First Reads: Writing My Wrongs

Review
Throughout my vacation, I struggled to find what kind of book to read before getting back to work. Books like Humankind: A Hopeful History, & The 99% Invisible City were on my radar, but it was too far into break to feasible read through with their 400+ pages. Thankfully, Shaka Senghor's biography of his life in prison, what lead up to it, and his fight to free himself not only from the prison system, but his past life, was my last minute savior. The book is ~260 pages in main content length, which you would think couldn't fit ~26 chapters, but I guess 1-3 page long chapters can exist in a non-joking manner. The vacation status combined with it's short length created a breezy read that can be comfortably tackled in daily readings, and finished quickly too. I may have finished the book in a little over a week, and while my tendency to rush things to get the next thing done plus my fear of not finishing it before vacation ends may have had a hand, the book was still engaging. Perhaps its because I never read a book of this subject matter before, but everyday I was pulled to learn just a bit more, just read one more chapter to find out what the author did in prison next. The book through a majority of its chapters switches between Shaka's life before and during prison. Admittedly, I preferred the chapters in prison than the former, though that combined with each chapters shorter than normal length for me may have created the pull I needed to get more invested into this biography compared to previous ones. This was honestly refreshing for me, after many long books, books discussing general problems, and self-help books, it was nice to actually have a more personal story.

Overall Recommendation: For those interested in exploring more of the American Prison system, with a side of exploring the drug-ridden and violent characteristics that plagued black neighborhoods from the first-person perspective of one who lived through it, this book could be for you. If you are at all mildly interested regardless, still consider it. The structure in which Shaka tells his life, as well as it's short length, provided an enjoyable read.

Buy it or Borrow It?: Unfortunately all of this praise comes from a rather warped perspective. I did buy this book, but for dirt cheap. Its list price on Amazon is $17 paperback and $26 hardcover. However, both of those prices as of time of writing are on sale for moderately less. It's also not hard to find dirt cheap prices for this book at other vendors. Personally, I probably would've opted to borrow this book. On the other hand, I may have never gotten this book if I didn't get a good deal out of it. So I guess in a strange way, If you are interested in getting this book but aren't to interested in the subject matter, buy one of the discounted copies. The financial burden may push you to actually giving this a try, which is certainly strange. I guess that's a topic for another time though.