What I've BEEN Reading

I know, I know.  It's been FOREVER!  I got a little bogged down by my day to day.  Not to say I haven't been reading, because I have.  I'll never stop.  I just haven't been blogging about it.  For which I apologize. 

Since June I have read:
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler (one of my favorite books ever)
Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler (great book)
Parable of the Talents by Octavia Butler (great sequel to a great book)

Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor - This was a good book.  It kind of fell in line to what I had been reading by Octavia Butler, but was definitely more "out there" than Butler's work to ME.  There was a lot more magic and unexplainable mysticism, I recommend it.

Island Beneath the Sea: A Novel - This book had good reviews, but I didn't like it so much.  Some parts of the story were great, but at times I felt like it was too long & the characters started getting on my LAST nerve. All that being said, it's worth a read.  It had a lot of good information Saint Domingue and the Haitian revolution told from a first-hand perspective.

My Soul to Keep by Tananarive Due - GREAT GREAT book.  Love this series.
The Living Blood by Tananarive Due - Another great sequel to a great book.
Blood Colony: A Novel: by Tananarive Due - A great SEQUEL to a SEQUEL of a great book.
I have read all three of these books at least 4 times.  WHY did I read them again?  I have NO idea.  I think it was because it had been so long since I read the 1st one, I wanted to remember what started the whole story off.  And THEN I just HAD to read the sequel, because I wanted to know what happened next (like I didn't already know), and since I had already read the first 2, why the heck not read the third?

Small Island: A Novel by Andrea Levy - I REALLY liked this book.  I plan on doing a longer post on it, but I highly recommend it.  It's the story of two couples.  One Jamaican and One English.  It delves into their lives at during the time of WWII.  I'd never read anything about the subject of Jamaican/English relations and it was very interesting.  The characters were very interesting.  It was a good story.

The Hot Box: A Novel by Zane - First of all...do NOT judge me.  I'm not a Zane fan, and this book did not make me one.  I know a lot of people LOVE her, RAVE over her books, but I was just eh.  I guess the story was ok.  But I have a problem with stupidity.  I am sure that there are people that read this story and learned something from it, but I just could NOT get over how stupid one of the characters was.  Like, SERIOUSLY...Really?  You're that stupid and you're that old? Steamy parts were ok, but I wasn't THAT moved. Maybe this shouldn't have been my first reading of her's and I'm missing something, but I'm likely to never figure it out.

Rhythms of Love: You Sang to Me\Beats of My Heart (Kimani Romance) by Beverly Jenkins/ELAINE OVERTON - this was a 52 fakeout, but I blame myself.  Oh wait...I forgot to repeat myself..do NOT judge me.  I absolutely LOVE the sappy romances by one before-mentioned Bevery Jenkins. & when I saw something new by her I immediately downloaded it.  Did YOU see Elaine Overton? EYE didn't.  *in my Bernie Mac voice* this was some BULL!  They were 2 short stories wherein people fell in love & got engaged in a 2 week time span.  Yeah...that's what I said.

A Chance at Love By Beverly Jenkins ALONE.  I'm reading this right NAH.  Ahhhhh...just what I like...a beautiful gambler woman in 1884 (her name is Loreli for goodness sakes) out on the prairie alone, making her way to Californ-I-A all by her pretty little lonesome...but what is this she sees...twin pretty lil chocolate drops just looking for a mama 'cuz their's has died and left them all alone with their exceedingly handsome, muscular AND single uncle.  And well...Loreli ain't doing nothing, and their UNCLE ain't doing nothing about getting them a mama, so why not stay a spell and be a substitute mama for these perfect lil angels?  And MAYBE in the meantime Uncle Jake will stop looking down his nose at this siren of a heathen gambler lady and take a chance on love.  *shrieks*  I LOOOOOOOVE IT!! 

Perfect Peace

Perfect Peace




I LOVED Perfect Peace by Daniel Black. It’s one of the best books I’ve read this year. The story is set in a small black farming town in Arkansas and begins in 1940. All the residents have known each other all their lives. Perfect, and I promise you I’m not ruining the suspense by telling this part (it’s in the description of the story on Amazon), is the 7th child born to a woman who’s already had 6 boys. Emma Jean is DYING for a lil girl… DYING. She’s had a horrible childhood at the hands of her mother and all she wants in life is to have her own daughter to show her mother how it’s supposed to be done. But she doesn’t. She has another boy. And she then decides that NOPE…she is GOING to have a DAUGHTER. And so she names her son Perfect, and she presents him as a girl to the world, and to himself. That decision is so thought-provoking, I had to stop reading for a minute to form my own hypothesis as to what the rest of the story would be like. Does what you perceive as your gender really matter that much? If you’re a boy and your mom tells you that you’re a girl and you’re raised as a girl, how does it effect your sexuality? Should it?

The center of this novel is of course Perfect (later to be Paul,) and his struggles with his mother’s decision. But there is also the story of each son, and the story of Perfect/Paul’s parents. And that part is what drew me in. The brothers are so different. They deal with their mother’s trickery differently, but they all confront it in their own way, and they’re each made to be so endearing in different ways. We follow each boy from the time that Perfect/Paul is born until the paths they choose as men. And each is admirable in their own way.

The husband and father, Gus, is a sensitive but simple man. The book opens with a ritual that he performs every year that is at first perplexing, but after reading Black's insightful description of it, I felt Gus' need for it. It's something we probably all should do.

It doesn’t help that Perfect is being raised in an impossibly small town. EVERYONE knows everyone and everyone knows Perfect was a girl who is now a boy. You can only imagine people's attitude towards him. They were envious of him as a girl but now mock him as a boy.

And of course there's Paul's struggle with what's been done to him. You feel every moment of it.

Emma Jean is also made to deal with what she's done. Her attitude at first is very indifferent, but eventually all that she's done, not just to Paul, but to her entire family, smacks her in the face.

Perfect Peace confronts sexuality, gender identity, and plain humanity head on, but in a non-conventional way. The writing was excellent. I thought about the characters long after I finished the book. This is the first book I’ve read by Black, and I’ll definitely be on the lookout for his others.