Freedomland by Richard Price (CBR-IV #44)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #44/52
Published: 1998
Pages: 736
Genre: Crime/Thriller

A friend recommended this book to me years ago, but I never got around to picking it up. I found it in a used book store a few weeks ago and decided to give it a try. 

The premise is pretty simple for such a long book: A white woman (Brenda) wanders into an emergency room with bloody hands saying that she was carjacked by a black man in a mostly black neighborhood. Then she tells the cops that her four-year-old son was in the back of the car. This sets off a long string of events that causes a huge racial conflict between the black neighborhood (Dempsey) and the neighboring white town (Gannon) that Brenda lives in (and her brother is a cop in). 

Lorenzo Council is the Dempsey cop that is working on her case. He starts a search for the little boy while trying to get more information out of a near comatose Brenda. Something about her is "off", but he can't quite figure out what it is.

I thought that Freedomland was a little long. Some parts when off on tangents that went for pages and pages. I mean we find out what happened to the little boy and there's still TWO HUNDRED more pages! I thought for sure that meant it was just a red herring, but nope. Just 200 more pages.  It definitely could have been condensed.

However, I did watch the movie they made based off the book that came out in 2006 with Julianne Moore and Samuel L. Jackson. It wasn't nearly as good. When the storyline was condensed like it was for the movie, it's very bland. You don't get the same feel for the characters and you don't get the creeping dread that builds up while reading the novel. So, in that sense I understand the length of the novel a little better. It seems slow at times WHILE you're reading, but after you finish you realize it was worth it.

Oh, and I never did get why the title is "Freedomland". The abandoned theme park they visit is called "Freedomtown". There is a passing reference to Freedomtown being based off a larger theme park in New York called Freedomland, but otherwise it is never mentioned nor visited (the book takes place in New Jersey). 

Waiting: The True Confessions of a Waitress by Debra Ginsberg (CBR-IV #43)

Cannonball Read IV: Book #43/52
Published: 2000
Pages: 298
Genre: Nonfiction/Memoir 

I was a waitress in college and I LOVED it. It's such a hard job, but so satisfying to walk away every night with a wad of cash. I've always thought the world would be a little bit of a better place if every person had to spend six months of their life as a waiter or waitress. You literally learn to deal with every type of person whether as a customer or as a co-worker. 

I picked up this book at a used bookstore and was hoping it was better than the behind-the-scenes book I read last year about the cruise ship waiter. It was okay, but focused more on the writer's personal life than his actual job. Waiting was the waitressing memoir I'd been looking for. 

Debra has basically been a waitress at various places her entire life. She has a college degree, but chooses to be a waitress instead. That may seem strange to some, but I can understand her. I have a college degree, but I have thought about going back to waitressing sometimes. There really is no other job like it. This book follows Debra's various waitressing jobs starting when she was a teenager. I loved her writing - she's funny and never goes off on unrelated tangents for too long like some memoirs. She shares stores about customers as well as co-workers and what goes on behind the scenes. It's a very well-rounded view of working in a restaurant. 

Highly recommended if you have ever worked in the restaurant industry. If you haven't -- well, read at your own risk. Sometimes it's best not to know what goes on after hours or back in the kitchen.