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Crystal
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 216
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 - 04:17 pm: | 
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Not in any particular order:
Last Bad Decision – Paula Edwards
Dark Roots – Jeannie Cobb
Within the Shadows – Brandon Massey
Graceland – Chris Abani
The Darkest Child – Delores Phillips
This is what I have at home already and I'll be happy to add whatever looks interesting at the library or any ideas from you wonderful folks.
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Crystal
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 217
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 - 05:08 pm: |
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Hey Snake. Girl you crack me up! Where's your list? |
Crystal
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 218
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 29, 2005 - 05:09 pm: |
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dang |
Rashena
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Rashena
Post Number: 126
Registered: 08-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 07:40 am: |
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Right now I am reading Wrapped In Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston...I love this book! I am probably late, but the writing is beautiful and I simply haven't been able to put it down.
It is amazing to see the parallels between literature then and now. And the way the purse strings were controlled by "patrons" and "benefactors" back then. I highly recommend it.
On top of the tons of books I picked up at BEA, I have been ordering quite a few from Amazon still...my reading list is always a mile long!
I've also been into food and travel writing, along with some more Indian titles. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 2305
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 01:27 pm: |
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I've just started reading "Blink." This best-seller is about trusting the instant impressions you get in the blink of an eye. Quite interesting but I wonder if the author realizes that black folks figured his thesis out a long time ago which is why they're always saying "I shoulda followed my first mind." |
Sisg
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Sisg
Post Number: 190
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 02:28 pm: |
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Oh Cynique,that was precious! |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 558
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 03:11 pm: |
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Funny you should say this, Cynique. There was a moment when I thought the author might be Black, cause I saw his photo in the context of an interview with him where he talked about folks' first impressions of him when he started wearing an afro...But now I'm back to thinking he's White...tell me what you all think: http://www.gladwell.com/bio.html. Just kindova Art Garfunkel vibe, right?
Anyway, I have this on my iPod and am looking forward to listening to it. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 2306
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 06:42 pm: |
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Malcolm Gladwell's hair is definitely kinky and his being born in England and raised in Canada makes his background even more murky. He might be Jewish or - maybe he's just mixed. In any case, his book is well-worth reading. |
Babygirl
Veteran Poster
Username: Babygirl
Post Number: 63
Registered: 04-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 01, 2005 - 08:00 pm: |
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Gladwell is bi-racial, the son of an English father and Jamaican mother. There was an interesting article on him in the current issue of Black Issues Book Review. |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 560
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 02, 2005 - 08:00 am: |
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Ah-hah, Babygirl...Mystery solved! Thanks. And thanks again for the review Cynique. (Maybe I'll move "Blink" up in my reading list queue.) |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 2307
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 02, 2005 - 10:37 pm: |
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Thanks for the info Babygirl. This book is turning out to be really fascinating, Yvette! The author did some interesting experiments with race. This dude is really deep. His previous best-seller was called "The Tipping Point". It is described as being a book about how little things can make a big difference. I'll probably check it out, too. |
Steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 97
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 03, 2005 - 08:51 am: |
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Here's an irreverent review of "Blink" by an African American reviewer (published on what appears to be a conservative Web site) called:
"Malcolm Gladwell Blinks at Racial Realities" by Steve Sailer
I don't know the name (hey, it's not me!).
http://www.vdare.com/sailer/050130_blink.htm |
Steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 98
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 03, 2005 - 09:30 am: |
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Maybe Sailer is not African American. This is from the review in the Daily Telegraph:
Its main problem is that it is confused. Billed as a celebration of intuition, it goes on to amass a heap of evidence against it. Apparent deliverances of intuition turn out, as often as not, to reflect the unconscious operation of prejudice. Take, for example, the difficulties female musicians (particularly brass instrumentalists) used to face in getting orchestral jobs. When a new system of auditioning was introduced, where applicants played anonymously behind a screen, women's success rate rose fivefold. Clearly not all conductors are overt sexists, so it seems their judgment must have been unconsciously swayed by the traditional association of brass instruments with men. So much for the power of blink.
Gladwell admits that our unconscious mind is a "fallible" force, but maintains that the causes of this fallibility can be "identified and understood". Once this has been achieved, our "internal computer" will "shine through". But this is a vain hope, for the sources of fallibility are limitless. Sexism and racism are already recognised, but who knows what other weaknesses and prejudices lurk hidden in the depths of our unconscious minds.
No intuition is entirely beyond suspicion, which is why the Western tradition places such stringent demands on proof. Gladwell would have avoided much confusion had he adhered to the old positivist distinction between the "logic of discovery" and the "logic of justification". We discover the truth in any number of odd ways, and call this "intuition". But when it comes to justifying what we have discovered, intuition yields to argument. Even leading art historians have to come up with more than hunches to support their ascriptions. . . .
Other examples listed by Gladwell, such as the fireman who left a burning house seconds before it collapsed, or the tennis coach who can always predict a double fault, are more genuinely intuitive. Neither the fireman nor the coach can explain his ability. Each "knows" more than he can rationally justify.
But all these cases have one thing in common. They all involve individuals who have devoted the best part of their lives to a particular activity. There is no such thing, in short, as a free-floating faculty of intuition. There are only art intuitions, people intuitions, tennis intuitions and so forth. And the only way to improve those intuitions is to engage intensively in those specific activities. Blink's promise to help us cultivate for ourselves the "power of intuition" remains - and must remain - unfulfilled.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 2309
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 03, 2005 - 05:44 pm: |
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You know, Steve, the criticism contained in the above review has some merit. As I continue to read this book, some of the points Gladwell advances are very ambiguous. But being able to recognize his oxymorons is, in itself, a lesson. |
Steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 99
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 03, 2005 - 06:17 pm: |
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Cynique, The library's 5 copies of Blink were not available so I spent a long cup of coffee with it at Borders and read the first 80 pages, the last chapter, and a little in between. Here are my impressions and final thoughts on this book. It's aimed at corporate America and designed for seminars that teach employees to think outside the box. I'm already way outside the box, in fact, compared to this guy, I'm on the sidewalk. But you already know all this stuff.
The first chapter is about art, the last chapter is about music. In between, he talks about making snap judgements about people based on race and gender. For instance, there's a test which asks whether you identify words like "office" and "family" as male or female (he might have added "ballet dancer" and "fire fighter"). It also judges the time one takes to respond. I think we've all been socialized in a similar way in these areas.
The first chapter is about the authenticty of a piece of sculpture. Not its cultural authenticity (which is way outside anything Malcolm Gladwell has ever experienced or thought about), but its historical authenticity, in other words, whether it is an authentic work of art or a forgery. For example, the Getty Museum was offered a Kouros sculpture, allegedly from c. 600 BC, for $10 million. They bought it, although it turned out to be a forgery. Because they wanted it so much, they believed their scientific experts, although it later turned out that an art expert like curator Thomas Hoving of the Metropolitan Museum of Art sized it up pretty quickly as a suspect piece of art. So in my opinion that's not intuition, it's an educated suspicion.
The last chapter is about classical music and uses the example of a woman trombonist, I believe, named Abbie Conant who auditioned for the Royal Opera of Turin in 1980. She auditioned behind a screen and although she flubbed one note, was chosen immediately and enthusiastically by the judges. However, once they found out she was a woman, she was hired, but spent 13 years in litigation trying to keep her job.
Finally, he gives the example of a french hornist named Julie Landsman who auditioned, also behind a screen, for the Metropolitan Opera orchestra in the mid-60s. She also was chosen, and when the screen was lifted, the judges were surprised to discover that they already knew her because she had previously been hired a substitute in the orchestra. Gladwell calls this a "Blink" moment, that is, when the curtain came up, "they saw her for who she truly was."
The purpose of the examples of the women instrumental musicians in the final chapter is supposed to have a practical application for corporate America, which is that "we get better music" by making a "snap" judgement on the basis of ability rather than a deliberation based on other factors. Gladwell states, "And how did we get better music? Not by rethinking the entire classical music enterprise or building new concert halls or pumping in millions of new dollars, but by paying attention to the tiniest detail, the first two seconds of the audition."
Here's my opinion, for what it's worth. These anecdotal examples may be sufficient to inspire Gladwell's corporate clients, however, in the real world, I think they probably have very little bearing on gender discrimination and racial inequality in classical music. In fact, I'm almost sure of it. What I mean is that in order to reach the level of proficiency required of someone who seriously expects to be considered for an orchestra appointment, a woman instrumentalist has already had to compete against men on the high school and college level where, I'm assuming, decisions are not made behind a screen. It's a very competitive field and I know a few woman classical musicians who have dropped out of music altogether while attending prestigious university music programs.
It's even harder for African American instrumentalists, but ironically, not for vocalists, according to Rosayln M. Story (author of "And So I Sing"), a violinist with the Dallas Opera and Ft. Worth Symphony. She explains that vocalists mature much later and it may even be to their advantage to receive operatic training relatively late, whereas, instrumentalists are required, in order to compete, to be extremely proficient by a very young age. So, according to her, there are socioeconimic reasons why only a small percentage of symphonic musicians and instrumental soloists are African Americans, compared to concert and opera performers.
It's hard to understand how someone can make $1 million a year with this kind of simplistic motivational spiel.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 2310
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 03, 2005 - 09:13 pm: |
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Well, Steve, now that, along with you, I've figured out that this book is kind of a manual for corporate America, I am starting to question some of its claims. The author tends to tell you what your reaction will be in certain situations when in one case, my reaction wasn't what he predicted it would be at all. Oh, well. I've noticed that the current generation of MBA junior execs seem to be a little short on mother-wit and this book might be just what they need. |
Steve_s
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 100
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 03, 2005 - 10:03 pm: |
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I have a book of creativity excercies by a guy who gives workshops to corporate people on how to think outside the box. It's mostly a book of drawings, I can't really describe it, but, for instance, it asks you to provide captions, make up stories, and play word games, mostly based on the pictures. Gladwell's book is more people-oriented. It seems like a good message. For instance, in the chapter called The Warren Harding Error, he mentions that most CEOs are good looking tall white males and then he names exceptions like Kenneth Chenault, CEO of American Express (?) who's African American and under 6 feet tall. So he's saying don't judge people based on preconceptions of what a CEO is "supposed" to look like. Then he uses the example of the Tom Hanks, or rather, the movie executive who recognized Tom Hank's ability early on. He's not really my favorite actor, although I suppose he's done some good things, but I think the message is the same as in the example of the American Express executive. I read the Morse Code example too.
There's a discussion of Arc of Justice on the NY Times reader's opinion board. I just learned that there was another book published last year about the Ossian Sweet case, "One Man's Castle" by Phyllis Vine. That's weird, isn't it? I guess it's been overshadowed by Kevin Boyle's book.
I would be interested in reading some other nonfiction book that interests me. I can't really think of anything. : )
I've started "Bitter Fruit" by Achmat Dangor, a South African novel, finalist for the Booker Prize this year. I think I'll stay with it. |
Bookluv
Newbie Poster
Username: Bookluv
Post Number: 2
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 04, 2005 - 07:48 am: |
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Well, I will list my summer reading list thus far;
Finished: Standing at the Scratch Line, Guy Johnson
Leaving Cecil Street, Diane McKinney Whetstone
The Bitten, L.A.Banks
Enjoyed all of them...wonderful books!
I have the following on my table to read: Camilla's Rose, Bernice McFadden
Babylon Sisters, Pearl Cleage
Color of the Family, Patricia Jones
Better than I know Myself, Virginia DeBerry & Donna Grant
If anyone has something they would lik eto recommend, please pass the title and author along.
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Libralind2
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Libralind2
Post Number: 164
Registered: 09-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 04, 2005 - 01:43 pm: |
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So far this summer I have read:
June
A Landlord's Tale,Gammy L Singer
Betrayal Of The Trust,Leslie Esdaile Banks
Interruption Of Everything,Terry McMillian
Genevieve,Eric Jerome Dickey
Love on the Dotted Line,David E Talbert
Other Men's Wives,Freddie Lee Johnson III
The Black Titan:AG Gaston and the Making of a Black Millionare, Carol Jenkins |
Sisg
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Sisg
Post Number: 192
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 05, 2005 - 09:32 am: |
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Libralind,
How was Terry McMillan's new book ? Tell us how you liked the others as well.
My list:
Ride or Die - Solomon Jones
The Tribe -Gregory Townes
Blood on the Leaves - Jeff Stetson
Genesis of a Mud Warrior - Terry W. Broussard
Still finishing up "The Apostles" - Y Blak Moore. |
Crystal
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 219
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 06, 2005 - 01:10 pm: |
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Bookluv - I suggest Echoes of a Distant Summer by Guy Johnson. I didn't like it quite as much as Scratch Line but the Tremaine saga continues. I think I saw somewhere here that he has another book coming out but I don't recall seeing that it's about the Tremaines. King Tremaine is one of my all time favorite characters.
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Inmybrain
First Time Poster
Username: Inmybrain
Post Number: 1
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 08, 2005 - 02:19 am: |
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I am Currently reading David Brock's "Republican Noise Mahine; Right Wing Media and how it corrupts Democracy"
Excellent read from a guy who denounced his hit peice "The Real Anita Hill". He has gone on to lambast the right wing media structure for what it is, a visciously bigoted attack machine.
I read Howrd Zinn's "A Peoples History of The United States" as well as "You Cant be neutral on a moving train"
Never knew he taught Alice Walker at Spelman College.
On my list right now is Cornel Wests "Race Matters". Ive seen him on Bill Maher a couple of times and the guy rocks!!!! |
Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 101
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 11, 2005 - 03:48 pm: |
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I'm more than halfway through the other 2004 book about Ossian Sweet, "One Man's Castle" by Phyllis Vine. It's a very good book but has a slightly different perspective than Kevin Boyle's "Arc of Justice." It contains a chapter on the Sweets' sojourn in Europe, one about the influence of D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation" on William Simmons in resurrecting the Klan, a chapter on James Weldon Johnson and the NAACP, etc. But in general, I think Boyle politicizes Sweet's actions according to Talented Tenth and New Negro theory in a way that Vine does not.
One example in which their interpretations could not be more different:
Dr. Sweet and some professional colleagues attend a luncheon hosted by the Inter-Collegiate Alumni Association, at which they're the only blacks. Vine writes, "They had come to hear Judge Landis, the baseball commissioner, who was the announced speaker." So they're surprised when Ty Cobb, notoriously racist and suspected of Klan membership, appears at the event. Vine explains:
Had Ty Cobb's appearance at the luncheon been announced in advance, the ten men in Green's party might have stayed away. Unaware, however, they walked into a dining room and brought discomfort, "consternation when the colored party arrived at the table." Several years later Sweet would describe the event as if he fully remembered the indignation, trepidation, alarm, and agitation -- the "consternation" that ensued because they were the only black table. Later that evening, after his office hours, Sweet and Julian Perry went to a dance at the St. Antoine Y, where they tried to put the event behind them.
At the dance he meets his future wife for the first time.
Boyle, on the other hand, describes the event without mentioning Landis at all, provides plenty of graphic evidence of Cobb's racism (e.g. assaults on blacks), and generally politicizes the incident by characterizing it as a "protest," i.e. an example of Talented Tenth activism, orchestrated by Sweet's colleague, Charles Green:
What a delicious thought, to have Cobb sitting on the dais watching in horror as a squad of black men strode into the auditorium to join the festivities. So Green bought a table's worth of tickets. . . It is easy to imagine that Ossian hesitated to accept . . . To refuse Green's invitation, though, was to risk being thought a coward, unworthy of a place among the city's Talented Tenth . . .
Ossian relished the moment enough to remember the details several years later. Undoubtedly, he reveled in the sense of solidarity that the ten men felt that evening, the slap on the back from a senior colleague when the tale was retold, the slightly more vigorous nod the next time he passed Green in the wards, the way that just a little bit of courage opened up the charmed circle of Detroit's elite, if only for an evening. But he also must have realized just how small a protest it had been. Going through the race papers stacked up in his Black Bottom rooms, Ossian couldn't miss all the brave talk about the New Negro, the exhortations to self-sacrifice on behalf of the race, the glorification of confrontation, a politics for young men who knew no fear. No matter how enjoyable the experience had been, spoiling the color scheme at Cobb's testimonial certainly didn't measure up to such great expectations.
See what I mean? Is Boyle playing up the heroics? Is Vine ovedoing the victimization? It's hard to say, but I think they're both excellent books. This one is blurbed by David Levering Lewis, Derrick Bell, Studs Terkel, et al. |
Anita
Regular Poster
Username: Anita
Post Number: 31
Registered: 02-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - 08:30 am: |
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"Other Men's Wives" Freddie Lee Johnson, III
"72 Hour Hold" Bebe Moore Campbell
"Rosa Lee" Leon Dash
"The Interruption of Everything" Terry McMillan
"Brickhouse" Rita Ewing
"The Fabulous Sylvester" Joshua Gamson
"Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living Your Full Potential" Joel Osteen
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Crystal
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 221
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - 02:24 pm: |
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Hi Anita, I'm reading 72 Hour Hold now. So far so good. I'm glad to see a solid, established author tackling such an important topic - mental illness. |
Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 102
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 12, 2005 - 04:36 pm: |
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I have less than 100 pages to go in "Bitter Fruit" by Achmat Dangor. A difficult, angst-filled novel about the complexities of identity set in the new South Africa around the time of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings.
"I see writing as a gateway to dialogue, to tolerance, to democracy, to justice; a gateway to understanding what the other person thinks." -- Nurddin Farah |
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