Sellout | 
pickI laughed out loud reading The Sellout, frequently – but in a way that made me feel oddly ashamed. It‘s a deeply satirical book. I found myself wondering whether it was really “okay” for me to be laughing, given that I‘m clearly not the intended audience, and many of the nuances would undoubtedly escape me. It‘s the taboo that makes it funny, a lot of the time. Full review: https://keepingupwiththepenguins.com/the-sellout-paul-beatty/
#weeklyforecast
December push is here. The tagged book is one of 2 I have left on my GR TBR from 2018. Must finish it so I can read and get Black Sun back to the library!
pickLittle Rascals indeed. Raucous & relentless. Comedian who piles it on, building from scathing commentary to cruelty. The LANGUAGE. So clever. American social structures & race. Entertainment & discomfort. Black American culture & stereotypes thrown into the mixer & splattered all over the reader. Outrageous satire, biting & hilarious—like a meeting of the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals. Exhausting read. First American winner of the Booker prize. 2015
pan#MayMoms Day 28: #Hilarious has been used to describe this book filled with acerbic wit - but I simply could not get into it, despite the psych allusions. I read this as part of our #DecolonizeBookshelves2022 reading theme, and I am relieved to have finished reading it. Undoubtedly it is an important novel, but the way it is told will be debated on by people more intelligent than me in years to come. More here: https://wp.me/pDlzr-opX
#MayMoms Day 22: This is what I would definitely describe as an #Angry book. Review is forthcoming as part of our #DecolonizeBookshelves2022 reading list.
pickSome great laugh-out-loud moments and a really interesting plot but I'm not quite sure I was always following what was going on.
This was our #audioroadtrip book for our trip out to the Okanagan valley where the wine was plentiful and the views were stunning
My #BookspinBingo list. There are a few on here (including the tagged) that have been on my #TBR a long time!
pickNot knowing really much about this book other than it was part of the super rooster. I really enjoyed it but I seem to be in a bit of a slump so it took way long to read than it really should have.
pickLoved it! I read it in 3 days while on vacation. Scathing commentary disguised as comedy. Did I mention I loved it?
pickA mixture of bizarre, abrasive, confusing, uncomfortable, and poignant, this novel tells how a boy raised as a psychology experiment becomes a man trying to protect his city and foster racial harmony through segregation, slavery, and urban agriculture. The solutions presented feel both wrong and logical and challenge the reader to consider the nature of "equality" and how the lessons we learn as children might not be the ones we need in adulthood.
Audio-sewing. Or more accurately, audio-cutting-and-ironing as I spent three hours and am only just now ready to sew.
I can't tell if the narrator of this novel is really unreliable or if I'm just missing/mishearing things because cutting bias strips takes too much of my brain power.
SoCal Littens: Is there a surfing place near LA called Escondido?
pickA nod to #BlackHistoryMonth
Satirical novel narrated by a man referred to by his childhood nickname "Bonbon" or his last name, "Me”. Me attempts to reintroduce segregation and keep a slave named Hominy in Dickens, his Los Angeles neighborhood. This attempt leads to a Supreme Court case, Me Vs. The United States of America. This book hits a lot of true (yet touchy) social, racial and political issues.
The Sellout is a fascinating book that uses satire so boldly that you can't always tell how seriously you should take it. It's about Black culture without, in Toni Morrison's terms, catering to the White Gaze.
I had fun jumping around between six different books for #Deweys24hourreadathon, The jury‘s still out on the tagged one. Final stats: 525 pages, 11 hr 7 min
#DeweysOct2020 #Readathon
Happy #BookSpin day! Here's my spin and #DoubleSpin books for July 😁
( @JamieArc The #BookSpin gods were listening to you, The Sellout it is! )
@TheAromaofBooks
I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new. Don't judge me - I have a lot of books. Join the fun if you want.
This is day 6
#bookstoread #tbrpile
pickThis book was ... weird. High-brow surrealism. Every single event is unlikely - but none of them are impossible. A farming neighborhood in central LA. A psychologist father with a Clockwork Orange approach to raising his son - concocting avoidance stimuli against white music, celebs, and beauty standards. A washed up former Little Rascal performing a suicide-pornesque final act. Toking up in the Supreme Court. Bizzare....
pickEven though I felt that I was missing a lot of the popular culture references in this book I liked the author's cynical sense of humour and style in which he told the story.
I find it kind of ironic that the bookmark TBD sent with The Sellout was designed by someone whose favourite book is Gone With The Wind.
pick'The Sellout' is easily one of the sharpest and cleverest books I have ever read; every page is armed to the teeth with quips and satirical wit. Deeply funny and introspective work about race in America's current political climate.
In some ways -- the deeply embedded pop culture references, larger-than-life characters, and narration-- Paul Beatty's writing reminded me in places of Junot Diaz.
Well I'm trying to read this for my library book club.
I've skipped the prologue as it wasn't making sense.
Now about page 80 and can't say I'm enjoying it although it's odd.
@Jas16 you are such a dear!! I came home after having a really rough day to find this lovely book sent to me as a #jb surprise!! I know I owe many people a letter as I‘ve fallen woefully behind. I have a long weekend in terms of work coming up but will work on getting caught up with #jb mail. XOXO to @Jas16 !
bailedI REALLY tried to get into this but could not. The themes are fascinating to me, but this book was so rambling that I couldn‘t focus. The first paragraph was incredible but the style put me off.
On a side note, when I met them in the early 1990s my sister‘s in-laws had one of those coachmen from the cover in front of their house.
Gross.
pickA satire that is rather hard to read, due to the numerous cultural references that I, a white Turkish-American born and raised in Turkey, had trouble deciphering... Nonetheless an entertaining and fruitful read...
If Jean Valjean had me representing him, then Les Misérables would‘ve only been six pages long. Dismissed —Loaf of Bread Pilfery.
pick⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2
Catching up on some missing Booker winners this one from 2016, my signed copy languishing unread for far too long on my bookshelf. I had trepidation‘s about this one as I am just not great with satire generally but this one while dense reading was, quite brilliant. It‘s funny and brazen yet philosophical and whip smart, laden with historical and cultural references. It changes the paradigm on how a book about race can be presented.
bailedBailed halfway through. It wasn't grabbing my interest and I think you have to be in the mood to read a book like this in order to fully appreciate it. I'll probably give it another shot at some point but it's a bail for now!
Picked this up at a used book sale last year- finally getting around to it!
pickThis book was a lot of things. Entertaining and biting. We all need a villain to push us to our best. Racism is bad. Ridiculous expectations from people of your own race can suck just as bad. We talk about race too much except for when we don‘t talk about it enough. The MC we only know as Sellout and Bon Bon gets taken before the Supreme Court as a black man who brought back segregation to save his town. Ridiculous and important.
Just a heads up... read in private. People think I'm crazy with the amount of LOL'ing this book causes.
pickGreat satire on race in America. I tried this in print, but didn‘t quite get the tone or cadence. The audiobook was fabulous!!! Highly recommend. #BlackHistoryMonth
pickThis is a terrific satire of race in the US. It crackles with wit and had me laughing aloud many times. I think I could read this several times and it would deepen with each read. It‘s an accomplishment of a book and well worth the accolades it has received. I found myself invigorated while reading it.
February #TBR Looking forward to celebrating Black History Month with my reading! #ownvoices #WeNeedDiverseBooks
"'I don‘t care if you‘re black, white, brown, yellow, red, green, or purple.‘ We‘ve all said it. Posited as proof of our nonprejudicial ways, but if you painted any one of us purple or green, we‘d be mad as hell."
Okay, this is the last one. Sorry for spamming your feed!
“You‘d rather be here than in Africa. The trump card all narrow-minded nativists play. If you put a cupcake to my head, of course, I‘d rather be here than any place in Africa, though I hear Johannesburg ain‘t that bad and the surf on the Cape Verdean beaches is incredible."
“I sit in a thickly padded char that, much like this country, isn't quite as comfortable as it looks.”
“...the face that feigns acknowledgment that the better man got the promotion, even though deep down you and they both know that you really are the better man and that the best man is the woman on the second floor.”
“That‘s the problem with history, we like to think it‘s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn‘t the paper it‘s printed on. It‘s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.”
“My father had a theory that poor people are the best drivers because they can‘t afford to carry car insurance and have to drive like they live, defensively.”
“Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it‘s fear.”
so-so
