Book Tagged

The lovely and talented Deirdre Savoy tagged me with this book meme. I’ll forgive her for that… (smile)

Total Number of Books:

I have no idea. Let’s just put it this way… I have six tall bookshelves in my home office and several bookshelves in my office on campus. All of my bookshelves have books stacked in front of/on top of books… I have piles of books on the floor in my home office and we won’t even talk about the books on my nightstand or my ever-growing e-book file… I can’t count them. But I will say that the over one thousand books on my Shelfari shelf are books that I own. And that’s not all of them...

Last Book Read:


Big Spankable Asses by Angie Daniels, Kimberly Kaye Terry and Lisa G. Riley (I liked it. I hope to get a chance to do a latest reads post. I have several books that I want to share with you all like Pat Simmon’s, Guilty of Love and F. D. Davis’s In the Beginning; A Vampire Series (finally I get my black vampire series… yay!) But if I sneak time to read, I can’t sneak time to do a nice review post… A girl has to have her priorities in order…

Last Book Bought:

On the first day of each month I go to eHarlequin and pre-order all my books. So-oo, I just purchased a bunch of books on October 1… You can get the books a month early and for all the category lines. I ordered all of my Kimani Romances that are due to hit the stands in November. But the last book I actually purchased from the bookstore was J. R. Ward’s Lover Unbound.

Five Meaningful Books:

The River Where Blood Is Born by Sandra Jackson-Opoku
This book blew my mind. It spans generations from the kidnapping and enslavement of African people to contemporary times and follows one family of women who are all connected to this mythical river in Africa. It has a river goddess, a trickster spider and just about every kind of black woman you can imagine. It is magical realism at its best and I would love to write a novel like that one day. I just have to share the blurb because I feel like I’m not doing the book justice:


Stitched together like a quilt or a piece of Kente cloth, this novel recasts the black experience as myth, encompassing both the world of the spirits and the world of ordinary human endeavors. It opens with the story of how Ananse the spider entered the villages of women ancestor spirits and learned the stories of Africa's daughters. The tale that drives the novel is of two women who are made to leave their village with their children. Ama, the daughter of one of the women, bears a child with the son of the other, and is then sold into slavery. The novel--told in diaries and journals, letters, and more conventional narrative forms--follows Ama's descendants in their wanderings throughout the New World and finally back to Africa.

New Black Man by Mark Anthony Neal
This book is amazing. It offers a stunning critique of Black masculinity that made me want to buy copies and give them to all the brothers I know. It’s so rare to see a man really grapple with issues of gender, sexism and sexuality in such real and honest ways. Plus his prose is just like butta… The man can write! I’ve read all of his books and each one becomes my new favorite. I have to share the blurb again for this one because I feel like I’m not doing the book justice.

From headlines to street corners, the message resounds: Black men are in crisis. Politicians, preachers, and pundits routinely cast blame on those already ostracized within African American communities. But the crisis of black masculinity does not rest with "at-risk" youth of the hip-hop generation or men "on the down low" alone. In this provocative new book, acclaimed cultural critic Mark Anthony Neal argues that the "Strong Black Man"-an ideal championed by generations of African American civic leaders-may be at the heart of problems facing black men today.

New Black Man puts forth a revolutionary model of black masculinity for the twenty-first century-one that moves beyond patriarchy to embrace feminism and combat homophobia. Neal begins by tracing the origins of the Strong Black Man, an empowering figure called forth by Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. Du Bois at a time when black men were resisting enslavement, economic exploitation, and violence. Despite the good intentions of its creation, he argues, this rigid model has been used too often as justification for the oppression and mistreatment of black women and children. Neal urges us to imagine instead a New Black Man whose strength resides in family, community, and diversity.

Part memoir, part manifesto, this book celebrates the black man of our times in all his vibrancy and virility. This impassioned tribute to a new face on the horizon of black America is not to be missed.


For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enough by Ntozake Shange
The monologues in this play speak to women across generations for a reason. If I could ever write something so powerful… “I found god in myself and loved her fiercely…” Wow!

Sula by Toni Morrison
This is my favorite Toni Morrison novel because of the female friendship between Sula and Nel. The characterization and the emotions in this novel give me something to strive for. Phenomenal!

Parable of the Talents and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler
Okay I know that’s two but they are a set. I can’t put into words the feelings that came over me when I read these. They are so prophetic, so eerily prophetic… You have to read them and then try and tell yourself Octavia Butler wasn’t a genius… It would be impossible.

Tagging:

Let me see… Umm…. No one. Okay, you can stop shaking in your boots now. You’re all off the hook… for now…