| Author | Message | ||
     Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 429 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, "Imagine my frustration with no invitation to dance..." Or in my case to really sink my teeth into a really good, absorbing book! I am surrounded by books and not a good one to read. So, I've been playing with my puppy Sasha. She's trying to go to sleep now at my feet, but I won't let her. I need to sleep through the night. Now, I see why I didn't have any kids! Now all I have to do is find a way to stop Sasha from smelling like a dog. As you probably could tell, but didn't realize it, I've been listening to my Number 2 favorite singer in the whole wide world, Ella Fitzgerald. Ella sang the Duke Ellington song, Imagine My Frustration, on the Ella at Duke's Place album. I've been buying up re-released Ella Fitzgerald CDs like a house a fire, and putting them into my new iPod. Apple really struck gold with these iPods. I love mine. I probably should have gotten a bigger one though. The one I have is a mini iPod that is 4GB. It holds about 1000 songs and mine is already full. I ain't got all my funk records on it yet. BUT, I do have the biggest baddest playlist of Aretha Franklin songs though. *big grin* | ||
| Crystal "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Crystal Post Number: 225 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
I feel your frustration Thumper. It’s hard to find a good book to read sometimes but I actually found one, although I’m not sure if it’d fit your bill: Dark Roots by Jeannie Cobb. It’s a self-published debut novel I picked up at the L.A. Black Book Expo and it turned out to be pretty good, even if the main character did get on my nerves. It’s the story of a contemporary AA woman who goes to Benin to search for her missing anthropologist brother and they and their friends end up being time transported to U.S. slavery times. I thought it was well written with only a couple of editorial problems that I caught. I loaned it to my friend and she pulled one of those “up till 3a.m.” stunts to finish it – couldn’t put it down. Check it out. I’ve just started Brandon Massey’s Within the Shadows – sometimes these books have the STUPIDEST men. That’s all I’m gonna say. What did you think of Harry Potter? | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 103 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Greetings, Thumper, how are you? Noticed the following on one of the jazz boards today, the sad passing of another jazz great, Mr. Keter Betts, who I know primarily through his work with Stan Getz on "Jazz Samba": A few years later, Betts met Fitzgerald through Ray Brown -- one of his favorite partners on the golf courses they encountered on jazz tours around the world. Brown, himself one of the greatest of jazz bassists, had once been married to Fitzgerald and later managed her career; putting the singer and Betts together would be one of his greatest moves. From the start, they were simpatico, something particularly evident in concert during their showcase voice and bass duets-- daring dialogues and dances of rhythms and melodies that could be beautifully elegant one moment and wildly inventive the next. Fitzgerald often told interviewers that Betts had a sixth sense as to what she needed, that it was his bass, not the drums, that drove the music. No one, she said, drove it better, and no one drove it as long, from 1964 until 1993, when Fitzgerald stopped touring because of declining health (she died three years later). But before that, there would be 50 European tours and an endless string of American concerts, including one at the Kennedy Center, during which Betts brokered a rare interview with the notoriously shy Fitzgerald for this reporter. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/08/AR2005080801678. html | ||
| Cynique "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Cynique Post Number: 2424 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thumper, just throw caution to the wind, break out of the black mold, and check out James Patterson's latest #1 best-seller, LifeGuard. It's a good summer read; mystery and suspense and sex! Well-plotted and fast-paced. Somebody passed it along to me, and I'm enjoying it! | ||
| Soul_sister Regular Poster Username: Soul_sister Post Number: 33 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hey all Thumper -- it has been a sad year in the publishing world for Black people but all hope aint lost --- Herb Boyd's We Shall Overcome was great and I have been checking out some non-fiction from Knopf Mary Berry's "My Face Is Black Is True," on reparations. How was Pride of Carthage -- otherwise, I too have left Black land and am in Asia - Just finished Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See -- it were okay - and I am starting my favorite Laura Rowland Assassin's Touch - #10 in the Sano series - you can start with #1 Shinju -- great murder and drama in 1600s Japan Oh well - stay strong - pet the puppy and love your intellect - the latter of those things is a rare find in the Black book world - ya dig | ||
| Thumper "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Thumper Post Number: 430 Registered: 01-2004 Rating: N/A |
Hello All, Thanks for the book suggestions. I guess its time for me to go to on my Winter Wonderland reading vacation. Soul Sister: Shinju sounds interesting. I'm going to have to put it on my list. Now about Pride of Carthage...*eyebrow raised*. Maybe it's me, but the book is turning out to be as dull as used dishwater. I have been trying to read that book for the past 4 weeks and have only gotten as far as page 50! Although I gave Lion's Brood, another novel about Hannibal, a harsh review; that novel is turning out to be a New Year's celebration compare to Pride of Carthage. Oh, and speaking of my puppy Sasha. She's a nut! Here's some pictures I took of her yesterday. She's a little thin for her age, so I'm working on buffing her up a bit. Anyway, here's a few shots of Miss Toot:   Steve S: I'm doing fine man. *big smile* How are you?? Thanks for the Fitzgerald-Betts link. I haven't heard what you thought of Adam Mansbach's new novel. Care to share? Cynique: Thanks for suggesting the Patterson book. I almost picked that one up at the store last week. I love Patterson's novels. Crystal: Now, you know, I was all excited about Harry's latest adventure. It ended on such an odd omunis note. But, I guess, in remaining true to the series, the ending was appropriate. I am, most DEFINITELY, looking forward to the last one! Now, I'm off to read the latest in the Stephanie Plum series, and probably follow it with a Faulkner novel that I hadn't read before. | ||
| Yvettep "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Yvettep Post Number: 662 Registered: 01-2005 Rating: N/A |
>probably follow it with a Faulkner novel that I hadn't read before. Via Oprah's book club? Did you see this from The Nation? The Buzz and the Fury by RICHARD LINGEMAN [posted online on August 4, 2005] Oxord, Miss. Oprah Winfrey recently challenged her extensive fan base to read a collection of works by Nobel Prize-winning author William Faulkner by declaring them as the summer selection for her popular book club. "If you have not read this author, you cannot say you have been baptized as a real reader," she said. Winfrey's June 3 endorsement catapulted Faulkner back onto bestseller lists. The coup is welcomed by Faulkner scholar Donald Kartiganer, director of the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, coming up July 24-28 at the University of Mississippi. "Oprah's recommendation (of As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury and Light in August) will get a lot of people to try Faulkner, and many will be delightfully surprised," said Kartiganer, UM's Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies. "Faulkner's fiction is not easy, but I think his reputation frightens people into assuming he's more difficult than he actually is." I still don't quite know how it happened but Caddy told me, "Go on, Bill, you should go on that woman Oprah's show. You're so not past because the past is never past. It's now! She'll bring back your books. All she has to do is say the word and they'll be in all the stores and her TV watchers will buy half a million copies. Ain't that a laugh! You been dead fifty years and a television personality snaps her fingers and you're a bestselling author like Stephen King. In Oxford people always called you Count No-Count, even after you won the Nobel Prize, but now that you're going on Oprah they'll change their minds. Now go enjoy yourself--and don't drink too much!" (I think of Caddy's dirty drawers.) Versh and Dilsey carry me to the airport in Versh's new Buick and put me on the plane and Versh says, "Hush, stop your snifflin', Bill." And Dilsey says, "I'll wipe his nose. Now don't you get into no mischief up north, hear?" They let me out at the airport and I get on the plane and sit back and open my flask for a nip... I come to with a dry flask and a headache when we land in Chicago and manage to make it to the terminal, where I spot a young woman holding up a sign saying: WILLIAM FAULKNER. OPRAH SHOW I go over and introduce myself and she says, "I'm Avis Davis. Oh, It's so scary to meet one of our greatest dead American authors. I read you in college and never did understand it even though I was an English major. Mr. Faulkner, are you all right? Why you look pale as a ghost." We settled ourselves in the rear seat of a long black automobile and were driven to what she told me was the "studio." "Oprah's so-o-o excited about finally meeting you. She says you're rilly her favorite author. Oh, here she is in her office." A handsome Negro woman rushes over and clamps me with lithe muscular arms. "I'll call you Bill I feel I know you like an old friend from your books and I hear you're a little bit shy and, yes, you should do yoga for that you just breathe ten times--hah-huh! hah-huh! shyness is just another word for low self-esteem and we have a wonderful show today and Tom Cruise coming to talk about Scientology--you should try it--and what he really thinks about his Katie as a master of human psychology do you think he has a real, mature, in-depth commitment to her here we are on the set Caddy's dirty drawers! sit there, please don't mind all those people out front 'cause they're really your fans it'll be like coming home they all adore you." I seat myself on a grandiose couch made out of some kind of slippery soft leather and sweat in glaring lights hot as the noon-day sun down in Oxford and this Oprah woman is all the time smiling with white teeth and talking and talking. And then pretty soon out comes loud brash fellow Tom with long hair and the women scream. The Oprah woman starts chattering with him a mile a minute too fast for me to make it out and he yells at her and can't for the life of him sit still and he is squirming about on the couch and jumping up and down and shouting, "I love her! I love her so help me God, this is so the real thing! I've never felt this way about any girl--not even my last wife, not even poor Nicole, who was too tall and competed with my career as you all know but what could I do?" And then he kind of crawls over my lap and embraces the Oprah woman and drags her around and kisses her and with a wave to the audience he bounds off and the Oprah woman is laughing and screaming blue murder. Finally, the Oprah woman grabs my hand and drags me up. "And now I want you to meet America's greatest writer, Mr. William Faulkner of Oxford, Mississippi--that's a state forty years ago I wouldn't have been caught dead in which I might well have been if I ever went there Bill Faulkner wrote about his native region and made racism seem like a biblical curse. Bill, tell me what you really I mean really think of the South today?" "I don't hate the South. I don't hate the South. I don't..." "There you are, guys we have reconciled Bill Faulkner and the South love is so much more positive an energy release than hate I want all of you to read Bill's books every word don't cheat and you'll gain a sense of the dark and perdurable historical subtext of slavery, written in a sophisticated almost avant-garde narratory strategy that melds biblical cadences with traditional rhythms of folk speech something you'll never ever get from Danielle Steele." Then someone takes me by the hand and I stagger offstage, feeling the need for several restorative drinks but it turns out they don't have a drop of liquor on the premises because the Oprah woman doesn't believe in liquor because it's against her diet. I decide to go home to my little postage stamp of earth, vowing it will be another millennium before you get me out of my grave again. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 104 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Thumper, I'm fine, thanks. I have not seen the Mansbach novel but would be willing to give it a try if the library gets it in. I did read 15 pages of "The Pride of Carthage" by David Anthony Durham, but judging by your comments above, I may pass on it now in favor of one of his earlier books. I'm reading Maximum City, a book about Bombay, a city of 19 million people, mostly its underside -- the rival gangs, the corrupt politics, the Bollywood film industry, etc. Last week there seemed like an unusually large number of obits for jazz- and bluesmen. Beside Mr. Betts there was Al McKibbon (bassist often associated with Dizzy Gillespie), blues singer Little Milton, and this sad one: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/05/arts/05thompson.html?ex=1124251200&en=4b1c1223 47ab94d5&ei=5070 | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 105 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
Dear Thumper, Oh, by the way, I ordered the Mansbach novel this evening (just can't resist an invitation to "share" my thoughts on a book!). I also decided to go ahead and read "Pride of Carthage," which, so far, is shaping up to be a really good read!~ | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 106 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
I'm now on page 125 of Pride of Carthage, hope no one minds my running commentary, but it's turning out to be a really great read. It starts slowly but picks up after page 50 and by page 100 I was completely absorbed in the story. | ||
| Deebaby Newbie Poster Username: Deebaby Post Number: 5 Registered: 08-2005 Rating: N/A |
Ooooooh, you have a Shepherd She's beautiful! and looks like my Velly. Velly is thin too and is getting very picky about her food. Lately, I've had to mix a little rice with her food, a raw egg...I even give her apples some times. But I want her to stay on dog food, particularly the ones that add ingredients good for the skin and coat. And I give her Dreamcoat (liquid vitamins). Velly doesn't smell like a dog. I have her groomed, cut (Shepherds can shed like crazy, can't they?) I brush her and wipe her with the doggie wipes and clean her ears regularly. I have a friend with a ninety-pound male shepherd (gorgeous) they wanna mate her with. The males can be considerably bigger than the females. Anyway, I just finished Asha Bandele's The Prisoner's Wife. I had never even heard of her before I picked up The Prisoner's Wife at Barnes and Noble recently. (I made a vow to get back to reading.) I like the way she writes. Now, I'm reading Sisters of the Yam, which I scanned back in 1996 in graduate school. I have so many books in my library that I've only scanned, thank goodness - enough for years of reading pleasure - if I could just get more time. | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 111 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: |
Hey Thumper man, I'm almost finished with the Mansbach book. Good call! I must admit that when I first saw Shackling Water (Adam Mansbach's first novel) in the bookstore, I spent about 2 minutes sizing it up and then, despite the glowing praise from his teachers -- Michael Eric Dyson, Robert G. O'Meally, et al -- I blew it off. Naw, I don't need to read this. But then I noticed that the readers here on AALBC seemed to dig it, so I thought, wow, maybe I ought to rethink this, and so I read it. I still didn't really dig the book, but the point is that I could not have imagined that the cat could have gotten from the first one to this one in only one book (if that makes any sense). So the people who dug Shackling Water obviously saw something in it that I missed, and I respect that tremendously. Angry Black White Boy is a satire of race relations written in a style one usually associates with Ishmael Reed, or maybe Percival Everett, but it's probably most like Paul Beatty's "White Boy Shuffle," with which it shares a similar title, the fact that both main characters are geeky college students who become unlikely cult group icons, and that both novels contain humorous riffs on abolitionist John Brown. 'Course, it's completely untrue that John Brown's motivation for his raid on Harper's Ferry was revenge aimed at his wife's former lover, but I guess that's what makes it funny. I think if anyone liked his first novel or any of the previously mentioned authors they will probably dig this one too, although it doesn't necessarily follow that if you liked Big Bill Broonzy's "Lookin' Up at Down" from "Keys to the Highway," you would therefore dig, say, JL King's "Comin' Up From the Down Low," or whatever that mess is called. Black Like Me festivities in Washington Square Park, the Race Traitor Project, The Million Wigger March, and a Day of Apology, are a few of the events and national holidays ricocheting around inside the skull of Adam Mansbach. One interesting thing is that the early chapters are interspersed with excerpts from the memoir of a Black baseball player's last season in the big leagues before segregation took effect. Turns out it's a real memoir and it's very effectively woven into the present-day narrative. But the baselballer, Fleet Walker, is actually a very educated man, a graduate of Oberlin College, and the later excerpts from his memoir are actually brilliant and quite devastating. May have to check that one out sometime. He sometimes shifts into a free-flowing poetic prose style, which, in the first novel, I thought was used most effectively at the beginning when describing a street scene in East Harlem (if I remember correctly). In this novel, I think Chapter 9 (of Book 1) so far contains the best example of this style. He would probably dispute the comparison to Jack Kerouac's "bop prosody" style (especially since he lampoons Kerouac in the novel!), but whatever it is, I like what he's doing. There's also a poem that Macon reads at an open mic at a Lower East Side club, which I'll have to reread because I'm not quite feeling his rhythm, but that's probably just me. However, the other poem, which the main character supposedly wrote in Boston as a young man, is actually very moving. Well, you know in Shackling Water there was a character named Sonny Burma, a piano player who could be bebop pianist Sonny Clark or the piano player from James Baldwin's short story "Sonny's Blues." But about 10 pages from the end, Mansbach goes for the inevitable "Burma Shave" shtick on the piano player's name: "Latif noticed the uneven splotches of stubble prickling Sonny's face and realized he'd never seen Burma unshaven before." LOL! That's a loooong way to go, waitin' for the other shoe to drop! But Angry Black White Boy confirms my suspicion about a character in Shackling Water (bear with me for a moment): In Shackling Water there's a superficial resemblence between the character Albert Van Horn and the late avant-garde saxophonist Albert Ayler, who died in mysterious circumstances and whose body, like Van Horn's, was found floating in Manhattan's East River. In the new novel, both Alberts -- Ayler and Van Horn (as an Ayler-surrogate) -- are named. But Van Horn, as described in Shackling Water, is not an outside player like Ayler, he's paid his dues on the road with "The Emperor." Anyway, Albert Ayler's drummer was Sunny Murray, Van Horn's drummer is named Murray Higgins. Drummer Murray Higgins = Sunny Murray (Albert Ayler's drummer) + Billy Higgins (Ornette Coleman's drummer). Bassist Amir Abdul = Ahmed Abdul Malik (?), Thelonious Monk's Brooklyn-born Sudanese-American bassist, the only member of the Van Horn quartet who's not a current or former drug user. Anyway, I may have more once I'm finished with the book. All my Best, steve | ||
| Steve_s "Cyniquian" Level Poster Username: Steve_s Post Number: 114 Registered: 04-2004 Rating: N/A |
I'd just like to add a correction to something I said about Adam Mansbach's "Angry Black White Boy." The first-person italicized passages which I said were excerpts from the memoir of baseball player Fleet Walker, may not be. The book that Mr. Mansbach cites is "Fleet Walker's Divided Heart: The Life of Baseball's First Major Leaguer" by David W. Zang, however I think that what I assumed were autobiographical passages may in fact be the fictional creation of the author. The final entry about double-consciousness is more elequent than W.E.B. Du Bois. Fleet Walker was a baseball player in the immediate post-Reconstruction era, more than a decade before Plessy and not long after John Henry. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0803299133/qid=1125893892/sr=1-1/r ef=sr_1_1/103-6343771-2836668?v=glance&s=books PS I thought the ending was terrific. I'm now a believer in Adam Mansbach! |
