While the subject is revelatory and important the execution is choppy and messy. It's a style I'm running across more that I momentarily describe as Twitter NonFiction by which I mean, it reads like a bunch of micro-essays strung together for quick reading but there's some cohesion and depth missing. Like it's written for sound bites.

When they said magic they meant it huh?

The writing is just not good.

Got this as an ARC over a year ago. Seriously considering DNF. It feels like a different (worse) author wrote this compared to book one.