January 2009

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. Read more

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. Read more

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 Read more

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. Read more