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Emanuel
Regular Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 296
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 11:13 am: | 
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I'm currently reading a fascinating nonfiction book called "The Game" by Neil Strauss. It's about how a writer infiltrates the pick-up-artists' world and becomes one of them. The writing is so good and over the top that it feels a little James Freyish. Know what I mean?
What ya'll reading? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8474
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 01:07 pm: |
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In keeping with my growing preference for non-fiction, I'm currently reading and immensely enjoying last year's bestseller "The Devil in the White City". Not only is it about a really interesting historical period in Chicago during the 1890s but it is also about the case history of a pathological serial killer. After that I'll be taking on the current selection of my book club, something entitled "The Book With No Name" and it's written by "Anonymous". Hummmmm. |
Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2104
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 01:19 pm: |
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Ecclesiastes (which I read every few months anyways), some book about sensitivity and how to make it work in your life (forget the title), and Monkey on a Stick (which follows the rise and fall of the American Hare Krishna movement). |
Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2105
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 01:21 pm: |
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And a friend's quite enlightening blog. |
Libralind2
Veteran Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 813
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 05:22 pm: |
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Im reading Walter Mosley's
This Year You Write Your Novel
LiLi |
Troy
Veteran Poster
Username: Troy
Post Number: 616
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, April 29, 2007 - 09:16 pm: |
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Libralind2 I also recently finished "This Year You Write Your Novel" I have to admit it was motivating. Not that I'm a novelist, but I can see how it would prompt someone, with a story to tell, but who has been sitting on the fencing trying to decide wether to write it down...
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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2003
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 11:27 am: |
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Cynique, I LOVED "The Devil in the White City"! I just finished a British mystery novel marathon and now am reading "What You Owe Me." (Hopefully after a couple more chapters I will be cured of my habit of using British slang and confusing my kids! LOL) |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4290
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 11:59 am: |
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Mein Kampf
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Creative Brother's Sci Fi Magazine #9
"A Little Something from the Public Domain" (A radio comedy in Three Acts) |
A_womon
Veteran Poster
Username: A_womon
Post Number: 1548
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 12:04 pm: |
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I just finished reading "Cross" by James Patterson the latest in his series about AA Detective Alex Cross |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8478
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 01:40 pm: |
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Yes, Yvette, I remembered your rave reviews about "The Devil in the White City" when I decided to check it out. |
Libralind2
Veteran Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 815
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, April 30, 2007 - 08:51 pm: |
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So true Troy in fact I hope this is the year for me
LLiLi |
Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2113
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 10:47 am: |
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Chris, I'm not trying to be funny, but I really am curious: What exactly are you learning from Mein Kampf? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8489
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 01:28 pm: |
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Jeeze. I thought everybody knew that Hitler is chrishayden's idol, and that ol chris dreams of becoming a dictator so he can purge the black race of anybody who doesn't adhere to his warped beliefs. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4302
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 03:41 pm: |
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Chris, I'm not trying to be funny, but I really am curious: What exactly are you learning from Mein Kampf?
(If you will note I am also reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. It is providing me background material on Hitler.
Basically what I mostly get from the book is an insight into his speaking style. I am sure that the passages of the book would have been much more effective delivered in a hysterical scream than on the page.
Basically it is claptrap and drivel but it is the kind of claptrap and drivel that his German audiences loved, so you can get an idea of their psychology, too.
What he says about propaganda though is gold.
Jeeze. I thought everybody knew that Hitler is chrishayden's idol, and that ol chris dreams of becoming a dictator so he can purge the black race of anybody who doesn't adhere to his warped beliefs.
(You're weak. Are you afraid that reading Mein Kampf will warp somebody's widdle bitty head? Are you afwaid dat a negro will read it an' go crazy on de white folks?
Puh-leease. You're weak, Cynique! Weak! |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4303
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 03:45 pm: |
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The above comments remind me of one night I was standing with a local woman in an art reception. This woman is college educated. She owns and runs her own consultant business.
She asked me what my novel was about. All I was able to do was tell her the title, "A Vampyre Blues:
I swear she could have fit into an old Charlie Chan movie.
She was practically shaking and said "I don't read nothin' like dat"
Negroes, it is the 21st Century. Stuff is in the works that will make Mein Kampf look like a school picnic and you'll be in the middle of it and YOU AIN'T READY! |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8493
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 03:51 pm: |
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Do you ever make sense, chrishayden?? Why would I care if black folks read this book? I'm all for people reading and thinking for themselves. I fear you about as much as I fear a maggot turning into a fly. Shoo! |
Emanuel
Regular Poster
Username: Emanuel
Post Number: 297
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 04:22 pm: |
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Chris,
I think African Americans with deep religious beliefs tend to try to stay away from horror, erotica, and street lit. Maybe she was a churched woman.
I read Mein Kampf over ten years ago to get a glimpse into what would make a man become such an evil dictator, and why people in this day and age worship him. Nothing wrong with doing a little research.
A lot of people think if you read someone's writing, you agree with what is said. For many of us, it's just research. When I was reading an E. Lynn Harris book in public a few years ago (I heard his writing style was nice.), these supposed thugs acted like they wanted to beat me down. I told them not only am I straight and married but I'll read whatever I freakin' want to read but if they wanted me to have a Gulf War flashback, we could go. They backed down. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4307
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 04:30 pm: |
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Emanuel, both you and I know that these Negroes need to get into the 21st Century and stop being afraid of "haints"!
They're uncivilized! And then they want to get on the brothers on the corner because they got a problem! |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8496
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, May 01, 2007 - 07:14 pm: |
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Get real, chrishayden. The kind of "uncivilized" people afraid of "haints" are the grandmothers of the brothers standing on the corner. Why don't you petition to have all of these uncivilized negroes exterminated the way that Hitler did the Jews?? I'm sure you'd agree that white folks would be happy to go along with your program. |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 247
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 12:00 am: |
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I'm reading "Ralph Ellison: A Biography" by Arnold Rampersad, just published last week and 650-pages. It's excellent.
Finished a Pakistan novel, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid, and one from Libya, "In the Country of Men" by Hisham Matar.
Hi Cynique, I have not read Larsen's "The Devil in the White City," however, there was apparently a racial symbolism to the arrangement of nations along the Midway. Depressing I know, but it's described in the following excerpt from Scott L. Malcolmson's "One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race."
The 1893 Chicago fair represented one way out of the racial prison for white people. Historically, when whiteness functioned well for white people, it tended to have one or more supplements, supplements that made being white a route toward something beyond race, some version of fully realized humanity -- Christianity, civilization, Enlightenment, natural superiority. These supplements had been in short supply since the Civil War, and white people had wandered into a world of mirrorings and animal savagery and desperate imitation and fantasy. They had become trapped by the terms of their own racial imaginations. What they found in Chicago was an appealing, if relatively meager, image of escape into the racial supplement of material progress, of technology. The centerpiece of the fair was the White City at the head of the Midway, a road that, as an observer wrote, depicted a "sliding scale of humanity. The Teutonic and Celtic races were placed nearest to the White City; farther away was the Islamic world, East and West Africa; at the farthest end were the savage races, the African Dahomey and the American Indian."
This was triumphalist anthropology run amok. Segregation had been applied to the entire world and to the sweep of human history. And this had been done in celebration of the marvelous diversity of human cultures, each one making its contribution, however rude, to the general advancement toward the White City. Part of the way along sat old Douglass and young Ida B. Wells with their pamphlet. Douglass had withstood much criticism for opposing the trend among blacks toward self-segregation -- including black immigration, generally to Africa, which had become popular again in some black and white circles after 1880. (Even President Grant had advocated a black homeland in Santo Domingo, where Columbus had first brought racial thinking to the New World -- a perfect closing of the racial circle, it would seem. James Garfield, president in 1881, merely hoped black Americans could be "colonized, sent to heaven or got rid of in any decent way.") Douglass wanted an America in which race did not matter. The Chicago exposition presented a world in which race did not matter if you were white. In the end, black Americans did get some handicrafts into the White City, though as examples of one among "the three modern types of savagery." And there was to be a Colored People's Day, complete with watermelons. Activists circulated "No Watermelon" leaflets in protest. That afternoon Douglass spoke at Festival Hall. As he read a paper, "The Race Problem in America," whites on the periphery began to jeer. Douglass put down his speech, and his glasses, and let loose a fighting voice that overwhelmed the catcalls. "Men talk of the Negro problem," he said. "There is no Negro problem. The problem is whether the American people have loyalty enough, patriotism enough, to live up to their own Constitution . . . We Negroes love our country." He spoke for an hour.
Douglass was himself an exhibit: honorable old man with an honorable old idea. His speech and presence were no more than stones on the Midway. the path led out and upward, away from race, away from the pastness arrayed along the Midway so as to suggest that the darker you were the more you lived in the past -- the dark child to the colorless adult. This was the other side of Joel Chandler Harris and the racial past he represented; this was Progress, the direction in which Harris's little white boy could go when he left his Uncle Remus. Progress hinged on the question of mobility. The plantation romance of racial immobility was, for all its cheeriness, a romance of despair. A fully realized race cannot, by definition, go anywhere, and the deathly nature of white nostalgia indicates some recognition of this fact. Whites needed an alternative vision, and they made one in Chicago; a future without nonwhites. nonwhites from Dahomey through Persia (and Alabama) would remain fixed in time, immobile. The despair of whieness could find relief in a cult of change. The chance to change and grow was the chief asset of membership in the dominant race.
http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/10/22/reviews/001022.22pattert.html?_r=1&oref=sl ogin |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 248
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 12:02 am: |
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Correction: "Malcomson." |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8499
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 12:54 pm: |
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I'm half way through the book, Steve, so I'll check out the critique later because I want to read and appreciate the skillful writing and interesting juxtaposition of the 2 compelling events the book covers without being distracted. The book's author is very thorough and presumably a historical non-fiction book set in 1890s would acknowledge racism. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4316
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 01:12 pm: |
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I'm half way through the book, Steve, so I'll check out the critique
(You mean you'll check out the CYNIQUE-- |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8503
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 01:16 pm: |
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That's right, chrishayden. I prefer to reach my own conclusion without the influence of preconceived notions, something that would never occur to you to do. |
Cocowriter
First Time Poster
Username: Cocowriter
Post Number: 5
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 07:49 pm: |
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Why do you all insist on such childish behavior? That's why I don't visit this board that often. I want intelligent discourse about literature and writing, not jr. high pot shots flying right and left. Grow up! |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8515
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 3 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 02, 2007 - 09:31 pm: |
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Do you have anything intelligent to contribute to this discussion? Like a book you read and would like to recommend???? |
Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2129
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 03, 2007 - 07:21 am: |
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I will soon start to read my new copy of The Book of Enoch.
To any here who have read it, what did you get out of it? Just curious. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 4338
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 07, 2007 - 12:23 pm: |
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Why do you all insist on such childish behavior? That's why I don't visit this board that often. I want intelligent discourse about literature and writing, not jr. high pot shots flying right and left. Grow up!
Do you have anything intelligent to contribute to this discussion? Like a book you read and would like to recommend????
(Cynique is exactly right as always. All you got to do is start a thread or suggest a book.
Only a WIMP is afraid to come to an electronic discussion board where she/he/it is known only by an alias!
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Msprissy
Regular Poster
Username: Msprissy
Post Number: 59
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2007 - 07:19 pm: |
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When I read “A Moment of Justice, A Lifetime of Vengeance” by John A. Wooden, I took flight from my surroundings and flew with the characters. The novel is a chilling and gripping murder mystery, set off by the murder of Alabama State Senator Robert Cowens, with shades of the old south woven throughout. It opens with the lynching of a Negro male, while 15 Caucasians, ages 15 to 21, celebrate as if it were a party. That, along, will raise the hairs on the nape of any human being. The lynching sets off many violent reactions, even years later. The voice of FBI Special Agent Kenny Carson (KC), the protagonist/narrator, is clear, yes, and full of testosterone. Yet, he’s still a gentleman. Although the subcharacters work well as his team, I had trouble keeping up with the many names. I now know that they are all necessary to help the reader understand the “... fifteen youngsters in a photograph with a hanging body, ...” Who is the avenger, the assassin of these kids? It’s the job of KC and his team to find the murderer who is murdering the murderers. What is more, KC knows he has to do it with as much objectivity as his heart can muster, given the fact that he is a black man highly offended by the lynching. His anger seeps through on occasions but he never loses sight of his job—to catch the assassin. And then there’s Julia, a controversial relationship.
John A. Wooden does a wonderful job explaining investigative procedures, putting together the pieces of the puzzle, and showing us the mind of the assassin. He never loses his way through the complicated twists and turns. He penned an attentive, detailed murder mystery. At times, the crimes were nerve racking, and that ending, wow! It is definitely not your conventional mystery. Taken all together, this is execellent writing that would stand the test of time. If you are a lover of murder mysteries, you’ll love this one. I eagerly await his next novel.
Minnie E Miller |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2037
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007 - 10:37 am: |
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Thanks for the review, Minnie. I have been in full "mystery mode" in my reading as of late so I'll have to check this out!
On another one of these watchu reading threads someone suggested "The Ladies' No. 1 Detective Agency." I am listening to an audio-book of this right now and love it. So--Thanks to whoever suggested that! (BTW, I remember reading somewhere that Queen Latifah is a big fan of this series. I wonder if--and hope--she's planning to buy the rights of this to make a movie version...) |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8584
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007 - 12:26 pm: |
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I finally finished "The Devil in the White City," the book your good review inspired me to read. It was one of the best books of its kind that I have ever read. |
Msprissy
Regular Poster
Username: Msprissy
Post Number: 60
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007 - 01:06 pm: |
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I invite you to visit my book promo at http://reviews.aalbc.com/the_seduction_mr_bradley.htm
Minnie E Miller |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8591
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 14, 2007 - 12:22 am: |
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OK, Steve, I read the interesting sidebar you posted about the era in which the book I was reading took place. The book does not focus on the "great white hope" aspect maybe because this undercurrent never occurred to the author of "The Devil in the White City" since he was so occupied with focusing on the trials and tribulations involved in actually bringing this World's Fair into fruition, not to mention the book's serial killer sub plot. |
Yukio
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 2336
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 14, 2007 - 03:25 am: |
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Penny Von Eschen, Race Against Empire. brenda gayle plummer, Window on Freedom:race, civil rights, and foreign affairs 1945-1988. |
Crystal
Regular Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 320
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 08:01 pm: |
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I'm about to start Not Our Kind Of Girl, Unraveling The Myths Of Black Teenage Motherhood by Elaine Bell Kaplan. I'm interested to see her take on this situation. I doubt it'll be a ridiculous "just say no" kind of thing.
But, what I'm really reading is a 6 volume 15th century British historical novel series by Dorothy Dunnett - satisfying my perverse love of British history. I've just finished the 2nd volume. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 4767
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 - 11:35 pm: |
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I am reading Dead Guy$ Don't Buy 
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Renata
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Renata
Post Number: 2173
Registered: 08-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 12:27 am: |
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You guys should really check out the Book of Enoch. It's written by the prophet Enoch, who according to the bible was the only man to have walked with God and lived, and was taken to heaven without dying. It's basically angelic lore and tells the story of the "fallen angels" and the punishment they faced in heaven. |
Robynmarie
Regular Poster
Username: Robynmarie
Post Number: 449
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 17, 2007 - 12:28 am: |
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I just finished "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" if you can believe that. I picked it up because I heard a Pullitzer prize winning journalist say that today's authors have spunk and ambition but are horrible writers. He suggested reading the classics to improve writing style and develop your own distinctive voices. So I am on the classics for now. Next stop: The Stranger by Albert Camus.
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Nom_de_plume
Newbie Poster
Username: Nom_de_plume
Post Number: 40
Registered: 07-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 07, 2007 - 03:24 am: |
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If you're reading the classics like that, then I suggest Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose as a terrific companion. Her thought is that back in the day, authors who penned those very classics didn't have fancy MFA programs and workshops to aid them, they studied the writers they admired! I really enjoyed that book and read another of hers, Blue Angel, which is a satire of sorts on the creative writing programs in universities.
Right now I'm reading Free Food for Millionaires by Min Jin Lee. It's about a young Korean woman educated at Yale amongst filthy rich peers and her own struggles of being the daughter of immigrants who run a dry cleaners in Queens. I LOVE it so far.
Ellison's biography is on my list, along with a few of the 165 books I got at BEA. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2087
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 07, 2007 - 11:21 am: |
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All of these are such good suggestions!
Robynmarie, I see no reason for anone to not believe (or support) what you are doing. As much as I have always loved to read, I have frequently found new insights and joys from picking up classics to re-read for pleasure that I was previously required to read in school. I'll have to add a couple of classics to my (already long!) summer reading list.
I finally picked up Neil DeGrasse Tyson's "Death By Black Hole." (Actually an audiobook.) I highly recommend it for anyone who enjoys science writing. He has a wonderful sense of humor and great facility to explain complex topics in stories and metaphors that are easy for the layperson to understand.
I am also about a third through "Guns, Germs, and Steel" (http://www.pbs.org/gunsgermssteel/) It is truly mind blowing. Though the factual details bog it down in parts, it is definitely worth the effort. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 8764
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 4 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 07, 2007 - 12:39 pm: |
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I am reading my book club's selection, something entitled "The Book With No Name" and it's written by "Anonymous". It's really an off-beat book but it's holding my interest. |
White
First Time Poster
Username: White
Post Number: 5
Registered: 06-2007
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - 09:54 am: |
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Right now, I'm reading "Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World," by Haruki Murakami, and "Coma," by Alex Garland. It's taking me far too long to read both to be honest, but the more work I get writing comics - the less time I seem to have to actually read. Catch-22, I guess. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2108
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - 10:16 am: |
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White, I enjoyed "Coma" though it was...haunting. If you enjoy it you might like "Blindness" by Jose Saramago.
I finally finished "Death by Black Hole." My prior recommendation still stands. Plus, I now have all sorts of random (as well as, likely useless) bits of information like that 90% of the atoms in the universe are hydrogen and that there are scientists ("Exobiologists") who study life on other planets and thus--so far--conduct their work without any data... |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 9021
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - 12:32 pm: |
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"Death by Black Hole" sounds like my cup of tea! The Condoleeza Rice biography and Stephen L. Carter's new book top my summer reading list. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 2110
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - 12:46 pm: |
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Cynique, I think you'd like it very much. And I just printed out a coupon for the new Carter book!
BTW, Robynmarie, you inspired me to read a couple of classics this summer. First up is "Brave New World." |
Linda
Regular Poster
Username: Linda
Post Number: 184
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, June 26, 2007 - 02:54 pm: |
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Good! A refreshing subject I can chime into. I just finished Casanegra, by Blair Underwood, Tananarive Due and Steven Barnes. Turned out to be a good start for the series of Tennyson Hardwick, a bodyguard/aspiring actor/ex-gigolo. Next, I read, A street girl named Desire, by Treasure E. Blue. Some of you probaly read his first, Harlem Girl Lost. The story-line is good, but, it's still another rag-to-rapper-to-drugs scenario. Presently, I am reading, The Last Kingpin, by Relentless Aaron. I'm loving it so far . . . I'll let you know how it turns out. |
Anita
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Username: Anita
Post Number: 37
Registered: 02-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 02, 2007 - 09:35 pm: |
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"The King of Colored Town" Darryl Wimberley
"Baby Love" Rebecca Walker
"Mixed" Angela Nissel
"When She Was White" Judith White/Sandra Laing
"The Golden Road" Callie Milliner |
Steve_s
Regular Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 275
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 08, 2007 - 10:30 pm: |
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Reading:
"Richard Wright:The Life and Times" by Hazel Rowley
Finished:
"Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius" by Lawrence Jackson (great)
"Louis Armstrong's New Orleans" by Thomas Brothers (excellent)
"Falling Man" by Don DeLillo (9/11 novel. I liked it)
"After Dark" by Haruki Murakami (not his best)
Hi Anita, hope you are well. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 9208
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 08, 2007 - 10:51 pm: |
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Well, Steve I'm plowing my way through Arnold Rapersad's biography of Ellison. I think I'm over the hump as I am now half way through his 1943-45 era. From your recommendation, looks like I should be reading the bio by Lawrence Jackson. I was, however, delighted to read in this book that when Ellison lived in Tuskeegee one of his girlfriends was "Chubby" Moore, my first cousin, the daughter of my mother's oldest sister. This book makes such frequent reference to Richard Wright that my interest in him is now piqued and I will have to get around to reading his bio soon. |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 276
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 04:20 pm: |
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Cynique, It says that Julia "Chubby" Moore is the daughter of the chief medical officer at the U.S. Veteran's Hospital in Tuskegee. She's not listed in the Lawrence Jackson biography though.
"Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius" ends in 1953, but it does cover some of his most important essays which were written well before the publication of Shadow and Act in 1964. As I remember, some of those young writers in need of guidance played pretty rough at the time.
Have you seen the new biography of Nella Larsen? I remember you said that you'd read the previous one.
The Hazel Rowley biography of Richard Wright is pretty good. I'm about 60 pages away from his first meeting with Ralph Ellison.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 9229
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 - 10:09 pm: |
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Yes, Steve, my cousin Chubby's father was Dr. George S. Moore, who although black was chief of surgery at the VA hospital in Tuskeegee. He was a brilliant neurosurgeon who attended Fisk university in Nashville, but he came north to go to med school at Northwestern University I believe.(amazing, I know) He and my aunt later moved from Tuskeegee to Nashville. I remember Chubby quite well. She was a Fisk graduate and was very quick witted and outspoken and quite pretty. I still hear from her kids once in a while. When I went to Nashville to spend the summer with my aunt waaay back in the 1940s, I became friends with the daughers of Harlem renaissance writer Arna Bontemps who was on Fisk's faculty at that time, and the son of famous sociologist Charles Johnson who was the president of Fisk back then, was also in the little circle of kids I hung out with that summer. As for Nella, she was married to a chemist who was on the Fisk's faculty and my older relatives remembered her when she and her husband lived on campus, recalling that she was a chain-smoker and avid bridge player. She also attended nursing school at Tuskeegee but apparently wasn't there during the time when Ralph Ellison was there. I'll have to check out the new bio on her. |
Steve_s
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Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 277
Registered: 04-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 06:39 pm: |
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Thanks, Cynique. Although Dr. Moore is not mentioned specifically by name, the history of the Tuskegee VA Hospital is recounted in both Kenneth Robert Janken's biography of Walter White and Lawrence Jackson's biography of Ralph Ellison, but I don't recall reading it in the Arnold Rampersad biography of Ellison. I might have missed it.
Perhaps your use of the adjective "outspoken" (rather than Dr. Rampersad's preferred "member of the privileged younger set") to describe your cousin contains a clue to Dr. Rampersad's possible motive in erasing an important piece of Tuskegee history, which, after all, has a role in the novel Invisible Man.
Built in 1923, the VA Hospital was an anomaly in rural Alabama. Staffed and administered by blacks, the hospital had brought some of the most impressive medical talent in the country down to the pine woods of Macon County. When it opened, local whites had angrily resisted the idea of black professionals monopolizing a federal facility, but a resolved Moton [Tuskegee President Robert Russa Moton] weathered a midnight march from the Ku Klux Klan. After the demonstration, Moton demanded that at least black doctors be allowed to serve at the hospital. Federal officials responded by placing a white director in charge of a partly black staff for the time being, until local dissent died down. Soon the hospital shifted entirely into black hands. The doctors, educated in the North and at Howard or Meharry, and the World War I veterans they served, cultivated attitudes of aggression and indignation. With their privileged educations and global experiences, they refused to accept second-class citizenship.
Hazel Harrison's concert was followed by a lecture from VA Hospital physician Prince Barker. Dr. Barker offered a concise elaboration of the idea of a miscegenated national American identity, which remained an essential theme for Ellison throughout his life:
The Negro, successfully hurdling geographical, ethnic and economic barriers, has obviously cast in his lot with his Anglo-Saxon neighbor. He has not built a modified African culture. Unlike immigrant groups, he has modified the American order of things in the same proportion as he has been modified and of all the so-called amalgamated groups he has become the most thoroughly Americanized....
Barker's creed rejected radicalism out of hand, but put well the unfolding dynamic of black and American cultural identity: "[H]e has modified the American order of things in the same proportion as he has been modified." In an elevated scholarly tone, the talk confirmed a kernal of Ellison's sense of identity -- a rebuttal to the back-to-Africanists and the negrophobes alike. Whites had no claim to the entirety of the American experience; rather, whatever they labeled as "American" was unequivocally mulatto. In Barker's speech, Ellison heard his junior high school instructor Lamonia McFarland echoed [who read the Crisis and other black journals and talked about her own ethnic and racial ancestry], and perhaps for the first time he understood what his social studies teacher had been getting at. (-- Lawrence Jackson, "Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius)
Whether or not anyone agrees with what the doctor said is not really the point. It is a piece of the puzzle of who Ellison was, it takes him on his own terms, and it describes something for the reader before it tells them how to interpret it (which it often does as well).
In my opinion, Arnold Rampersad is invested to an almost absurd degree in defining Ralph Ellison as a status seeker and a social climber rather than an artist, even beginning at age 3 with with the death of his father:
Ironically, the son probably wouldn't have become famous if his father had lived. Protected, perhaps even cossetted, by his father's love, he would probably have escaped the wounds of poverty, loneliness, and despair that came howling in the wake of Lewis's death. (p. 12)
Note that Rampersad doesn't claim that Ellison would not have become an artist if his father had lived, but instead that he would not have become famous, a recurring theme in the biography. It doesn't make any sense to me that losing a parent at age three leads to fame, so I think he's playing to a sentimental stereotype that art is born out of poverty and a lack of paternal love.
A good example to refute this would be Miles Davis's father, who attended Lincoln University at the same time as Kwame Nkrumah and graduated from Northwestern University Dental School where Dr. Moore studied.
Miles Davis's father provided more unconditional love and financial support than anyone I've ever heard of, even though parents in the medical profession are often the most nonjudgmental about their children's choice of music as an occupation.
I don't think that anyone would seriously claim that Miles Davis's primary goal was to become famous and not an artist because there are easier ways to become famous. And I don't think Ralph Ellison is any different than Miles in that respect.
More importantly, he depicts Ellison throughout as betraying black people, including his parents. For instance, we're told that he was seldom tender with his mother (p. 20) and did not cuddle with her (p. 24).
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Cynique
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Username: Cynique
Post Number: 9249
Registered: 01-2004
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Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 11, 2007 - 07:29 pm: |
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Well, Chubby's family eventually left Tuskeegee and went to Nashville and it was never really clear why they made this move but her father's private practice in Nashvile faltered because he had a severe drinking problem and the family seemed to have gradully fallen on hard times. As for Rampersad, I am probably more in awe of him than I should be because his book is so in depth and I figure anybody who delves that deeply into a man's life and puts it into perspective must be extrememly capable but then, it does occur to me that this author could still be flawed in his perceptions and intepretations, especially when analysing the psyche of his subject. I am assuming that Rampersad portrayed Ellison as a betrayer based on what his critics said about him and from I heard before I even started this book, Ellison did become a snobbish part of the bougeosie that he had previously condemned, never taking a stand during the civil rights movements, also falling out of favor with radical activists who had idolized him as the author of "Invisible Man". I wonder if Rampersad ever met Ellison. Also, I had no idea that Ralph Ellison considered pursuing music as a vocation. In any case, it's hard to take the measure of a man and condense it into a book so I guess any biography is just one version of the truth. |
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