From the Bookshelf of Bound Together…

James

Percival Everett

Start date: November 1, 2025

Finish date: November 30, 2025

Discussion: 2025 November

Why we're reading this: November 2025 Members Choice
November 1 thru November 30
Thanks for the nomination Linda
[close] November 2025 Members Choice
November 1 thru November 30
Thanks for the nomination Linda

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2025 November

2025 November Author Read ~~ Him and Her
By ♥ Sandi ❣ , Me! ~~ on a good day · 6 posts · 12 views

last updated Nov 01, 2025 02:42PM

2025 November Members Choice ~~ James, by Percival Everett
By ♥ Sandi ❣ , Me! ~~ on a good day · 3 posts · 11 views

last updated Nov 01, 2025 02:31PM

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What Members Thought

Aug 28, 2024 PattyMacDotComma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, aa-ce, award-win-listed, kindle, audio-while-reading, aa

UPDATE: May 2025, Winner of 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (after some controversy about voting, which you can find in the media)

4.5★
“That evening I sat down with Lizzie and six other children in our cabin and gave a language lesson. These were indispensable. Safe movement through the world depended on mastery of language, fluency.”

James/Jim narrates his story with this language. He is James, but friends call him by his slave name, Jim. This is almost the beginning of the book where slave Jim i ...more

92 likes · Like · see review

Jul 21, 2024 ☮Karen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: audible, read-in-2024, historical-fiction

If you read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as a child, you should recall his partner on the raft trip down the Mississippi River, Jim. That was about all I did remember, it's been a long time! So this is Jim's, or James' as he'd prefer it, point of view about their trip and about slavery. I was inspired to find a Huck Finn audible copy for a quick refresher, but it's certainly not a necessity by any means. My curiosity just got the best of me, and many call Huck Finn one of the best books ev ...more

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Jul 21, 2024 Pat rated it it was amazing

I absolutely LOVED the audiobook of this beautiful novel, an interpretation of Huck!
Definitely my favorite book of July and possibly of 2024.

2 likes · Like · see review

Apr 21, 2025 Bucket rated it it was amazing

Shelves: reviewed, history, literary, culture, life-and-death, books-about-books, race, communication, adventure, class

James was a fantastic reading experience. It's well-written, it's challenging, and it pays respect to Mark Twain without any sort of fawning or homage. It's more than a commentary -- James is a sparring partner for The Adventures of Huck Finn. It feels like the other side of the story that was always missing is now here, and both sides push and pull on each other.

James' code-switching was a brilliant choice and it works so well all throughout the story - it fits right in line with the Jim of Twa James was a fantastic reading experience. It's well-written, it's challenging, and it pays respect to Mark Twain without any sort of fawning or homage. It's more than a commentary -- James is a sparring partner for The Adventures of Huck Finn. It feels like the other side of the story that was always missing is now here, and both sides push and pull on each other.

James' code-switching was a brilliant choice and it works so well all throughout the story - it fits right in line with the Jim of Twain's book, while also pointing out that as accurate as Twain was there was much he could not and would not see and hear as a white man. It also serves as humor here and there, it deeply humanizes Jim, it illuminates how much Jim's (and every slave's) life might depend on a word or a look. They can make no mistakes. And it puts in sharp relief how much the white people hid the humanity of Black people from themselves. To the point that they are more bewildered and frightened than angry or dictatorial by Jim's true voice.

Some quotes I marked:

"You're saying we're equal, but also inferior," I said.
"Ain't no such things as rights," I said.
Drowning to death always made a person more interesting, but I wanted, at that moment, to be, to remain, as boring as possible.
I had already come to understand the tidiness of lies, the lesson learned from the stories told by white people seeking to justify my circumstance.

John Locke "Some might say that my views on slavery are complex and multifaceted."
"Convoluted and multifarious."
"Well reasoned and complicated."
"Entangled and problematic."
"Sophisticated and intricate."
"Labyrinthine and Daedalean."
"Oh, well played, my dark friend."

"Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares 'em."

"Belief has nothing to do with the truth. Believe what you like. Believe I'm lying and move through the world as a white boy. Believe I'm telling the truth and move through the world as a white boy anyway. Either way, no difference."

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. ...more

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Sep 17, 2025 Laurel Bradshaw rated it really liked it

Shelves: historical-fiction, pulitzer-prize, audiobook, literary-characters, themes-mark-twain, mississippi-river, slavery, color-rating-blue

4.5 blue stars

Interesting and certainly thought-provoking, but the author takes some great liberties with history here. I'll make allowances for that, since this is literary fiction, not historical fiction. We're playing with a literary character to present his story from the point of view of a highly intelligent and well-read man, despite his being a slave. It speaks more to the 21st century black experience. I went along with it for about 2/3 of the book and then it took a huge departure from 4.5 blue stars

Interesting and certainly thought-provoking, but the author takes some great liberties with history here. I'll make allowances for that, since this is literary fiction, not historical fiction. We're playing with a literary character to present his story from the point of view of a highly intelligent and well-read man, despite his being a slave. It speaks more to the 21st century black experience. I went along with it for about 2/3 of the book and then it took a huge departure from Mark Twain, and I'm not convinced it was an improvement. It almost seemed as if James, with his pencil, was rewriting the ending, and it felt more like a violent fantasy of empowerment. I can agree that I wasn't entirely satisfied with Twain's ending either - the whole nonsense with Tom Sawyer enacting some grand rescue that wasn't needed. And the choice to make Huck Finn his son (sorry if that's a spoiler) took all the power out of the choices that Jim made for the sake of friendship and kindness. James does what he did to save his son, and then ends up abandoning him in the end. Rather than being a free man at the end, it felt more like James had become a slave to violence and power. But probably since I am a white person (and a woman) I am missing the point here.

Description: When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father, recently returned to town. As all readers of American literature know, thus begins the dangerous and transcendent journey by raft down the Mississippi River toward the elusive and too-often-unreliable promise of the Free States and beyond. While many narrative set pieces of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn remain in place (floods and storms, stumbling across both unexpected death and unexpected treasure in the myriad stopping points along the river’s banks, encountering the scam artists posing as the Duke and Dauphin…), Jim’s agency, intelligence and compassion are shown in a radically new light.
...more

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Dec 27, 2023 Rosalind marked it as to-read