Born a Crime: Stories From a South Africa/Trevor Noah - 5 big stars

[JoLene]

What a great ending to my year of reading.....I listened to this in mostly 2 sittings (one was a long car ride). I don’t watch the daily show on a regular basis so I didn’t realize that Noah was raised in South Africa until I started seeing the rave reviews of GR friends. This is his story of growing up in a world where he didn’t really fit in because he is mixed race. Although his parents didn’t live together and his father was mostly absent, his mother was a force to be reckoned with. Noah reads the book himself and his comic timing is sprinkled throughout. There were several laugh out loud moments, but in between there was also a lot of difficulty and tragic events. I appreciated the sprinklings of South African history as well.

I don't want to share too much but I do have my own funny South African story. In 2003-2004 I did a trip around the world (backpacking). I did much of the trip with my freshman college room-mate. We spent about 3 weeks in SA, because an ex of mine lived in Capetown and then we traveled around from there. My friend wanted to get an advanced scuba diving certificate so I was going to drop her at this dive resort and then travel down to another hostel around Zululand. We got to the resort late and the front desk advised that I not leave and drive at night. We had just been in Johannesburg and were well aware of the high crime etc so I asked if that was the reason. They replied no --- the reason you shouldn't drive at night was the cows!!! I seems that there were a lot of farming communities around there and the animals weren't fenced in. People driving on the highways often hit cows at night damaging their cars!

[Ladyslott]

I loved this audio, everything about it was great - from the stories to Trevor Noah's amazing reading - his accent and especially listening to the SA language of which he seems to have an amazing ability. It's one of my Top Ten books for the year.

[Anita]

Yay, I'm going to read this in January (as my tribute to Linda!). It sounds amazing.

LOL on the cow story.

[Book Concierge]

I also read this this month ... just haven't gotten my review written & posted.

[Ellen]

Such a good and interesting book. Loved it!