My summer has been zany and demanding - mostly in a good way. I haven‘t been able to sink my teeth into any books, but knitting a lace scarf has been my companion. Considering getting into this book, soon. #knittingandreading #readingandknitting
pickActually between a “so-so” and a “pick.” Well- written and informative but….underwhelming for me. I wanted to like it more.
from Editor‘s Note:
“For this edition, we have drawn from 39 of the 74 poems, presenting a total of 70 questions. These questions represent parts of poems, with poem LVI being the only full poem in the book, but even in this case, not all of the poem‘s couplets appear on the same page. The 70 questions were arranged into more or less thematic groups, informed by the relationship between humans and the natural world, mind, and geography.”
“How do the oranges
On an orange tree share the sun?
Who wakes up the sun when it sleeps
upon its blazing bed?
Don‘t you see that apple blossoms bloom
In order to die as apples?”
#illustratedbooks #pabloneruda #bookofquestions #palomavaldivia #poetry
As if I needed a reason to visit one of my favorite independent bookstores - LOL! - today was Independent Bookstore Day; and this is what I scored at 57th Street Books!! First illustrated bilingual Spanish-English selection published in 2022 by Enchanted Lion Books. Illustrations by Paloma Valdivia. #poetry #pabloneruda #independentbookstoreday #illustratedbooks
After hearing U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (b. 1970) say that she stands “on the shoulders of” the Honorable Constance Baker Motley (1921-2005), I COULD NOT leave this book at the library when I happened upon it the other day. It also happens that the two women share a birthday- with exactly 49 years between them! #ConstanceBakerMotley #KetanjiBrownJackson
After reading Barbara Kingsolver‘s Unsheltered, I decided that I want to read more books by her, so now I am reading The Bean Trees. If you would like to recommend other books from Kingsolver‘s body of work, I thank you in advance! 🌸 #readingandknitting #readingandcrafting
pickPoetry is a great vehicle for exploring so much with children, & this book is an excellent example. In this case, 17 rhyming poems about the sleep habits of 17 different animals. In fact, were it not for this book I wouldn‘t have known that sea otters sometimes hold hands while sleeping so as not to float away from each other! I recommend this for readers of all ages. Includes brief prose descriptions, glossary, & index, plus cool illustrations!
Happy Birthday Alice Walker! Born in Eatonville, Georgia on this day in 1944, Alice Walker has - since the 1970s - been writing beautiful, soul-touching poetry, fiction, essays, and more. I feel gratefully enriched by her body of work. My stack only represents a portion. #alicewalker #blackwomenwriters
I‘m so excited to receive my copy of this book - just released yesterday. Subtitled “Transform, Heal, & Remember with the Power of Plants and Ancestral Medicine.” I see that the book‘s 8 chapters are organized by our bodies‘ systems, i.e. Circulatory Health, Respiratory Health, Digestive Health, etc. and includes soft watercolor illustrations of our organs and the plants whose medicine attends them. #spiritualherbalism #empresskarenmrose
Seeing that Quincy Troupe‘s recent poetry release is subtitled “Poems, 1966- Now” I had to go back in my mind to recall my first encounter with his name. It was as co-editor of this 1975 anthology with Rainer Schulte. #poetry #quincytroupe #vintagepoetrycollections #rainerschulte
New poetry release book mail received! Duende: Poems 1966- Now #poetry #quincytroupe
Since Chicago Public School children only returned to classrooms this Wednesday, my poetry residencies are scheduled to resume next week. I‘ve had more time to read and knit this week and I‘m not complaining! 😍 #readingandknitting #readingandcrafting
pickWritten in the adult voice of Neopolitan Giovanna Trada, this gripping, nearly obsessive narrative is largely a psychological and emotional “coming-of-age“ story. Giovanna retraces her adolescent years of struggling to unearth and reconstruct the truth behind the seemingly well-mannered life that her parents had constructed; while simultaneously trying to forge her own independent identity. A pick for me, with lot's of ⭐️s!
Thank you bell hooks - born Gloria Jean Watkins - thank you for everything you‘ve given us! Your life‘s work, your body of writing- all of it rooted in Love. 🙏🏾💗
bell hooks (1952 - 2021)
#bellhooks
I can‘t talk about this right now. 💔
bell hooks (September 25,1952 - December 15, 2021)
#GloriaJeanWatkins #bellhooks
True story: I was leaving my apartment building to go for a walk and said hello to a neighbor who was sitting in the lobby opening mail and deliveries. She asked “Do you read?”
“Oh, yes!” I replied.
“Well, here- I want to give this book to you. I just got it from Amazon.”
“That‘s so kind, but….”
“ I can‘t read it.” She said, and pointed to her eyes. “I‘m going to listen to the audiobook.”
She bought it to give away; refused my money.
Yes, after gushing over Marilynne Robinson‘s writing in Gilead, Home, and Lila, I‘m having to bail on Jack. 74 pages in and he and Della are still in the cemetery….I‘m weary and having difficulty believing this scene and their exchange. #MarilynneRobinson #Gilead #Gileadseries
“We did not have organized religion per se; rather the whole earth is a sacred site. A poem can be considered a sacred site, in which so much of our culture is stored, made into form to be acknowledged, given a place, even a place to hide. Many of our oldest and most traditional poems and songs contain maps of the stars, road maps, or precepts of spiritual knowledge.” - from the Introduction
#nativenationspoetry #nativeamericanpoetry #indigenous
“Our mother is not well. I can scarcely remember a time when she was. She is a vast garden of water-hungry flowers in a land of perpetual drought. Our father, I imagine, wanted to have something he could save every day, so he married her, narrow-waisted and massive-eyed. She was beautiful in an impossible way, a delicate thing. Too soft for this world, too soft for Lagos and the madness that is it‘s throbbing motor. Too soft for London…”
I actually finished this some weeks ago. I‘ve read 3 of the Gilead books - all loans from the library- and as you can see, I found a copy of Jack on my last visit. Honestly, I think I need to purchase the box set because I really kind of love Marilynne Robinson‘s writing, and each book comes with its own astonishing meditative gifts. #marilynnerobinson #gileadseries
pickI realize, now, that when I began reading this, I may have been in need of a “warmer” book, or one that makes more beautiful use of language. Gifty‘s sorrow and loneliness and grief are so palpable, even while she tells her sensitive story from a kind of clinical distance. The questions that she poses - about God and science and personal agency and religion and faith - are lingering and mighty. 4/5 ⭐️s.
If you peek inside my bag you‘ll see I purchased two more relatively new books even though in my mind I want to read more from my backlog of “older” books. My justification for purchasing Whitehead‘s book is that I got it at a 20% discount; and copies of The Personal Librarian won‘t be available from the library for months!
Ploughing my way through a pile of work (that I am grateful to have - let‘s be clear!) so I can get started reading this one without feeling distracted by the voice that says “ You know you have a deadline to meet, right?” #guiltfreereading #chunkers #bigfatbooks #honoréefanonnejeffers
So far I‘m liking the 2021 cover art of Grand Central Publishing‘s editions of Octavia Butler (1947-2006)‘s Xenogenesis Series. 💙 #octaviabutler #xenogenesisseries #coverart
🥰😍Got these two for less than $10.00 on the “clearance” shelf of one of my favorite independent bookstores! (57th Street Books) #poetry #adriennerich #alicewalker #thecushionintheroad
Finally! I finally read this masterwork - first published in 1946! I love the scenic, emotional, and social detail that Ann Petry poured into telling Lutie‘s Johnson‘s story. In the introduction [to my 2020 edition] Tayari Jones notes that Petry was “a pioneer of the literary thriller, a genre popularized by her contemporary Patricia Highsmith.” Now I want to read more Petry, and try Highsmith for the first time!❤️❤️
“Adinkra (ah-DiNK-ra): a group of symbols, originating hundreds of years ago in Côte d‘Ivoire, that tell stories and teach lessons. The symbols appear on pottery, jewelry, and other decorative items, including fabrics initially once worn only by African leaders but now worn by many people, both in African countries and in other places in the world. “Adinkra” also means “goodbye” in Twi, a Ghanaian language spoken by the Ashanti tribe.”
A recent acquisition while enjoying The African World Festival in Detroit 🥰
I enjoy many illustrated books, and couldn‘t resist this one, which also includes Adinkra symbols and their meanings. #adinkrasymbols #illustratedbooks
Bailed on this after reading all of part one and a few pages into part two just because I‘m not in the mood for this. The writing is good, but this isn‘t the adventure I want to go on, now. #moodyreader
“Don‘t rush though:
Your eyes need
Time to taste.
Your soul needs
Room to bloom”
💜❤️💗🧡
#howtoreadabook #picturebooks #kwamealexander #illustratedbooks
“Sometimes she listened to the radio, if there was an opera or drama, or if she just wanted to hear a human voice. The big old radio gave off an odor like rancid hair tonic. It reminded her of a nervous salesman. And it made a sullen hiss and sputter if she moved away from it. It was the kind of bad companion loneliness makes welcome.”
pick17 essays written between 2010 and 2020 from the brilliant novelist, Aminatta Forna. The Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer has lived and traveled all over the world. A human repository of a rich and unique blend of experiential, journalistic, and academic knowledge, Forna‘s wordsmith game is superb.
3.5⭐️s for content, 5 ⭐️s for writing only because some essays were too erudite for me or were too heavy on encyclopedic detail and stats.
pickAfter reading the 1st two installments of the Perveen Mistry series, I looked forward to reading this one. Sujata Massey does tight, intricate weaves of story set in Bombay in the 1920s, so you get a glimpse into Indian and British colonial complexities, and how attitudes about gender roles dovetail with Parsi, Muslim, and British legal systems. It‘s a lot to juggle - with uneven success. Page-turners, nevertheless. 3 ⭐️s + a cup of chai
“The trouble with happiness, thought Attila, was that, perhaps because infants seemed such happy creatures, people were led to believe that happiness came with a mother‘s milk, happiness was man‘s state of nature, of which all else was a warping. The search to return to that state became unending. But they were mistaken, for what they desired so badly wasn‘t happiness but a state of prelapsarian innocence, the thing that babies possessed.”
pickOctavia Butler (1947- 2006)‘s
speculative considerations underline a strong grasp of human instincts and emotions. Her unique fusion of imagination with science is provocative and convincing. I really love her ability to tap into the tensions where curiosity and repulsion, hope and distrust- converge. #xenogenesisseries #octaviabutler #coverart
Just getting around to reading this novel, first published in 2011.
It‘s raw, relentless, tender, terrible. Raw, relentless, tender, terrible. Raw, relentless, tender, terrible. #jesmynward #hurricanekatrina #sauvageMS
So, yesterday I had lunch with a friend whom I have not seen in over a year. We swapped some books. I gave her these - all of which I enjoyed, by the way! #bookswap
I so want to get my hands on a copy of this exhibition catalogue! I finally got to visit the Art Institute Of Chicago to see Bisa Butler‘s beautiful artwork up close. She paints stories through an extraordinary quilting practice. Pictured here is “Four Little Girls, September 15, 1963,” 2018 - which commemorates the lives of 4 girls murdered in 16th St. Baptist Church that was bombed by white supremacists in Birmingham, Alabama.
“Hungry Paul then dropped to the floor and started a push-up on his knuckles. There was a cracking sound, followed by some oaths, and then he started again, looking like a break dancer doing the caterpillar.” 😂
Happy Valentines Day 💙💚❤️😘🦋
#poetry #poemsofkindness
pickThis monograph-type book includes 31 pieces of writing, mostly poetry, and 32 art works created by writer and interdisciplinary artist, Krista Franklin. Palpable and compelling, it is the kind of book that encourages me to read it the way I read picture books as a child: I read parts aloud enjoying the language and tracing my fingers around some images while emitting sounds of excitement😍.
pick217 pages of black-and-white photographs is a celebratory spectrum of black barbershop 💈 culture, as documented by Antonio Johnson. He named his project “You Next” because “you next” is what a barber says to a customer to communicate that they are on deck for a haircut. It‘s also used as a question between customers to determine where they are in line.
💈These images pay homage to the public spaces where Black male identity is whole and loved.
I reserved this copy from the library not realizing it was going to be a chunker, and that other people like me were wanting to better acquaint themselves with this awardee of the Nobel Prize in Literature 2020. Nevertheless, before returning this to the library today, I copied out six poems that I would enjoy re-reading, anytime. #LouiseGlück #chunkster #bigfatbooks #nobelprizeinliterature #poetry #chunkers #ilovelibraries #LouiseGluck
pickPoems and other recipes of a Korean American history and inheritance. Love: cooked or raw. Violence and spice blend. Food memory. Geography of migratory hungers and nourishments. #poetry #koreanamericanpoets #jihyunyun
“Please God,” Isabelle whispered piteously, kneading her face with her fingers. Please what? She hated God. She hated him. In the darkness she actually shook her fist in the air, oh, she was so sick to death of God. For years she had been playing some kind of guessing game with him. Is this right, God? Am I doing the right thing? Every decision made on what would Please God - and look where it had gotten her: no place. Less than no place at all.”
Naomi Long Madgett (July 5,1923 - November 6, 2020). Poet, and educator who founded the historic Lotus Press in 1972. In 2001 she became Detroit‘s Poet Laureate. She was named Kresge Eminent Artist in 2012. ❤️♥️Literary Mother and Pathcutter, now an ancestor after 97 strong years. Rest in the garden of literary flowers. Asé! #naomilongmadgett #blackwomenwriters #poetry #lotuspress
I‘m 59 today!
Talk about myths and secrets....!
😂🥰
#mythsandsecrets #womensmythsandsecrets
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