What Are You Reading???! - 'Half-Blood Blues'

You guys are in for a Real Treat!! This post is completely from Ninnera !! starting....>>>NOW! >>

"Today i begin my read of "half blood blues" the author is a black woman named Esi Edugyan who is both married and has a child (yes its possible to have a fantastic home life as well as a blossoming writing career).

since i spend 3 hrs a day on the subway..(and spend almost 130$ on my subway pass -___-)  Ive decided to put this time to good use...that being said i am committing to ONLY use my subway time to read this book and see how long it takes me...3 hrs a day in reading? A challenge im going to take on LOL.

This book is about a young, brilliant trumpet-player, Hieronymus, is arrested in a Paris cafe. The star musician was never heard from again. He was twenty years old. He was a German citizen. And he was black. 
Fifty years later, Sidney Griffiths, the only witness that day, still refuses to speak of what he saw. When Chip Jones, his friend and fellow band member, comes to visit, recounting the discovery of a strange letter, Sid begins a slow journey towards redemption. 
From the smoky bars of pre-war Berlin to the salons of Paris, Sid leads the reader through a fascinating, little-known world, and into the heart of his own guilty conscience. 
Half-Blood Blues is an electric, heart-breaking story about music, race, love and loyalty, and the sacrifices we ask of ourselves, and demand of others, in the name of art. 

 

"Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room." 
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

 

"It's like that, I guess, when the past come to collect what you owe." 
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

 

"I guess mercy is a muscle like any other. You got to exercise it, or it just cramp right up." 
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

 

"It ain't fair. Gifts is divided so damn unevenly. Like God just left his damn sack of talents in a ditch somewhere and said, "Go help yourselves, ladies and gents.Them's that get there first can help themselves to the biggest ones. In every other walk of life, a jack can work to get what he want. but ain't no amount of toil going get you a lick more talent than you born with. Geniuses ain't made, brother, they just is. and I just was not." 
― Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues

 

Winner of the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize

Winner of the 2012 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize

Winner of the 2012 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award

Shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize

Shortlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction

Shortlisted for the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

Finalist for the 2011 Governor General's Award for Fiction

Finalist for the 2011 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize

<<<< Cooool!! Let us know how long it took when your finished!! :) This book, along with the sixteenth round, seems like it would have a good history lesson in terms of what other parts of the world were like, and a little bit about how black people were treated, and how black people were treated by the law, early 20th century.