Orange is the New Black by Piper Kerman

This book was part of a "buy one, get one" free deal at Audible, and I used 1 of my credits to purchase two books. There wasn't much else in the deal, unfortunately, but I was curious to read Orange is the New Black since the Netflix show came out a few years ago.

The book isn't the jammed packed comedy-drama depicted in the show, but that's to be expected. It's entertaining in a different way and I appreciate the narrative. It's also incredibly informative and her passion for the corrupt prison system (and sentencing of nonviolent drug crimes) is easily seen. She makes a compelling case on what is wrong with the prison system and gently pushes the reader to wonder exactly how much the prison system is affecting the rest of our economy and way of life in America.

Piper Kerman starts off as an eye rolling lost 20 something wasp who is in need of a good adventure and some time to "find herself." She meets Nora, who is 10 years her senior and has the allure that some middle aged men sometimes do for young women. Nora is a drug smuggler working with an African drug lord and quickly pulls Piper into her fold. Piper is mesmerized by the glamorous lifestyle and the exotic places, but soon she sees the cracks of her fantasy life. It all comes to a head when Nora asks her to smuggle money into the country, and she barely does it without getting caught. Piper realizes that she doesn't want this, and soon makes her getaway.

Piper chronicles her life since her tumultuous time. She meets Larry and though dated women prior, they fall in love. Thinking her brief stint with Nora would just fade away in the past, she moves on, climbing the professional ladder and moving to NYC with Larry. However, it all goes south, and she is indicted on a drug trafficking and money laundering.

It takes the federal courts 6 years to finally sentence her and close her case. She's less eye roll-y during this time, though I am never a fan of describing deep and personal moments with significant others with cliches ad nauseam. She routinely goes back over how much she is cared for and how much people love her, which, to me, felt a bit off. Maybe it was to drive home the fact that her life outside of prison would be vastly different than many of the women she would meet on the inside? That her time in jail didn't really mess up the rest of her life, just the brief period?

Anyway, she gets to jail at Danbury and the characters mentioned in the book are different, though you can see where the inspiration came from. The cast of characters rotate much more frequently in the book than on the show and there is a lot less sex in the book than on the show, hah.

Again, she provides a much needed perspective of an educated woman going through the prison system. It's clear that socioeconomically she benefited from the system, until her rebellion led her being named in a criminal case and though she will leave (relatively) unscathed from her time in prison (she even had a high paying job that her friend created for her), she realized what her participating in the drug ring did to others, and how the prison is just failing those who made mistakes and need rehabilitation, not punishment.

Upon further research, I'm glad to see that she used her experience to continue to push for prison rehabilitation and prison education. I'm also glad to know that her and Larry are still together, despite the show breaking them up.

It was a really good listen and an easy listen. However, the audio wasn't consistent. I really liked the voice actor, though sometimes I felt like her voice kept getting lower and lower in pitch and I had to bump up the volume to hear her and then she would switch to another character and I would have to hurry to turn down the volume again.


Overall, a great listen. I have to rewatch the first season (and the second possibly) to do a "Which is Better?" but I think they are great pieces of work on their own. Their messages are different but both stand alone as individual pieces.

Which is Better? AKA Jessica Jones and Alias

Wait, AKA Jessica Jones was based off this comic book? Did the script writers read the comic book, toss it to the side and thought, 'no, we can do better?' Or they thought, 'hey, let's take the most uninteresting things about the comic book, toss the rest aside that makes it great, and put other characters in because, well, we're sooo creative and naturally, what we come up with is far more riveting than Alias?' Because that's what the show felt like.

AKA Jessica Jones has been critically acclaimed and raved about, but honestly? I thought it was just OK. Not the worst thing I've ever watched (I'm looking at you Chappie. You abomination.) Now that I've read the beginning of Alias, I've realized that the tone and the mood doesn't transfer over into the show. There are also quite a few terrible things they added, like Ruben and... what was her name? Rylie? Rudder? Rumplestiltskin? and Malcolm, who, let's be honest, had the most thankless character arc ever. Not to mention they rewrote the entire story to where it's almost unrecognizable. There are bits and pieces of the show that I appreciated, and recognised what they were trying to accomplish, but it fell flat. Especially standing next to the comic book.

Even Jessica Jones' hair is different! Which, ok, it's not a big deal. I mean, hair is hair, but did they keep the black hair because it's Krysten Ritter? It would have been interesting to see her have a hair change, but maybe she's butt ugly with red hair... who knows? But it felt to me that black hair was to on the nose with how "dark" the show was.

What I also noticed most about the show was how... cheap it looked. Now, I don't mind low budget movies, and honestly, sometimes creativity can be a wonderful thing that actually adds to it. However, when you notice that even the makeup looks awful in certain lighting (really... there was a defining line between her makeup and her neck, not to mention her skin looked yellow), and your husband points out that the high profile lawyer's office is incredibly bare, and not in a minimalist way, but in a oh-shit-we-have-no-money way, it's a problem. I don't set out to watch a movie to look for makeup flaws and bare settings but it smacked us in the face. It was so low budget that it couldn't even be covered up.

Now, Josh and I have different theories on why it looked so low budget and I think it's a mixture of both of them. I think some of it was intentional, or tried to be. In the comic book, at least in the first volume, she's mostly on the streets, investigating. She's just in tee-shirts and jeans, and only twice does she demonstrate her super powers. It seems like they tried to carry that over to the show. I also think they spent a lot of their money getting Carey Ann Moss, David Tennant, Krysten Ritter and Mike Colter on the show. Josh thinks that most of the budget for the Marvel TV shows were blown with Daredevil, which had a lot of really remarkable shots and stunts and they none left over to shoot Jessica Jones. Man, I hope they are able to film the Luke Cage one (which btw, was one of the best parts about the show).

So, verdict? I haven't read all the comics, so I would have to update as I read them. However, it's a shame that AKA Jessica Jones didn't use much of the story line with Alias, because it would have been neat to see, even if it was just the Rick Jones, sidekick stuff. So far? Read Alias... and I guess see the show if you want to know what everyone else is talking about and you want in on the convo...  but you didn't miss much.