From the Bookshelf of Constant Reader…

Hell of a Book

Jason Mott

Start date: March 15, 2023

Finish date: April 15, 2023

Discussion: Reading List

Discussion leader: Ann D

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Showing 2 of 436 topics — 17,009 comments total

Reading List

* The Schedule for July through Dec. 2025
By Lynn · 4 posts · 54 views

last updated Nov 15, 2025 02:07PM

The Blackhouse - Discussion (including spoilers)
By Gina · 19 posts · 21 views

last updated Dec 06, 2025 06:34AM

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What Members Thought

Dec 17, 2021 Jenny (Reading Envy) rated it liked it

Shelves: tournament-of-books, read2021, libby-app, national-book-award-nominees

This won the National Book Award and was long but not shortlisted for the @tournamentofbooks for 2022 so I decided to go ahead and read it. Previous books have used satire to discuss the Black experience in America. This book uses what I'm going to call meta-satire to discuss the experience of how we talk about the Black experience in America, particularly around the BLM movement, even more particularly how the media covers the issue in interviews with Black people.

The narrator is a Black author ...more

35 likes · Like · see review

Jun 12, 2022 Clifford rated it really liked it

Shelves: novels

If it's too painful to address a topic head on, sneak up on it. Ultimately this book is about police brutality and mistreatment of black people in America. The main character, a novelist, is trying to move beyond the trauma that is the African American experience, but he can't, because it never goes away. If I have a complaint about the book is in the portrayal of white people. The novelist's agent is a caricature and so is the publicist hired to give him media training. Ironically, the only whi ...more

2 likes · Like · see review