This book got me emotional. 😿
The Nickel Boys: A Novel | 
I went out to get something at lunch and came back with books! That's the way it goes sometimes.
WHISPER NETWORK is for one of my book clubs, and I'm looking forward to reading it. And THE NICKEL BOYS has been on my want-to-buy list since I first heard of it!
#newin #bookhaul #booksforlunch
Beginning this one today. Looking forward to reading it because I keep hearing good things about it. Happy Sunday Litsy friends! 💜
Taking some quiet time before heading after a long work today. Contentment is a book, a beer, burger and my border collie.
Book Haul - it always feels like all my library holds come in at the same time. 😺
pickThere‘s violence quietly boiling under ever sentence of this tight wound novel. The fact this is based on a real place, on real lives is devastating. These boys didn‘t have a chance to grow, to live or to become the men they were destined to be.
pickNot a perfect book, but a very good one. Tells a fictionalized account of an institutional "school" for boys, an alternative to prison, where boys were beaten and killed, especially in the black houses. Emotional portrayal, but not one that had me sobbing, which is kind of nice. Read this for the #BNbookclub, which I am hosting at my store tonight
Also, this was my E for Care of Magical Creatures in the #NEWTs #magical readathon
pick4.5 stars rounded to a full 5 because so much is packed into this little book. It didn‘t wreck me like The Underground Railroad - I was a mess by the end of that book. This one was more quietly devastating. Whitehead didn‘t pull his punches but instead slipped them around from behind. The violence doesn‘t hit you in the face, it stabs you in the back. I also thought a lot about Ava DuVernay‘s When They See Us, currently streaming on Netflix.
pickThis is a book that will stay with me. Whitehead tells the story of Elwood Curtis, a boy sent to Nickel Academy, ostensibly a school designed to reform wayward youth that is in reality a prison, where racist staff & guards abuse & discard the boys at will. Whitehead based Nickel on the Dozier School for Boys, a real Florida reform school. It's a heartbreaking & angering story, unsentimental & unflinching. Required reading.
“ They has been denied even the simple pleasure of being ordinary. Hobbled and handicapped before the race even began, never figuring out how to be normal”.
Beach reading today ..... #summerisnotoveryet !
pick😭 What a powerful book. It just killed me. The cover is also so clever.
pickI‘ve found Whitehead‘s novels to be difficult to absorb in the past. While I enjoyed The Intuitionist, many of his other novels such as Zone One and The Underground Railroad couldn‘t grab my attention. The Nickel Boys on the other hand is delightfully engaging. The characters are so interesting that I finished this book in one sitting. This is one that will stay on my shelf.
My son bought me this mug!!!
I just finished The Nickel Boys for b&n book club this week. I did not see the twist in the last part coming at all! It was so well done. I‘m glad I read it. It covers so many themes in its little 210 pages and I am excited to hear what people thought and the things they picked up on that I, super oblivious as ever, completely missed. Anyone else read it yet?
pickThis is the first book that made me cry this year. It is such a tragic story but one that needed to be told. The fact that this book is based on true events makes this story even more important. This is story was raw but wonderfully told. It is a story that is unforgettable and will stay with you.
Feel like I‘m watching a horror movie and I just wanna yell at Elwood to not get in the car!
pickThis was a book club pick and like all of Mr. Whitehead‘s books didn‘t disappoint! I insist that you stop whatever you are doing and get a copy of this book now
pickWow. This book was perfect. It will stay with me and I urge everyone to read it.
It feels like there‘s something I‘m supposed to be reading, but I can‘t remember what 🧠 🌫
So, I‘m going to read my first Colson Whitehead.
pickAudiobook. Narrator was nothing great or bad. I‘m disappointed. It‘s not what I thought it was going to be. Oh it was good, a novel based on reality but not as much of a horror novel as I thought it was going to be. It was a well written and engaging short book. Library loan via OverDrive. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
so-soA disturbing but all too familiar tale of the horrific treatment of African American boys. The story haunts me as to how far we still need to go as a country to heal. I'm afraid our generation will be written about in the same disturbing light on the unjust treatment of many of our citizens. Such dark times.
We must believe in our souls that we are somebody, that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with this sense of dignity of this sense of somebody-ness.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that
It didnt stop when you got out. Bend you all kind of ways until you were unfit for straight life, good snd twisted by the time you left.
Everybody around and nobody around at the same time.
...so complacent and sleepy after years of oppression that rhey had adjusted to it and learned to sleep in it as their only bed.
...with the knocking of his thoughts, which rattled around his skull like dice.
...sometimes laughter knocked out a few beicks from the barricade of segregation...
💔
If you had the power to make people do what you wanted and never exercised it, what was the point of having it?
You can change the law but you can't change people and how they treat each other.
Pain rolled off him like rain from a slate roof.
...a Perpetual Misery Machine.
(this would make a great band or bar name!)
There are big forces that want to keep the Negro down, like Jim Crow, and there are small forces that want to keep you doen, like other people, and in the face of all those things, the big ones and the smaller ones, you have to stand up straight and maintain your sense of who you are.
We must believe in our souls that we are somebody; that we are significant, that we are worthful, and we must walk the streets of life every day with the sense of dignity and rhis sende of somebody-ness.
Last line: He was hungry and they served all day, and that was enough.
First line: Even in death the boys were trouble.
pickOMG OMG!! Everyone needs to read this book! Beware because your heart will be smashed into pieces 💔💔💔 This story starts at the ending and then takes you through the story of Elwood and The Nickel Boys at the Florida Reform School for boys. This was based on a true story which i did not know before embarking on this wonderful heartbreaking story. Also, it was relatively short at 210 pages.
