Harlem Shuffle

I feel like I have to give my street cred card back. The street cred card that says "This Woman Reads Good Books." Because while this book is on every list of the best books of 2021 and I have loved every other thing Colson Whitehead has written, this was my one DNF of the year.

Did not finish.

Quit in shame and never looked back.

I'm sorry, everyone. I just couldn't get into it! I kept trying - I made it halfway through. Then, I found myself not even caring what happened to the main characters and I knew it was time to let it go.

It wasn't the quality of the writing. Whitehead has such a rhythm to his work that feels different in all of his books. It wasn't the subject matter. I liked reading about Ray Carney's attempts to live life as a legitimate businessman in Harlem in the 1960s. I was intrigued by the criminal element and the stories it told about that time in New York City. 

I just felt like it wasn't going anywhere and I wanted off the ride.

There are a million reviews of this book that are glowing and I definitely think those folks know more about this stuff than I do. I just found myself asking for grace (from myself) for deciding to move on from what I know will be a celebrated book in literature.