The Pretender (2025) by Jo Harkin

 Audiobook Review

The Pretender (2025)

by Jo Harkin

   The Pretender is a rare 2025 Audiobook listen, written by English author Jo Harkin, one of the cover quotes describes it as "Glorious Exploits meets Wolf Hall" and I agree. Specifically, I agree with the comparison to Glorious Exploits which brought some contemporary characterization into a historical milieu while still keeping things from getting anachronistic.  There's a pot of gold for any writer of literary or historical fiction who can pull off this trick- see the endless attempts by the film industry to recharacterize and repurpose novels from the early 19th century.  Clever stuff, recommended. 

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (1977) by Mildred D. Taylor

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (1977)

by Mildred D. Taylor

Jackson, Mississippi

Mississippi: 3/18

  Ran out of Audiobooks in Alabama about one Audiobook in, so it is on to Mississippi and Louisiana, where the pickings are almost but not quite as slim. The rule with Audiobooks in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is no chick lit and no YA titles- everything else, including actual children's books, of which this is one.  This is a good children's book, written before kids were wimps and parents were insane.  Back in the 1970's an African American author could use the n word in a children's book and win Awards, nowadays some libraries won't even carry this title for the same reason.

  Roll of Thunder was a genuinely effective children's book, like something out of the nineteenth century and filled with the unmitigated terror of the "Night Riders" on a community of African Americans in rural Mississippi.  The protagonists is the youngest daughter of a rare family of African American property owners- with the land now in the second generation of the family.  That already makes Mississippi different than Alabama, where some of the book's detail how it was impossible for African American families to even rent, let alone own land in swathes of Alabama.   

  Many times as I listened to this Audiobook I thought about the horror movies of Jordan Peele and the idea that the African American experience in much of America is, in fact, a real-life horror film.  You look at the central family in this book: Property owning farmers, no bad habits and their very existence is an affront to their white neighbors.  These people are literally not allowed to live.  It is a deeply Unamerican environment and I think there is a strong argument that it simply is not. 

The Watsons go to Birmingham (1995) by Christopher Paul

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

The Watsons Go To Birmingham (1995)

by Christopher Paul

Birmingham, Alabama

Alabama: 11/18

   Arguably not a book about Birmingham since most of the book takes place in Detroit before the Watsons Go To Birmingham (right before the church bombing). This is a children's book, not a YA title, so it is pretty straightforward.  The Watsons does have a road trip, which, I think because of the map-based categorization of the titles, are sorely lacking in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America.  The most interesting portion of this title was, in fact, the drive itself.

    Just the fact that this family hops in a car and drives somewhere not in their neighborhood puts them in a rare subgroup of this project.  It's like, for most of the characters in these books, the idea that one might just leave the terrible place where they happen to have been born is unfathomable.  I mean, I'm talking about hundreds of books at this point.  And this observation has nothing to do with this title in particular but it's crazy how none of these books have characters who in any way, shape, or form transcend their surroundings or low beginnings.  Stasis and regression is the rule of thumb in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project, and not just for the South, although that weight is heavy in Alabama. 

Looking for Alaska (2005) by John Green

 1,001 Novels: A Library of America

Looking for Alaska (2005)

by John Green

Culver Creek (Birmingham), Alabama

Alabama: 10/18

   I checked out the Hulu Version of this paperback- with a picture of who I presume was the actress who played the eponymous Alaska of the title.  Before I shit all over this book let me just say that I understand that John Green has multiple YA hits (The Fault in our Stars), that he is a popular YouTuber and I think Podcaster, and that he has lots of fans some of whom might actually read this post.  In other words, Looking for Alaska is a hit, and the author has other hits, but the books are terrible. 

  Set in a progressive co-ed high school and narrated by a fish-out-of-water type, Green brings together a familiar band of misfits which includes a Japanese guy buy no African American.  In fact, there are no African American characters in this book which is enough to make me hate John Green.  There's nothing specific to Alabama in this book beyond, I think, the geographical location of the school and the fact that the author went to a similar school in Birmingham.  You can tell it's a new generation of YA author because of the presence of the most harmless blowjob depicted in this history of literature in these pages.

Luminous (2025) by Silvia Park

 Book Review

Luminous (2025)

by Silvia Park

     2025 was a down year for literary fiction neither the race for the Booker nor the National Book Award interested me- I didn't even recognize the semi-finalsts for the National Book Award.  Luminous, by first time novelist Silvia Park, stood out to me this year as an excellent combination of genre (science fiction) and literary fiction themes.  Luminous moves in a couple different directions and handle all its issues in a way that isn't overly didactic or stereotyped.    Luminous is one of the first really vivid visualizations of what a post-human society might look like- here we have characters who are part robot, part human, humans who have familial relationships with robots and robots that definitely, definitely want to be human.  At times, the literary fiction element made me feel like I was reading a contemporary I, Robot as written by Virginia Woolf, but my take is always that a difficult to read novel is interesting in a way that an easy-to-read novel simply is not.

  I'd highly, highly recommend picking up a copy of Luminous if you can find it in a book shop.