Started on 4.26.25, finished on 5.1.25

I want to start this by warning you that I’m not intending to give deep literary criticism on this, my humble log of books.

And with that said, I’m going to start this entry with a story about the process of getting the book itself. Almost all of my books come from the library; I rarely ever buy a book unless it’s something I know for sure I’m going to want to reference on a regular basis. I live in LA, so the library system is huge, and almost always has any book I could dream of. So this book had obviously gotten really popular, and when I put it on hold, I was number 847 on the hold list. I’ve never been further back on a hold list! But then if you, like me, are obsessed with your holds list, you can also search for the book again and count how many copies there are to estimate how long it’s going to take to get to you. And the library system had about 150 copies of the book! So I was not that concerned and went on my merry way, reading other books and checking for this one in LFLs occasionally.

I went to the library last week to pick up two other books I had on hold, that I had gotten emails about, and picked them up and brought them to the front desk. The employee said, “Oh, wait, it says you have three!” So I went back over to the hold shelf and found the third one (sometimes they stack them when you have more than one, but then sometimes if another one comes in separately the person filing them doesn’t notice that you already have a stack going). The third one was James! So, nice surprise, and after only, I believe, about three months’ wait.

I brought it back to the desk, and the employee said, “Oh that’s funny, she (pointing to a woman who was still in earshot) was just asking about this book!” The woman looked over, and so to both of them I said something like, “Oh how funny! Yeah, the hold list is pretty long, but they have a lot of copies, so it didn’t take too long to get it.” And reader, the woman looked so annoyed! She said something like, “Yeah, I guess we’ll see.” I smiled but in my head I was thinking, Ma’am?? You can buy it if you’re going to act like that?

Anyway, when I put this book on hold I had definitely read that it was a retelling of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn told through Jim’s perspective, but by the time I picked up the hold I had forgotten it. This book was an absolute delight, even while dealing with very somber subject matter and at times being truly heartbreaking! It gives Jim—or James—the agency he always deserved, and I understand now why so many people are reading and loving it.

Click here to buy this book on Bookshop.org

My favorite quotes:

“Some folks might have called what I was doing stealing. So would I, and I didn’t particularly care.”

“A man who refused to own slaves but was not opposed to others owning slaves was still a slaver, to my thinking.”

“I didn’t understand the complaint that the pants were too high. Pants were pants—they covered my ass.”

“Are you insane?” “No. However, I did get the idea from an insane person.”

“White people often spent time admiring their survival of one thing or another. I imagined it was because so often they had no need to survive, but only to live.”

“If one knows hell as home, then is returning to hell a homecoming? Even in hell, were there such a place, one would know where the fires were just a little cooler, where the rocks were just a little less jagged.”