CONFESSION!

After I read a book that really, REALLY makes me think, I feel the need to decompress.  My mind is going a million different directions at once & I need to calm it down.  Glorious was a book I needed to calm down from.  Before I would usually read a book for the 2nd, 3rd or 20th time.  Since I've gotten my Kindle though, a new book is at my fingertips, so I've taken to reading "lighter fare" in my in-between time.  AND my favorite "in-between" author is Beverly Jenkins.  Her books are perfect to cleanse my reading palate.  They are romance books set any where from the 1800's until now and EVERY. SINGLE time I go to look for one, I find one of her's that I haven't read. 

They are not your typical "romance" novels though.  Well, really, they are (I just said they weren't at first to make myself feel better).  In the end, the girl always gets her man & the man always gets his girl, he has to fight to win her love & she's a virgin & perfect and innocent.  OR if she's NOT a virgin, she's never "felt the fire that burns in her love temple such as the one she feels with Blake".  But they are SO DARN CUTE.  The stories I mean, they're cute as hell.  They're not depressing and most are set in black towns in the mid-west right after/during slavery and they have SO many interesting historical facts about how black people survived and information on the all-African-American towns that existed then that makes them very interesting, and they are well written. & people fall in love & junk & it's sweet.  Which I guess makes them not-so typical, so maybe I'm not a liar.

A LOT of her books are available on the Kindle too, which adds to her draw for me. I just 2 minutes ago finished Something Like Love by her & was COMPLETELY pissed off at myself for tearing up. 

I'm gearing up to read From Capetown with Love.  I've read the other two books in this series by Tananrive Due, Blair Underwood & Steven Barnes.  They're pretty good.  This book actually has a video trailer on Youtube.  Check it out: From Cape Town with Love.  It's part of some thing I haven't looked at to understand fully, called a vook.  They have a website to look at the whole idea of the thing (which you know I had to do, but honestly I STILL don't get it): http://www.vook.com/

I'll let you know what I think of the book though.  Have a great day!

Now I'm all mad again.

I finished Glorious by Bernice McFadden. For the second time. It was so good though, I probably would have read it again back to back anyway.


The story starts in 1910 and spans into the ‘60’s. I LOVE historical fiction. Those are my favorite stories. I also love novels written by black authors in the 19th and early 20th century. You learn so much about so many different things. The way people, especially black people, survived, lived and loved then fascinates me. And the story Easter Bartlett and her life was definitely fascinating.

Glorious follows Easter Bartlett’s life from a young woman when something tragic happens to her family, into the golden years of her life. The thread that runs throughout her entire life (and story) is that she is a born writer. She has a talent for it and she spends her life writing. It’s a great thread & the way her love for writing is weaved into the story really draws you in.

As I later found out, the preface of the book shapes the whole premise of the story. It’s such a tragic thing that happens, it changes Easter’s life and the lives of those in her family forever.

Easter ends up dealing with that tragedy by leaving everything she’s ever known. Her first stop is to live with a relative, where she witnesses a HORRIBLE incidence of racial violence. The description of it made me skip over parts of it in my second read. It is truly gruesome. That incident spurs her to leave yet again and she runs into a travelling circus of sorts. There she meets another main character that remains throughout the rest of the book. Rain is an ADULT attraction at the circus, and Easter becomes beyond infatuated with her. Easter becomes Rain’s maid and stays with the circus for a while. The story that is told during this time is entertaining and you begin to see just how much Easter loves to write. But again, something happens to Easter that makes her leave that life and move on to the next phase. This book is broken into very distinct periods. Each one is marked by Easter’s physical movement to an entirely different place with entirely different people with her living an entirely different life at each place.

Easter is next a teacher, where she has a very Notes on a Scandal experience, she leaves there and ends up in Harlem at the very beginning of the Harlem Renaissance. In the book, she actually helps begin the Renaissance. This period was the longest part of the book and my favorite. The description of this period of her life is great. The telling of the story of how the Renaissance began is very interesting and the fictionalized insertion of the REAL LIFE key players in the Renaissance that were TRULY there made me feel like I was there. I loved it. Easter has married by then & her husband is very into the Marcus Garvey movement. There is excellent detail in that part of the story. Because she adopts the point of view of Easter’s husband (to my memory, the first time the story is told from someone else’s perspective), it seemed a little forced, but it was appropriate I guess. Around the same time, someone reappears in Easter’s life that she never thought she’d see again. The end of this time of Easter’s life ends abruptly & I WAS ON PINS AND NEEDLES. The way that part of the story ENDS?! I had to put it down for a minute to collect myself because I. Was. MAD! MAD I say! I’m mad right now typing this. Now that I think of it, I was mad each time she had to move on. Folks were doing Easter DEAD. WRONG.

The story ends right where it started. Easter has to face herself and her life and her choices. The beginning of the ending got me mad AGAIN, but the true end kind of smoothes it out. I felt better. I’m all riled up now remembering, but Easter had peace, and I know she’d want me to have peace too.

I HIGHLY recommend this book. It was great. Bernice McFadden is great.

FAIL!

After using my Kindle for almost 2 years now, I just had my first reading catastrophe.

When you click on a book for the first time in the Kindle, it takes you to the first page of the book.  Sometimes it skips the foreward, the pages in the beginning that mention the publisher & acknowledgements and takes you to the first chapter.  When I started Glorious, it started on the first page of the first chapter.  I thought the book started off weird, but who am I to question how a book starts?  Also when I read the reviews on Amazon (I always read the reviews on Amazon.  Actually reading reviews on Amazon is one of my favorite past times, you should try it sometime.  Pick the most ridiculous item you can find & read its reviews.  HILARIOUS, especially the comments on said reviews),  I saw them mentioning an incident and characters I had no knowledge of.  I thought I missed something & went scouring through the book. I finally realized that my Kindle skipped the ENTIRE prologue, which was very important to the whole premise of the book.  Imagine my surprise when I clicked on "Go to Beginning", pressed previous page & there actually WAS a previous page.  My conclusion:  I HAVE to read it again.  And so I'm doing that, because I don't feel right.  Easter Bartlett deserves that, if nothing else.

I just picked up Bernice McFadden's lastest, Glorious.  She's another one of my favorite authors.  I loved Sugar Sugar: A Novel.  It's one of my favorite books, ever.  Sugar, from what I know, was her first book.  I'll let you know what I think of Glorious in a few days.  Have a great weekend folks!  It's supposed to be great here.