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A review by emmareadstoomuch
Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
5.0
I, like any self-respecting bookworm, am a big fan of a bookstore.
Left to my own devices for a few hours, I will often find my way to one, usually an old favorite but sometimes a new one to try.
https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2021/01/22/the-best-books-of-the-worst-year/
And once I am there, I will stay there for a very long time.
When I found this book, it was in the literary fiction section of a bookstore basement, where the used books were kept in winding rows.
Another thing about me: I keep a wish-list of books I mean to buy. When I want to buy one that isn’t on that list, I achieve a Bare Minimum Requirement of reading a few pages and seeing if I feel ordained to keep going. (I almost always do.)
So in this bookstore basement, on a Thursday night around 9:30 or 10 pm (yes, I know this is late. The coolest bookstores are open late), I found a chair in a corner under an unseemly pipe, plunked myself down, and started reading.
Over the next hour, a series of quirky college students had loud and performative first dates in a cycle so coordinated it was as if they scheduled it. First two girls yelled about how one of them had seen Panic! at the Disco at a rural gas station. Then a boy and a girl did an intentionally adorable thing where they pointed out the title of a book and tried to guess the plot (this was the girl’s idea, and the boy’s interest was never more than half-hearted). Then two older women shouted across the shelves about where the children’s section was before learning the answer: right f*cking in front of them.
That last one may not have been a date, but I promise it was equally annoying.
Through it all, I sat and read this book.
It wasn’t even a comfy chair, or a particularly pleasant room. It was just that good of a book.
My favorite TED talk (which is a very low bar) has been Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” since I watched it in a gender class a few years ago. In it, Adichie explains the pervasiveness of stereotypes and bigotry when only one story about a certain group is being told - she uses the story of Africa being a continent of poverty without technology, the only one told in America, as an example.
After I watched that talk in that class, and after I got home and watched it again, I should have gone right out and bought everything she’d ever written. But I didn’t. What a dummy.
This book is divine.
It is so, so beautifully written. I care about each and every character in a way that hurts my heart. It’s nearly 600 pages long, and character-driven to the point that there’s essentially no plot other than the daily progression of our protagonists’ lives, but if it were twice as long as I wouldn’t have minded.
It’s just that good.
I feel like it expanded my whole brain.
Everyone should get to have that feeling.
Bottom line: Everyone should read this book.
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pre-review
i missed reading this the second i finished it.
review to come / 5 stars
------------
currently-reading updates
could someone please inform the work i'm supposed to be doing that i won't be doing it due to suddenly being unable to put this down? k thanks
------------
tbr review
the best way to stay on track on your reading challenge is to read three books at once and also one of those books is 600 pages long
Left to my own devices for a few hours, I will often find my way to one, usually an old favorite but sometimes a new one to try.
https://emmareadstoomuch.wordpress.com/2021/01/22/the-best-books-of-the-worst-year/
And once I am there, I will stay there for a very long time.
When I found this book, it was in the literary fiction section of a bookstore basement, where the used books were kept in winding rows.
Another thing about me: I keep a wish-list of books I mean to buy. When I want to buy one that isn’t on that list, I achieve a Bare Minimum Requirement of reading a few pages and seeing if I feel ordained to keep going. (I almost always do.)
So in this bookstore basement, on a Thursday night around 9:30 or 10 pm (yes, I know this is late. The coolest bookstores are open late), I found a chair in a corner under an unseemly pipe, plunked myself down, and started reading.
Over the next hour, a series of quirky college students had loud and performative first dates in a cycle so coordinated it was as if they scheduled it. First two girls yelled about how one of them had seen Panic! at the Disco at a rural gas station. Then a boy and a girl did an intentionally adorable thing where they pointed out the title of a book and tried to guess the plot (this was the girl’s idea, and the boy’s interest was never more than half-hearted). Then two older women shouted across the shelves about where the children’s section was before learning the answer: right f*cking in front of them.
That last one may not have been a date, but I promise it was equally annoying.
Through it all, I sat and read this book.
It wasn’t even a comfy chair, or a particularly pleasant room. It was just that good of a book.
My favorite TED talk (which is a very low bar) has been Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “The Danger of a Single Story” since I watched it in a gender class a few years ago. In it, Adichie explains the pervasiveness of stereotypes and bigotry when only one story about a certain group is being told - she uses the story of Africa being a continent of poverty without technology, the only one told in America, as an example.
After I watched that talk in that class, and after I got home and watched it again, I should have gone right out and bought everything she’d ever written. But I didn’t. What a dummy.
This book is divine.
It is so, so beautifully written. I care about each and every character in a way that hurts my heart. It’s nearly 600 pages long, and character-driven to the point that there’s essentially no plot other than the daily progression of our protagonists’ lives, but if it were twice as long as I wouldn’t have minded.
It’s just that good.
I feel like it expanded my whole brain.
Everyone should get to have that feeling.
Bottom line: Everyone should read this book.
------------
pre-review
i missed reading this the second i finished it.
review to come / 5 stars
------------
currently-reading updates
could someone please inform the work i'm supposed to be doing that i won't be doing it due to suddenly being unable to put this down? k thanks
------------
tbr review
the best way to stay on track on your reading challenge is to read three books at once and also one of those books is 600 pages long