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4.36 AVERAGE
4.36 AVERAGE
It was really hard for me to get into, but it picked up about 1/4 the way through.
5 stars. I have no idea how to describe just how many emotions this book stirred within me. Best book of 2020 and I doubt I’ll read anything else this year that’s gonna top this for me.
I know the story of Roots because of the television mini series from the 70s. We watched that in History class in high school and I was shook. I wasn’t mature enough yet to appreciate the story so it never occurred to me to pick up the book and I’m glad that I’m now at a point in my life that I can fully appreciate stories like this. I like that it’s about one family and that it spans over generations starting with Kunta Kinte and it ends with the author himself. It’s all so well done.
The writing is brilliant and raw and the way the story is told is bold and in your face with its brutality. I had to put my kindle down a lot and do something else because I would get so angry reading about what the characters went through. I’m incredibly sensitive to stories like this because this shit actually happened and I just get all in my feelings.
Anyways, this is definitely one of my new all time favorites and I’m so happy that I’ve finally read it.
{Challenges completed:
✔YA Buddy Readers’ Corner: Step Back in Time Team Challenge
✔Romance Readers Reading Group: March Monthly Challenge (6 out of 10)
✔For Love of a Book: I Went to the Zoo Challenge
✔For Love of a Book: Hunt the Serial Killer Challenge
✔For Love of a Book: Santa’s Workshop Challenge
✔For Love of a Book: The Bookish Life Challenge
✔For Love of a Book: Women’s History Month Challenge}
I know the story of Roots because of the television mini series from the 70s. We watched that in History class in high school and I was shook. I wasn’t mature enough yet to appreciate the story so it never occurred to me to pick up the book and I’m glad that I’m now at a point in my life that I can fully appreciate stories like this. I like that it’s about one family and that it spans over generations starting with Kunta Kinte and it ends with the author himself. It’s all so well done.
The writing is brilliant and raw and the way the story is told is bold and in your face with its brutality. I had to put my kindle down a lot and do something else because I would get so angry reading about what the characters went through. I’m incredibly sensitive to stories like this because this shit actually happened and I just get all in my feelings.
Anyways, this is definitely one of my new all time favorites and I’m so happy that I’ve finally read it.
{Challenges completed:
✔YA Buddy Readers’ Corner: Step Back in Time Team Challenge
✔Romance Readers Reading Group: March Monthly Challenge (6 out of 10)
✔For Love of a Book: I Went to the Zoo Challenge
✔For Love of a Book: Hunt the Serial Killer Challenge
✔For Love of a Book: Santa’s Workshop Challenge
✔For Love of a Book: The Bookish Life Challenge
✔For Love of a Book: Women’s History Month Challenge}
This book blew my mind. There is so much detail, so many intricacies, and what feels to be an impartial telling of the characters' stories.
This is a must-read.
This is a must-read.
Incredible book, please take the time to read this book, it is a moving, important story. Read it.
(I don't actually remember when I read it, just that it was very good, and I should probably read it again.)
I loved reading a history involving things I'd never been taught. It's so, so important that history classes diversify their subjects!
However, I feel like Haley lost patience in writing this book. The first half details the life of one ancestor, while the second half covered progressively shorter summaries of following generations.
The massive amount of detail missing from the lives of the later generations, as well as historical events like the Civil War, let me to be disappointed with the second half.
I would have enjoyed this novel more of it showed some consistency.
However, I feel like Haley lost patience in writing this book. The first half details the life of one ancestor, while the second half covered progressively shorter summaries of following generations.
The massive amount of detail missing from the lives of the later generations, as well as historical events like the Civil War, let me to be disappointed with the second half.
I would have enjoyed this novel more of it showed some consistency.
Even if this novel is not as "historically accurate" as Haley originally claimed, it is still an incredibly powerful and moving tale of a family and their struggle for dignity and freedom from the birth of the United States to the 1970s. It's a powerful read, and it is a difficult one. Slavery was brutal, and absolutely none of the horrific aspects of it are shied away from. There are no good masters here, just some that are slightly less worse, just as it actually was in during the antebellum years. What I loved most was the emphasis on the passing of identity, and the ways in which family provided a source of strength, survivance, and pride for oppressed people.