Long Walk to Freedom – a review

This is a big book, as in 700+ pages in paperback big. So I wasn’t expecting to finish it any time soon and was actually taking it pretty slowly, reading it in small chunks…

I read 500+ pages of it in one evening cause I couldn’t put the damn thing down!

This was gifted to me by the wonderful Kari from Kari-ng for books, and we both thought that I wouldn’t be starting or finishing it any time soon. But I was making good progress with War and Peace and I thought why not keep plodding my way through another big book reading sections at a time? So I did, I started doing that around November 2020. But in the beginning of March 2021 I read a few chapters during work. And then a few more just after work. And then when I looked up it was 11pm and I had finished the entire book!

If you couldn’t tell from the accidental 500 pages of reading, Mandela has a really accessible writing style that I personally really enjoyed. There were also, of course, so many interesting life events throughout this book that kept me interested. Seeing his young life and how as a young man he struggled to make a place for himself within an Apartheid world, and how this then developed into activism and fighting back against the oppression.

This was such an interesting read. I learnt so much about South Africa, about Mandela himself, and about how the rest of the world reacted to the oppression that was so blatant within South Africa. This is an incredible book and I’m so glad that I picked it up!

I did use CAWPILE on this book and got a rating, but the system isn’t designed for non-fiction books so take it with a grain of salt:

• characters: 10
• atmosphere: 8
• writing: 9
• plot: 9
• logic: 9
• enjoyment: 9

Totalling 9.00 meaning I rated this book 5*s! I know it’s a big one, and that bigger books can be intimidating, but I really do recommend giving this book a go. I promise it’s more readable than you think!

Highlight here for trigger warnings: violence against women and children, racial triggers

Einstein

I am so proud of myself and being able to say that I finished this book! It took me probably six months to get through, and it wasn’t the easiest of reads. It is quite a long book and as someone who isn’t good at physics, those sections of explanation took me a little longer to comprehend and therefore expanded the reading time and did make me take breaks from the book due to its intensity. This book taught me so much about Einstein that I never would’ve known otherwise and goes into a lot of depth about his personal life and his childhood. The author speculates about details when clear evidence of Einstein’s thoughts isn’t known, but the speculations are made clear and they’re posed in a way to make you think about your own opinion of what was happening rather than being a closed statement. I truthfully only picked up this book as my boyfriend bought it for himself and I really wanted to borrow it! I ended up taking so long to read it that I had to keep the copy for myself (and I also enjoyed it and definitely want a copy on my shelves) and I bought him a new one! 😂 The copy I was reading was all battered and bend from carrying it around for so long so I would’ve felt horrible about giving him it back in that condition! Despite the fact that this book is really long and incredibly detailed, it is a very good read and I’d recommend it to anybody who has an interest in Einstein, or physics as a whole. I am a geographer (at least that’s what I am doing for my undergraduate!), although I do have an interest in science, however, I imagine most people of average intelligence will be able to read this book with minimal struggle even if science and physics isn’t your specific area of expertise.

Casati, hidden history

Thank you to NetGalley for an eCopy of this graphic novel in return for an unbiased review. I genuinely did not expect to enjoy this book as much as I did, I thought it’d be a little interesting 20-minute read that ended when I read the last page. It was a short read, and it was interesting, but it definitely did not end when I reached the last page. I had never heard of Casati before, and now I have she is definitely someone I want to learn more about. She is such an interesting character, and her life seems so surreal and ends so sadly that it is almost hard to believe this is a biography and not a work of fiction.

I really liked the artwork within the graphic novel, and the writing style was very immersive and enjoyable. I was genuinely sad when it finished. You may have never heard of Casati, or you may already be familiar with her, but either way, I definitely recommend picking this graphic novel up and giving it a read. Definitely something I’d like to own in person one day.