It's almost Christmas, bibliophiles! Here's hoping that your stocking is stuffed with bookish presents and that there's a bunch of tomes under the tree to fill out your TBR! Meanwhile, though, things have looked kind of grim in the world of books, as we have lost a couple of my favorite wordsmiths, which makes me sad. Millions of readers mourn your loss to the world of literature. Rest in peace, Nikki and MJ. Your legacy of poems and novels will live on through the centuries.
I've been in love with Nikki G's wonderful poems since I was a teenager, and I'm not surprised that the world mourns her loss.
Obituary
Note: Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni,"the charismatic and iconoclastic
poet, activist, children's book author and professor who wrote, irresistibly
and sensuously, about race,
politics, gender, sex and love,"
died yesterday at age 81, according to
the New York Times.
As the Times noted, Giovanni was "a
prolific star of the Black Arts
movement," but was also
independent of it. She was "a celebrity poet and
public intellectual who appeared on
television and toured the country.
She was a riveting performer,
diminutive at just 105 pounds--as
reporters never failed to point
out--her cadence inflected by the jazz
and blues music she loved, with the
timing of a comedian or a Baptist
preacher who drew crowds wherever she
appeared throughout her life. She
said her best audiences were college
students and prison inmates." She
appeared regularly on Soul!, the Black
culture program that aired on
public television from 1967 to 1972.
Giovanni wrote more than two dozen
books, including volumes of poetry,
illustrated children's books, and three
collections of essays. Her early
poetry included Black Feeling, Black
Talk (1968), Black Judgement
(1968), and Re: Creation (1970). In
1971, she published the memoir
Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical
Statement on My First Twenty-Five
Years of Being a Black Poet. Her other
poetry collections include The
Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni
(1996), Blues: For All the Changes
(1999), The Collected Poetry of Nikki
Giovanni: 1968-1998 (2003), and
Bicycles: Love Poems (2009).
Her 2007 children's picture book Rosa,
focused on Rosa Parks, won a
Caldecott Honor Award, and its
illustrator, Brian Collier, won a Coretta
Scott King Award. Among Giovanni's many
awards and honors were multiple NAACP Image Awards, the Langston
Hughes Award, and the Rosa Parks Women of Courage Award.
Several indie booksellers paid tribute
to Giovanni on social media,
including Baldwin & Co. New Orleans, La., which posted, in
part: "Nikki Giovanni taught us to see ourselves, to honor our stories,
and to speak truth to power with
grace and boldness. She dared us to
dream beyond boundaries and loved
our culture fiercely through her
poetry, essays, and presence. As we
reflect on her life and legacy, let us
honor her by continuing to
create, to write, and to uplift one
another. Rest in power, Nikki
Giovanni. You will forever be missed,
but your words will live on in our
hearts."
MahoganyBooks,
Oxon Hill, Md., Noted: "Dearest
Nikki Giovanni. Rest well.
Our prayer is that you knew how much so
many of us loved you. That you
felt it without one piece of doubt.
Knew that we felt seen by your words
so deftly written on each page and your
imagination of what 'Us' could
be. Whew! We were just with you in
February and we chuckled at the
shirts we wore... unplanned and all
reveling in our continued boldness
to celebrate our history, our books
that others... think necessary to
ban. Your light will remain lit for a
lifetime."
I'm gutted at the unexpected loss of the wonderful MJ Rose, whose works I've been reading and loving for decades. I think I've read most of her works, but I'm particularly fond of her "daughters of La Lune" series, which was beautifully written paranormal romance. Rest in Peace dear author.
Obituary
Note: M.J. Rose
Very sad, shocking news. M.J. Rose
(Melisse Shapiro), author, marketer,
Author Buzz founder, a founder of
International Thriller Writers,
co-owner of 1,001 Dark Nights, died
suddenly yesterday (editor's note: No one is saying what she died of that made it so sudden, but I'm hoping that it wasn't something like suicide).
She was a remarkable person, always
full of ideas, sharp, challenging,
warm, a striking personality, and a
true friend to so many authors and
others in the book world. As Jenn
Risko, co-founder and publisher
emerita of Shelf Awareness, said, "M.J.
Rose was a much-loved author,
publisher, and force of excellence and
innovation for our industry. She
started Author Buzz when we started the
Shelf and she quickly became
known to us as the patron saint of
authors, tirelessly working with
those who wanted better marketing. She
had more ideas on how to do it
better than anyone, and was constantly
searching for the new ones. She
was a huge and dear friend to us all
and will be greatly missed."
And Shelf publisher Matt Baldacci said:
"I first met Melisse in 1999
when we at St. Martin's published her
prescient book How to Publish and
Promote On-Line. The very title and
timing of that book speaks volumes
about how she thought and how she
helped people. She has been a
confidante and friend since that time,
and will be greatly missed."
M.J. was always busy, seemed always to
be writing, and exploring a
variety of genres, and creating her own
genres. Altogether she wrote 19
novels and three books on marketing,
her first career. (With Doug Clegg,
she wrote Buzz Your Book.) Lip Service
was her first novel, which she
self-published in 1998. As she proudly
noted on her website, it was "the first e-book and first
self-published novel chosen by the LiteraryGuild/Doubleday Book Club
as well as the first e-book to go on to be published by a mainstream
New York publishing house."
She also wrote the thrillers In
Fidelity, Flesh Tones, and Sheet Music.
She introduced Dr. Morgan Snow, a sex
therapist, in the Butterfield
Institute Series, which included The
Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex,
and The Venus Fix. The
Reincarnationist, which the Fox TV show Past
Lives was based on, was part of a
series of books focused on
reincarnation, including The Memoirist,
The Hypnotist, and The Book of
Lost Fragrances. Her more recent work
included Forgetting to Remember,
The Jeweler of Stolen Dreams, The Last
Tiara, and Cartier's Hope.
With partners Liz Berry and Jillian
Stein, she ran 1,001 Dark Nights, which began producing series of
novellas based on the Arabian Nights but retold through paranormal
romance, contemporary romance, and erotic romance stories.
Author Buzz, the marketing service that
puts authors directly in touch
readers, reading groups, booksellers,
and librarians, has been
instrumental in the careers of so many
writers.
We will miss you, M.J.!
I'm looking forward to seeing this movie when it comes out, as Colson Whitehead became something of a literary star for the book version.
Movie:
Nickel Boys
A new trailer has been released for
Nickel Boys
based on Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer
Prize-winning novel. IndieWire
reported that writer/director RaMell
Ross (Hale County This Morning,
This Evening) "has already been
toasted as a filmmaker to watch this
awards season" for his adaptation.
Nickel Boys premiered December 13 in
select theaters in New York, with a Los
Angeles debut coming December
20. It will expand nationwide in
January.
Ross, who co-wrote the script with
Joslyn Barnes, received the Auteur
Award at the 2024 IndieWire Honors
event, where he said, "The film is
not looking at the Black community,
it's looking from the Black
community. And that's a perspective I
wasn't seeing often.
Alternatively, I think this film and
Colson Whitehead's novel is about
justice on some level, not only visual
justice but another justice, one
for the young men of the Dozier School
for Boys and their families. And
this is really, really deeply true, we
owe those young men for their
stories not to be buried right next to
them. It's such a tragedy, such a
horrible story. At a time when we want
to forget and ignore the ugly
parts of American history, I wanted to
create a loving and experiential
monument to the [real life] Dozier
School boys."
So true!
Quotation of the Day
"[The bookstore experience is
about] discovery and a social space. You
come out of it feeling good... You need
to create lovely spaces.
Bookstores have to be friendly. They
have to be open. And if you have
them beautifully presented, they're
never going away... What really
matters is we have physical stores,
which are each a little bit
different, have a real personality, and
they're fun to be in."
--James Daunt, Barnes & Noble CEO,
on CNBC's Squawk Box
The Last Heir to Blackwood Library by Hester Fox is a mystery/paranormal romance about a woman in the early 1920s whose life is changed by an unexpected inheritance. Here's the blurb: In post–World War I England, a young woman inherits a mysterious library and must untangle its powerful secrets.
With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.
The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own.
Rumors swirl in the village about the abbey’s previous owners, about ghosts and curses, and an enigmatic manuscript at the center of it all. And as events grow more sinister, it will be up to Ivy to uncover the library’s mysteries in order to reclaim her own story—before it vanishes forever.
With the stroke of a pen, twenty-three-year-old Ivy Radcliffe becomes Lady Hayworth, owner of a sprawling estate on the Yorkshire moors. Ivy has never heard of Blackwood Abbey, or of the ancient bloodline from which she’s descended. With nothing to keep her in London since losing her brother in the Great War, she warily makes her way to her new home.
The abbey is foreboding, the servants reserved and suspicious. But there is a treasure waiting behind locked doors: a magnificent library. Despite cryptic warnings from the staff, Ivy feels irresistibly drawn to its dusty shelves, where familiar works mingle with strange, esoteric texts. And she senses something else in the library too, a presence that seems to have a will of its own.
Rumors swirl in the village about the abbey’s previous owners, about ghosts and curses, and an enigmatic manuscript at the center of it all. And as events grow more sinister, it will be up to Ivy to uncover the library’s mysteries in order to reclaim her own story—before it vanishes forever.
There are a lot of tropes and cliches to unpack in this novel, including the "angelic nun vs the evil monk" and the "poor but lovely" young woman who is thrown into a dangerous situation with no one to help her but a handsome chauffer/groundskeeper/staff member (who inevitably rescues her and she falls in love with him). Of course Ivy's naive and a bit stupid about anything but books, so she continually puts her foot in it and has to be rescued by the staff, who keep trying to get her to leave, not realizing that she doesn't have anywhere else to go in her impoverished state. I found it unbelieveable that Ivy allowed herself to be tricked into an engagement with an evil lord who was only after her rare magical manuscript....he was so obviously a moustache-twirling bad guy...I mean he leers, he's verbally abusive and manipulative, he tries to force her into submission by locking her up and treating her like a prisoner, and he makes it pretty clear that after he marries her, she will be dead soon after. While it has a rapidly paced plot and hearty prose, I felt the HEA was rushed, and therefore I'd give this slender volume a B, and recommend it to anyone who likes willowy and somewhat demure heroines who are lucky enough to make it out of bad situations with their skin intact.
The Protector Guild, Volumes 1-3 omnibus by Gray Holborn is a YA fantasy/polyamory romance with some LGBTQ themes, including gender non binary and gay couples woven throughout the narrative. That said, the spice is fairly mild, with only one actual sex scene and lots of blushes, frissons and enigmatic attractions woven throughout each chapter...these are "horny teenagers" after all, though some of them are werewolves and others are part incubus or sucubus by heritage. Here's the blurb: They don't want to want her, but they do...
In the shadows of the human world, a secret society of demon hunters fights to keep humanity from the supernatural forces that threaten to tear it apart.
But for Max Bentley, a rookie hunter struggling to find her place amongst her kind, the biggest threat might just be the four brooding, enigmatic members of the most elite team of hunters - all of whom seem to have taken a special, antagonistic interest in her.
She quickly discovers that their past is as dark and complicated as her own. As she is drawn deeper into the mysterious world of demon hunting, she finds herself torn between her duty to her people and her growing attraction to her team.
It's more than her heart on the line, it's the very fabric of our world.
This set includes the first THREE full novels:
Academy of Protectors
Forging the Guild
Dreams of Hell
In the shadows of the human world, a secret society of demon hunters fights to keep humanity from the supernatural forces that threaten to tear it apart.
But for Max Bentley, a rookie hunter struggling to find her place amongst her kind, the biggest threat might just be the four brooding, enigmatic members of the most elite team of hunters - all of whom seem to have taken a special, antagonistic interest in her.
She quickly discovers that their past is as dark and complicated as her own. As she is drawn deeper into the mysterious world of demon hunting, she finds herself torn between her duty to her people and her growing attraction to her team.
It's more than her heart on the line, it's the very fabric of our world.
This set includes the first THREE full novels:
Academy of Protectors
Forging the Guild
Dreams of Hell
Just an FYI...Since this omnibus is actually a compendium of three novels, I consider it as counting me having read four books for the purpose of this post to my review blog.
This book series started out with a cliche of what a teenage girl is, including lustful descriptions of how "petite" she is an yet how sexualized, as if the books were written by a pedophile or some gross old man who oogles young women half his age. Shudder. My initial thoughts were that Max was such a mess, that I wanted to slap her upside the head. Rudeness and the total lack of tact that Max displays are NOT at all "refreshing," they indicators of being spoiled and selfish and infantilized by the men around her, including her old male guardian (who taught her how to fight but didn't somehow teach her about the beings she is supposed to kill and the dangers of just blindly trusting the young men around her). While certain types of "honest" outbursts are cute in young children (those who are anywhere from 2-6 years old), there is nothing "cute" about a teenage girl with no filter who says whatever comes into her head and continually, selfishly, puts everyone around her in grave danger because she can't seem to understand that the bad guys, ie vampires and werewolves and soforth, see humans and protectors as food, to be killed and eaten without remorse or a second thought. Max is awful, and reckless and ignorant, which is always a dangerous combination. Then there's her mysterious "power" to attract anyone and everyone and somehow hold them in a sexual thrall. It seems obvious to me that she's a hellspawn of some kind, probably descended from the former angel Lucifer himself, and that's what has everyone salivating over her. But the author leaves us hanging at the end of book 3, not knowing anything concrete about Max's powers. So I plan on reading book 4 on my kindle to see if there are any revelations. The prose in these books is bright and strong, and the plot swift as an owl chasing down a mouse. I'd give this collection a solid B, and recommend it to anyone who likes paranormal romance with a bit of spice and a lot of teenage idiocy.
