Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by A Few More Pages.

The first evening Mama doesn't come back, I make a sandwich with leaves from her good-bye letter. I want to eat her words. I stare at the message written on the stiff yellowed paper as if the shaky scrawl would stand up and speak to me.

--from Soul Kiss by Shay Youngblood

Of course, this caused me to push aside the half-dozen other titles I'm reading. It's so enthralling and poetic. I believe this will be a cherished read.

Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice.

At first it sounds as if I am sawing wood but then I begin to feel the music in my bones. Sometimes I can make the cello sing. Sometimes I make her cry. My cello makes the most beautiful sounds. I name her Rosemary. She becomes my best friend. Sometimes I fall asleep with her in my arms.

--from Soul Kiss by Shay Youngblood 

I can't say enough how wonderfully this novel is written. It's kind of magical.

Let me preface this post by acknowledging the snobbery of its title. I am unapologetic about my distaste for certain types of reads. 

Having said that, it's quite apparent that those of us who do not read urban/street fiction have become marginalized by booksellers and, to some degree, publishers. I understand that many street fiction titles are self-published and this is where I fault booksellers in this sidelining. There seems to be little consideration for those of us who prefer more thoughtful, complex reading or that we have interests in books besides the canon of Black literature, i.e. Walker, Morrison, Baldwin, Hughes, etc. Even those can be a hard find in the muck and mire of fiction celebrating street life. 

Recently, Reads4Pleasure shared her own professed book snobbery in which she noted the reoccurring issue of misleading book covers that many authors have little control of and deter some readers from a potential buy. I recanted my experience with this involving Martha Southgate's Third Girl From The Left. If not for her praises being sung in my Twitter feed, I would never have added this to my tbr because the cover I saw (surrounded by street fiction in Borders) did not look like my sort of read. I then questioned if that indicates some underhanded attempt at capitalizing on the market trend towards that genre. That's what inspired this post. 

If the occasionally misleading cover is such a bid, where does this leave the true intended audience? I know, I know, the bottom line is obviously more important to publishers and booksellers. But readership is part of what feeds that bottom line and shutting out any portion of those readers is actually detrimental to that. 

Another thing I just don't get is why so many Black authors have a book picked up by a large publishing outfit but left to fend for themselves when it comes to marketing and promotion. It just seems that publishers are shooting themselves in the foot with this. I hope that my saying so isn't seen as causing trouble for authors. I'm genuinely curious about the logic behind this and have the best intentions here. 


My point is that more space needs to be given to those who write stories that don't read like a transcript of the local evening news filled with hypersexual, materialistic, perpetually impoverished characters. Books are like blood: we all need a different type; we reject those incompatible. A lot of us are bleeding out and the repository is low.

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by A Few More Pages.

from An Atlas of Impossible Longing by Anuradha Roy--

In the warm glow of fires that lit the clearing at the centre of straw-roofed mud huts, palm-leaf cups of toddy flew from hand to hand. Men in loincloths and women in saris had begun to dance barefoot, kicking up dust.

While not very captivating, these first two lines gave me the impression that I was in for a culturally enlightening read. 

Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice.

I'm sharing lines from the same read this week...

    The murdered man lay on the road, a dark, shining puddle forming beside his stomach as the owls resumed their soft night-time exchanges.
   Kananbala lay down beside Amulya on the far edge of their wide bed and, trying to breathe as quietly as her panting would allow, in her head she began to make up a story.

Chasing Amanda
Melissa Foster
ISBN: 0615477526
378 Pages
May 12, 2011
Solstice Publishing
This book was provided by the author.

Novelist Melissa Foster is back with a new novel and you'll find no signs of a sophomore slump here. Chasing Amanda is an emotionally charged read that explores the boundless wounds of the loss of a child and the perplexity of a paranormal gift: "the Knowing". Both of which notoriously tear families and, even towns, apart. 

And now it‟s like he never existed to them. They pummeled him and forgot him—forgetting that he was a person, a brother, a son. Pummeled him and walked away, thinking they were protecting their community from some...monster.

Molly relocates, with her husband and son, to Boyds, Maryland after a devastating loss in search of peace in a small town atmosphere only to be met, eight years later, with unresolved mysteries and shameful secrets of the town in which she thought she'd found some semblance of normalcy.

I can empathize with Molly's desire to right a wrong by finding the currently missing little girl, Tracey. It's hard to imagine not only reliving the pain of your own familiar experience but also being impelled with visions of the current victim's ordeal. The men in her life are struggling with their own conflicting feelings of her gift often wondering if it's merely a question of her sanity being intact. The other residents of this farming community all seem to be lost in their own mired pasts. At almost every turn, another secret arises meanwhile, Molly battles with the Knowing that wants her to find the little lost girl and the fact that she hasn't fully forgiven herself for her own loss. The chain of events lead to an unexpected ending that I honestly thought I had pegged early on in the book. Many secrets come to light and the townspeople truly begin to heal while others have to face their past demons and retribution. I'm glad I wasn't disappointed with a predictable read.

Foster writes with clarity, warmth, and intensity. She lets the reader into her narrative omnisciently which can be a blessing and a curse when dealing with such perverse subject matter. With the penning of this second novel, I can now say that Melissa Foster's main writing talent lies in her ability to write nuanced characters that display great humanity in the midst of the bleakest circumstances.

You can find the rest of the Chasing Amanda blog tour here. Follow along for more reviews, interviews and guest posts from the author, Melissa Foster. 

Book Beginnings is a weekly meme hosted by A Few More Pages.

from The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke--

My name is Mary. People in this Village call me Mary-Mathilda. Or, Tilda, for short. To my mother I was Mary-girl. My names I am christen with are Mary Gertrude Mathilda, but I don't use Gertrude, because my maid has the same name.


Whenever a book opens with a character introducing herself, it's usually indicative of a mystery and/or epic tale of their life. I think this is both. It could be a hit or miss. While not far into this read, I love Clarke's writing style but the pace is questionable.

Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice.

from Drop by Mat Johnson--

Because if I got up there they would boo or laugh or throw rocks at my head. Because I wasn't made for the pedestal, I was unsuitable for display. No crowd would ever accept Chris Jones held up above them.

This sums up the disillusion and angst of the novel's protagonist.

Sometimes I find myself looking for books on certain topics instead of genre and it gets really frustrating when trying to narrow that down to authors of color. I've often wished for a database that would allow me to search for books by topic or subject matter. No luck yet. Meanwhile, I thought I'd start bringing my readers some lists of books by authors of color on various subjects. My inaugural lists actually visits a topic I never indulge in but, the Mr. does. So, here's some crime fiction...

Uncredited Rewrite says you should read this one because it's "a slick thriller that shows the seedy side of L.A. Ridley's characters arrive in the city of angels with dreams but end up just trying to survive."

Uncredited Rewrite says check this one out because "it's a black comedy about four women crying out for better treatment than their lives have to offer."