Hello April! ☔
Up next for May is Before the Coffee Gets Cold, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. We have several copies, but just in case you don't need a copy and you haven't already let me know, would you please leave me a quick note in the comments below so we can keep the call list updated?Thank you for your help!
With all of the nominations in for next year's reading list, I am working to get them organized onto the ballot and out to you real soon. We will still plan to vote at our May 12th meeting, with the top 11 votes being our winners/selections. (We decided to use December's meeting as a time to come together to have a discussion about good books we've read (inside or outside of book club) and get some good recommendations from each other. With that in mind, we'll only vote in 11 books for next year's reading list, and we won't have a book club book to read for November 2026, but will get back to the reading list in December. Sorry if that's confusing~ please let me know if you have any questions!).
To the book!
When Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he runs away until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck has faked his own death to escape his violent father. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond.
For most of our members, this book was very well received. They really liked a book from Jim's fictional perspective, and very much preferred it, and Everett's writing, to The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. They liked the part about Jim being a self taught guy, that he shared those teachings with his wife and children, and that he toggled back and forth between the dialects, depending on the company he was keeping. We all liked Jim, we felt for him throughout the book, but we weren't sure what the point was of having him turn out to be Huck's father... especially since there really isn't a emotional, poignant moment of reunion... and the two didn't stick together in the end regardless (which was disappointing).
On the other hand, those who weren't as charmed by the book, wondered out loud of maybe it was a mistake to read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and James back-to-back. At least half of the book felt like the same story all over again, which was tedious. They didn't really feel like the book got interesting until the last few chapters, and then it ended terribly, with all kinds of open ended loose ends and questions. This group preferred James to Huckleberry Finn as well, but not by much.
Let us know your thoughts below! 👇
Did you love James? Fans of the book also enjoyed, The Correspondent, by Virginia Evans, My Friends, by Fredrik Backman, and Broken Country, by Clare Leslie Hall. All of these titles are available within the Viking Library System~ reserve your copy today!
The votes are in!
Would we recommend this to a friend to read? Yes
Would we
recommend this to another book club for discussion? Yes
Rate the
book 1-5 stars, with 1 being the lowest rating: 4 stars
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