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    Long Division
    Long Division
    Long Division
    Audiobook7 hours

    Long Division

    Written by Kiese Laymon

    Narrated by Sean Crisden

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Long Division contains two interwoven stories. In the first, it's 2013: after an on-stage meltdown during a nationally televised quiz contest, fourteen-year-old Citoyen "City" Coldson becomes an overnight YouTube celebrity. The next day, he's sent to stay with his grandmother in the small coastal community of Melahatchie, where a young girl named Baize Shephard has recently disappeared.

    Before leaving, City is given a strange book without an author called Long Division. He learns that one of the book's main characters is also named City Coldson-but Long Division is set in 1985. This 1985 City, along with his friend and love-object, Shalaya Crump, discovers a way to travel into the future and steals a laptop and cell phone from an orphaned teenage rapper called . . . Baize Shephard. They ultimately take these with them all the way back to 1964, to help another time-traveler they meet protect his family from the Klan.

    City's two stories ultimately converge in the mysterious work shed behind his grandmother's, where he discovers the key to Baize's disappearance.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 23, 2013
    ISBN9781452687025
    Long Division

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    Reviews for Long Division

    4/5

    135 ratings15 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Enjoyed this book immensely and I can safely say this book has now become my favorite book of fiction. It’s intelligent, funny and like nothing I’ve ever read. Do yourself a favor and read it now!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Very funny book but confusing to follow along with. I did enjoy it for the dialogue and the history, I just wish the time travel portion of the story line was easier to follow.
    • 5/5
      This must become required reading for early high school students. The writing and the craft to interweave the two stories are without fault.
    • 4/5
      It was just a satisfying read — Really enjoyed this book.

      It’s a mixture between Inception (the movie) and Back to the Future (movie).

      I listened to the audio, so at first it was really confusing as tho whose storyline I was in. It did give off YA vibes (and not just because the MCs were aged between 13 & 15). Really loved the concept of having 3 storyline intertwining with each other.
    • 5/5
      It's a crazy book but it really gets at truth
    • 2/5
      I get the praise for this novel - it is awesome from a literary and cultural standpoint. The author was ambitious, and it paid off. I wanted to love this book for these reasons, but it just never grabbed me. There were some incredibly emotionally raw moments that prove the author's talent. Overall, though, it just wasn't for me, and I almost hate to say that.
    • 3/5
      I don't know how much of this I really got, but I liked it. If you like twisty, time-travel, enigmatic books, you'll like it too.
    • 3/5
      audio fiction (meta drama with time travel: 1964, 1985, 2013 Mississippi).Maybe I would be less confused if I'd read this in print, because it was sometimes tricky to remember if I was listening to the main story, or the story inside the book inside the book (also called Long Division). But I bet I would still be confused.The narration was, apart from that, really excellent and the characters were interesting.
    • 3/5
      I liked how much this book tackled and its very satirical bent. I can have a hard time with time travel, though, and I think that's what tripped me up about this...between that and the book element, this might have been more effective to me if I had read it instead of listening to it. Worth a revisit, but I'm glad I read it. Yet another book that should have been nominated for an Alex.

      ********
      Read Harder: book about books (well A book in this case)
    • 3/5
      Citoyen "City" Coldson is a black teenager in Mississippi dealing with racism and the difficulties of adolescence. But he also seems to be... a character in a book he's reading? Maybe a book that he himself wrote? One that involves time travel, and other kinds of strangeness.The novel's depiction of and commentary on racism and the way it affects people is pointed and painful and often very well done. Everything else about it... Man, I don't even know. It's weird, because I'm perfectly comfortable with time travel stories, and I'm okay with magic realism, and well practiced in believing six impossible things before breakfast. But the strangeness in this book... I just never really felt like I had a handle on it, never felt like it quite made sense to me, even on its own terms. Maybe that's the book, maybe that's me, I don't know. I did notice, when I was nearly finished with it, that there was a blurb on the back comparing Laymon to Murakami, which suddenly reminded me that I felt a very similar can't-quite-find-my-footing feeling with the one Murakami novel I've read, Kafka on the Shore. Although I found that one more interesting than frustrating, in the end, and I'm not sure I feel that way about this one.Rating: This is a hard one to rate. The aspects of it that worked for me worked really well, and I want to give it credit for that, but mostly I'm left with this unsatisfied what-the-hell-did-I-just-read? feeling. Let's go with 3/5.
    • 2/5
      When I first started this book, I was really interested in reading it. The first few pages grabbed my attention and I looked forward to reading the story. Somewhere in the middle of the book I got lost and confused as to what was actually going on. I don't even understand what happened at the end!
    • 3/5
      2.5 stars. There were some early chapters that I absolutely loved, and there is definitely something to this book that is new and different. But I think it required something of me that I didn't have to give. Undivided attention and devoted study, perhaps? I could give you the general outlines of the stor(y/ies), but I'm certain I would get confused in the details. Without expending more effort than I would normally put in, this stayed just a bit over my head. The characters were all interesting but I was so busy trying to keep them straight that I never developed feelings for them. I suspect this is a book that improves with a second reading, though.
    • 5/5
      This was a trip from beginning to end. I legitimately think it's an extremely strong four star book, but the fact that it's completely different from anything else I've been reading punches it out extra. It's a time travel novel (although not particularly science fiction-y, there isn't anything about how the time travel works, exactly), starting off with teenagers in 2013 post-Katrina rural Mississippi. (I think it's rural, I know nothing about Mississippi, there seemed to be a lot of woods) In addition to the time travel, you've a book-within-a-book story, featuring some of the same characters in various times. The humor was hitting me exactly right, too. I confess that, as usual, I struggled to keep up with exactly what thread was playing out in what way in what timeline, but that's definitely a problem I have often so I assume it's me. I mean, the broad strokes were clear, it's more like there were some details I know I fuzzed out a bit.It's not perfect, the tone oddly shifts around a bit and I'm not sure that was working for me, but overall, this book was hard to put down and whenever I had to, I found myself thinking about it a lot.
    • 4/5
      Oh what a refreshing gem this is. I love the humor, the characters, the writing is so full of life. Full full full. It gets a bit confusing with the time travel, and ends up seeming like the hand drawing a hand drawing, if I'm reading it as well as I hope I did. I feel like I missed so much though! The ending all but tells you to start the book over again, if only I had the time, but unless I start it again right away I don't think I could figure it out better than I already have. I can't really think about it without feeling my brain is broke. It's well worth the read anyway just for the writing style, even if you can't figure out this puzzle. I could probably think about this book for hours and never figure it out. I've got some questions! I can't tell if Laymon wrote the book intentionally vague or if I'm lacking some brain cells...so the book could probably be polished a bit, lose some loose ends. I especially loved the laptop dance party in 1964 but each page is filled with good stuff. I love that the characters compete in a sentence competition, as Laymon could certainly win one of those. The humor stays throughout the book, even when it gets confusing and sad. This book sure has HEART. I even had a dream that I was in the book with the characters. This reminds me of Mark Twain, Ralph Ellison, Victor LaValle and Haruki Murakami. If it wasn't for the Tournament of Books, I might not have found this one. A sad pairing in the ToB for this book to be against The Goldfinch. I feel like The Goldfinch was written a billion times before, but Long Division is the fresh beating heart of future books.... I will definitely be keeping an eye out for Laymon's writing in the future. Man, I need a drank.
    • 3/5
      Read from February 26 to March 02, 2014 I had a difficult time wrapping my brain around this book. There were moments of "Wow, this is great" mixed with "I have no idea what just happened" combined with "That entire paragraph made zero sense, did the author forget a few sentences?" and then "Is 1964, 2013, or 1985 -- who did that happen to and when?"I've never been a huge fan of time travel. (That's probably why I am not a Doctor Who fan, I can't grasp the when.) But this book was even more confusing than just time travel, it's also a book-within-a-book with the characters having the same names in both the book and the book-within-a-book . Yeah, wrap your brain around that. If this book had JUST been the story of City and Shalaya, I think I would have liked it much more. (Basically, I just found parts of it way too confusing.)