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#ThoughtProvoking
review
Robotswithpersonality
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Mehso-so

Awkward. I was hoping for honest reflections on the role reading, engaging with books, can play in incarcerated people's lives, and that was part of the text. The awkward part was the author's realization that literature didn't play as big a role in their lives as in hers, that the book club was an escape that she seemed happy to be part of until confronted with its relative position in others' lives and ends on a self-pitying note. 1/4

Robotswithpersonality 2/? There's a real push pull between humanizing the incarcerated, something society needs more of, and focusing on the author's own feelings, experiences. Maybe it's just trying for honest, in which case the unflattering personal portrait is an accomplishment of truth. 12mo
Robotswithpersonality 3/? I think my personal bias factors in, because formal schooling emphasizing grinding away at a dry, incomprehensible text in faith that there is hidden brilliance is similar to the experiences that sent me into a decade long reading slump, reading behaviour that I now heartily reject. Reading her inflict that on the group intermittently between more savvy book choices is painful. 12mo
Robotswithpersonality ⚠️animal death, mention of SA 12mo
Robotswithpersonality On the plus side, I found a memoir for my TBR actually written by an incarcerated person, Sentence: Ten Years and A Thousand Books in Prison. I'm hopeful the shift in POV/author will make for a more focused read on the subject matter. 12mo
Larkken Sounds like a nf version of the tagged with a side of saviorism, sorta 12mo
7 likes5 comments
blurb
TheEllieMo
Fishbowl | Bradley Somer
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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 in if you want!

#ABookADay2023

review
StrangeLibrarian
The Sentence | Louise Erdrich
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Pickpick

Tookie, who sells books after years of incarceration, must solve the mystery of why the bookstore‘s most annoying (now dead) customer is haunting her while trying to survive Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, and furious reckoning.

Tropes/Themes
• book about books.
• chosen family.
• faces racism.
• confronts mortality.

#literaryfiction #characterdriven #issueoriented #thoughtprovoking #reflective #mediumpace #culturallydiverse

review
swynn
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Mehso-so

It's the memoir of an English professor who leads a literature course in a maximum security prison. It's okay: the premise is appealing, and the discussions are occasionally enlightening. But also the author sometimes comes across as naive or self-superior or both. To her credit, she often acknowledges her missteps and does not attempt to justify them; still, it's sometimes hard to sympathize with her or see what the takeaway is supposed to be.