'The Help' by Kathryn Stockett, or 'Racist Southern Women Care Too Much About Toilets', also 120/1001 'Invisible Man' by Ralph Ellison, or 'American Racism with a Hint of Magical Realism'

So I was all reading 'Invisible Man' cause it was on the 1001 and I hadn't heard of it and it's supposed to be a classic and I saw it in a charity shop and what not, and then my book group was all 'let's read this awesome book 'The Help' cause we heard other people say it's awesome' and I was all 'yeah alright'. So I stop reading 'Invisible Man' in order to read 'The Help' in time for my next book group meeting, and then they mention 'Invisible Man' in 'The Help' and they're both all about racial equality and I was all...

So 'The Help' is all about some nasty, posh, white southern ladies who, for the most part, treat their black maids like crap even though they do everything for them and raise their children. The head bitch in the pack is a woman called Hilly, who starts a campaign to stop black maids using the same toilets as their white employers to avoid innocent whites getting nasty black diseases. It would be hilarious if it wasn't taken so seriously by all the other posh, white southern ladies. One of head bitches mates realizes she is an utter tool decides to write a book full of interviews of these bitchy womens' maids. Two of these maids champion her cause, despite the fact that they know they risk their jobs, and potentially their lives, and the book gets written and published. Lots of people get pretty pissed off after it's published, at which point the bitches friend who compiled it all knobs off to New York. Yeah I wasn't happy with the ending. Oh and there was some hoo-har in the middle about a chocolate pie someone shat in.

 Opinion? Yeah it was very readable, except for the poo pie bit which was actually quite difficult to read! You have ALL the outrage at the nasty women, who ruin the lives of their maids without a second thought, you love the maids, who are funny and heartwarming and sweet. I have a few niggles, like how all the bitchy ladies are so goddamn young (like 23 most of them) yet they have ANCIENT mothers that must be put in old people homes and go senile and what not, yet surely they should be like 50 years old at max! Also there is a weird bit about a naked man attacking one of the maids and her employer that came from nowhere and didn't really lead to anything either. Overall though it was interesting, thought provoking and heartwarming. Awww.

Well not totally, similar themes, but generally it's a very different direction in which we now travel. So 'Invisible Man' is all SERIOUS and LITERARY and IMPORTANT and REALLY REALLY CONFUSING.
So the poor, black protagonist (he isn't given a name throughout the book, despite it all being from his perspective, cause he's invisible ya see! ya see?) works his way up to a respectable, all black, southern college. He has to go through a slightly bizarre 'to the death' boxing match in order to obtain his position, but hey, it's not explained so I guess it's just something I don't get, either because I'm British or I'm dumb. He then gets the task of driving round some posh old white dude who helped found the college or something and rather stupidly he takes him to this bloke who slept with his daughter and got her pregnant.

Yeah I know right? He then takes him to a fucked up bar and then wonders why he ends up getting thrown out, but thrown out he is and he takes off to New York. Lots of people don't give him jobs, mainly because, ya know, he is..... carrying a letter that says he was expelled from college!

oh yeah kids, I worked out how to put gifs on my blog!

He then goes into a spiral of depression and ends up working for what I think are a load of communists. Notice the 'I think' cause really have have NO FUCKING CLUE.
Anyway it all seems to go to crap (not really sure why) and he ends up living in a basement with hundreds of light bulbs working on stolen electricity in order to 'stick it to the (white) man'. I wish I had understood this book, I really do!