January 2009

  • Confessions of a Rookie Cheerleader

    By ming on 1/28/09 5:05pm
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    By Dominga Martin

    Novice novelist Ericka Kendrick may be new to the literary world, but she is no stranger when it comes to the basket ball court. In this juicy tale about love and games girls play she takes readers inside her NBA Cheerleader days, leaving everyone wondering is this fact or fiction?

    She admits that she over induldges on a few "Bimbo Cheerleader" stereotypes, but it is all fun in games. Ms. Kendrick is an Ivy-League graduate with an MBA, who happens to be an ex-cheerleader.

    "Confessions of a rookie cheerleader is a satirical peek behind the NBA Cheerleading locker room doors. It's a work of fiction, but there are definite elements of truth peppered throughout the pages," admits the writer who enjoys the banter of readers who can not figure out what's real or not?

    What's real are the pointers for any women who think that being a basketball groupie is the way to go.

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  • Bling: The Hip-Hop Jewelry Book

    By ming on 1/28/09 3:21pm
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    By Dominga Martin

    The word Bling continues to stick [and] as a generation continues to bury themselves in glitz & jewels, two authors (Reggie Ossé & Gabriel Tolliver) uncover the birth of the word as well as the meaning behind some of our most sought after treasures.

    In Bling, you will find a historical collage, history of the word and how it has shaped the culture throughout the decades.

    Before the word Bling spilled out of the mouth of Lil Wayne, it was a slang term used in Jamaica.  Bling, is not a big word at all, but somehow it has managed to resonate throughout the hip hop culture.

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  • The Thirteenth is really...12.

    By ming on 1/28/09 2:39pm
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    By Dominga Martin

    LA Banks has been named Essence's Storyteller of the year.  She has created a frenzy with her vampire huntress tales, kicking off with Book 1: The Minion, which takes us into the world of music, into the underbelly of a beast who wants to control the game and a diva who is trained to stop it. This underworld consists of Vampires and two teams; the good and the bad.

    "Damali," the Vampire Huntress is a Neteru who is in constant turmoil because of the path she is chosen to walk and the love of her life. Kick ass action, love and surprises are what keeps people reading this helluva series.

    "A Neteru is an Egyptian word for the god or divinity in everything. Damali is that divinity that is within the human essence of all of us [and] that was my real message," says Ms. Banks who's been penning out books every 6 months for years, in various genres.

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  • Review of Saul Bellow's Henderson the Rain King

    By tyroneslothrop on 1/27/09 4:42pm
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         I actually finished a book last week. My partner and I subscribe to about six or seven magazines, so sometimes we find it difficult to reign ourselves in from distraction from longer works, both fiction and non. For the record, she is much better at avoiding distraction from novels than I and somehow manages to read longer, more densely written novels in the time it would take me to read a no less complex but much shorter novel like Henderson the Rain King, by Saul Bellow. Two years ago the opposite was true. It would seem that she gains cerebral acuity while I, sadly, am losing it.

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  • Review of Alan Moore's Watchmen

    By tyroneslothrop on 1/27/09 12:52pm
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    I am, like many nerds and other such people that are awesome, extremely excited about the forthcoming adaptation of Watchmen, by Alan Moore. It is bittersweet, for Moore has already said that he has no intentions of viewing this adaptation and (I’m assuming this by his tone) does not really approve of the fact that this film has been made. If you peruse the Wikipedia entry on Moore's greatest work you can study up on his numerous conflicts with publishers involving creative rights, etc. Zack Snyder of 300 fame helmed the whole affair and from the previews the end product looks like something to be reckoned with. But this isn’t really about the film. This is about the graphic novel.

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  • The Heavyweights

    By mous on 1/23/09 1:19pm
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    Heavyweights are typically read, if at all, in college. Then they are forgotten. If the person keeps reading, perhaps he or she will come across popular lighter books rather than the older, weightier Classic side of things. By heavyweights, I mean the Canon.

    Heavyweights are the books you mention at parties that make people say “Oh,” expressively before running off to find a drink rather than talk to the book snob. Mention it the first time you meet someone and you’ll forever be labeled the intellectual, for better of for worse. Often for worse, as heavyweights get a bad rap for being too heavy or too hard to read.



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  • The Heart and Gut of A Writer

    By taybot on 1/23/09 10:37am
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    I recently had the pleasure of reading the classic, Moby Dick.  I was very proud of myself for finishing it as, while everyone has heard of the book, most people I meet have only read sections of it or they only made it to that first famous sentence, "Call me Ishmael."

    Call me crazy, but I feel this book gets unfairly put down by many people, including avid readers.  Sometimes it is seen as an "elitist" book that only professors or literary snobs enjoy.  I have heard people call it many things, although the main criticism seems to be that it is "boring" and "nothing happens."  One specific time comes to mind when I was reading it on the bus.  Someone asked me if I was reading it for school or fun.  The answer was fun and she went on to tell me how much she hated the book.  Then another person joined in on the criticism.  Luckily my stop was next but as I departed they told me to quit now because it will only get worse as the pages turn.

    Both these people said they read it in high school and it struck me that they shouldn't bother teaching this book to teenagers.  If I had read this in high school, a 600+ page book full of expla

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  • Watching the Watchmen

    By roskopp on 1/22/09 3:04am
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    Watching the Watchmen CoverPossibly the greatest graphic novel of all time the Watchmen film adaptation is about to hit our cinema screens and so a new hardcover edition has been released along with a companion book called Watching the Watchmen.

    For people who think that comic books are for kids the Watchmen proved they can be a medium for adults too. It was originally released as a series back in the mid-eighties, published by DC, and it received rave reviews from critics and became an essential and much loved classic for comic book fans. Written by the talented Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons the Watchmen took the medium to new heights with a satisfying woven complexity, characters with real depth and intense thoughtful storylines that combined to create an explosive and captivating read.

    Moore created some incredible characters and Gibbons brought them to life on the page. Their dysfunctional relationships and an alternate history backdrop made the Watchmen more like a deconstruction of the superhero genre.

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  • Americans read!

    By mous on 1/21/09 1:18pm
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    A survey from the National Endowment for the Arts has come out for 2008 with the statistic the percentage of American’s who read is up for the first time since 1982. The survey asks adults over 18 if they have read a book, play, short story or poem in the last year. Today, roughly 50.2 % of Americans read fiction.

    This is good news, or is it? The question asks if people have read at least 1 book in the last year. Half the people in this country haven’t read that one book. This figure stands in stark contrast to European reading statistics, which are higher overall. While I won’t restate the cliché that Americans are stupid, I will say that I’m not overly impressed with half the population right now.

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  • Reading On The Rise (Says the NEA)

    By lisala on 1/19/09 3:50pm
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    The American National Endowment for the Arts has released a report on "Reading On The Rise." You may remember last year's report "To Read or Not to Read." This year's report, like those of previous years, is largely based on a survey of a wide range of Americans. Last year's report and the 2004 report "Reading at Risk" were full of despairing news about substantial declines in reading. But this year's report is being presented as the opposite: "a decisive and unambiguous increase" in "literary reading" across the board, with the most dramatic rise (more than 20%) among Hispanic Americans. The reports also says that The 18-to-24-year-old shifted from a 20% decline in reading, in the 2002 survey, to a 21% increase in 2008. The report attributes both increases to community-based reading and awareness programs, particularly their own, which, given the outreach abilities of the NEA strikes me as a bit unlikely to have had that much effect.

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  • The Recession Hits Powell’s Books

    By erika on 1/12/09 3:22pm
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    The economic crisis has hit every industry hard, but the publishing and bookselling industry - always struggling in the best of times - is really taking a beating. Recently Powell's Books, one of the world's largest independent book retailers, asked its employees to voluntarily take unpaid sabbaticals, or to scale back their hours.

    Powell's management is currently unwilling to discuss layoffs publicly, but most people assume that layoffs are on the horizon at the "City of Books." The thought of Powell's actually shutting its doors strikes fear into the heart of every reader - or should! Powell's, founded in 1971 by the Powell family, bills itself as "the world's greatest bookstore," and who can argue?

    Powell's pioneered the method of selling used books alongside new copies. Powell's continued that business model on the internet, where you can find both new and used copies (ranked by condition) listed on each book's page. If a used copy is not available, you can sign up to receive an email alert when a used copy arrives.

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  • Huckleberry Finn: Banned Book

    By lisala on 1/10/09 4:53pm
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    The American Library Association regularly publishes a list of the 10 most frequently challenged or banned books. A book is "challenged" when someone at a local school or library or in a community thinks the book should be banned. I'm going to specifically address a single banned book; the fifth on the list for 2007; Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which is usually banned for "racism."

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  • From the Page to the Screen

    By mous on 1/8/09 5:48pm
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    Welcome to the premiere of From the Page to the Screen, a new column that will blend two forms of vastly different but uniquely connected art forms: motion pictures and the written word. To purloin the mission statement of the USC Library's Annual Scripter Awards (now in its twenty-first year) the aim of From the Page to the Screen is to celebrate the written word, creative collaboration and the profound results of transforming one artistic medium into another.

    Today's column kicks off with a look at the Writers Guild of America Awards for 2008. Based on the noms for Best Adapated Screenplay it has been a fairly dismal year for book-to-film adaptations.

    Eric Roth was nominated for his big screen adaptation of the slight and not incredibly engaging short story "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I read the Fitzgerald story in question fifteen years ago in "The Collected Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald" while on a cross-country plane trip (You can read the whole story online here).

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  • Dreams From My Father, Barack Obama

    By roskopp on 1/5/09 8:52am
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    The relief felt across the world when Barack Obama was elected the next President of the United States was palpable. Not only do we finally get rid of George W. Bush and his negative influence on world affairs but we also get a progressive and intelligent politician with a black African father and a white American mother coming in. The expectation level is huge and Obama looks potentially well placed to bridge the racial divide in the US and repair the national reputation which has been so badly tarnished by Bush.

    Like many people I knew very little about Barack Obama, as the democratic choice and opposition to McCain and Palin it wasn’t necessary to know much about him in order to decide he was the better option.

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