I was looking for a book by Colson Whitehead in the library. A friend had recommended The Nickel Boys, but that wasn't available. John Henry Days was available, and it caught my attention. I listened to it as an audiobook. It was very long, trying to bring in many different stories. It might have been better if some of the various stories were shortened or left out.

Yet, it pulled together themes of journalism, culture, and black history in a powerful overarching story. At times, it led me to rabbit holes, as I put down the story and read about the history of steam hammers, or racial conflict in New York City.

Find time to read this. ( )

I had to burn through this one pretty quickly because my kindle loan from the library was about to run out, but I liked it a lot even no doubt having missed a lot for having read hastily. I thought it was well put together and nicely written, and it for sure keeps me interested in Whitehead (this is the fifth of his that I've read). ( )

Gorgeous Whitehead prose -- never overdone. His historical passages are the strongest, though -- maybe why Nickel Boys and Underground are stronger books than this? The John Henry legend is fascinating -- I especially like the sections about the song being carried on. Ending did not work for me but was a legitimate choice. ( )

I DNF at 21 percent. I tried to finish this book, but honestly nothing was grabbing me at all. Initially, I was intrigued about how Whitehead would weave in John Henry into the story, but instead we seem to be flip flopping between different narrative styles. I really loved "Underground Railroad" and was hoping for more of the same here, but this book really needed some magical realism or something like the former book to really make it stand out.

"John Henry Days" takes a look at folk hero John Henry and an African American journalist (called J) who is flying into the town that claims him to write about the John Henry Days celebration. Whitehead goes back and forth between J and just random characters in this book. I think this is his way of taking a look at race in America. I just couldn't force myself to keep reading this.

I didn't care one whit about J the only character that I think that we follow through this whole book. I found the writing to be uneven. There were way too many metaphors. The chapters were really short too which doesn't allow you enough time to get settled into whatever POV you are currently in while reading. ( )

I'm either several years too late reading this book, or several years too early—Whitehead's descriptions of the early dotcom boom and its accompanying technology, of journalists (sorry, "journalists") on pointless junkets, while rendered in some wonderful prose, now seems dated. I don't think enough time has passed for descriptions of how a bot works, or how early search engines were compiled, to have acquired some sort of retro nostalgia.

This, of course, is a quibble which Whitehead couldn't necessarily have foreseen or done much about—that's just how things go. What he could have done, however, was to get his editor to do one more pass through John Henry Days. I found the first quarter to a third of the book to be immensely readable, full of wry humour and snapping prose. As the book wore on, though, it all became a little leaden, and some of the turns of phrase didn't make sense if you stopped to think about it—there was more than a hint of the overwritten about it. I got why some of the chapters tracing John Henry's impact during the years since his death were necessary and there; others, though, made it seem as if Whitehead, like J. Sutter, were being paid a dollar a word in order to get across the Grand Central Revelation which anyone would have realised fairly quickly.

This is not to say that John Henry Days is a bad book. I read large parts of it with pleasure, and would certainly try other books by Whitehead, but I would much rather have read a shorter novel he'd written about John Henry himself. I feel that such a book wouldn't have tried so hard to be More Hip and Ironic than Thou. ( )