Book Reviews (46)
By Kam Williams
Film Critic
“I love pizza. Who doesn’t? The idea of this book started to form after I completed a six-month journey into true pizza obsessiveness…
From the beginning, I decided this book was not going to be simply a Zagat-like guide to New York pizzerias… It was going to be two books in one--profiles of at least twenty pizza personalities, then honest reviews of as many pizzerias as I could visit.
You’ll learn a lot in this book [like] what kinds of cheese and tomatoes and ovens pizzerias use… If it opens your eyes to the great big pizza world out there, makes you suddenly crave a couple slices, or leads you to embark on your own sleepless search for the city’s best pizza, then I did my job.”
-- Excerpted from the Introduction (pgs. 1-3)
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
For awhile there, you thought you were gonna die.
Your head hurt. Your body ached, and your stomach was acting like a fresh-caught fish – but that didn’t matter much. Bills still needed paying and business needed attending. There was family to care for, work to do.
Yes, you should’ve stayed horizontal but you came back from the dead – and so did Easy Rawlins. In the new novel “Little Green” by Walter Mosley, Easy’s recent demise never gave him but a moments’ rest.
His vision was blurred. His thoughts, more so.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
This month, you’ve decided you need a whole new look.
Your hair and wardrobe are out of date, so you’re getting a cut-and-style and a fresh wardrobe, shoes and all. You’ve got an appointment for a mani-pedi, a dermatologist, dentist, and – no more glasses! - you’re getting some of those colored contacts.
But there’s one thing you can’t alter. And in the newly updated book “The Color Complex” by Kathy Russel-Cole, Midge Wilson, and Ronald E. Hall, you’ll see how much it still matters.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Not in a hundred years.
There was just no way. From the minute you saw her, you knew everything you needed to know about that woman. She was a schemer, she was ghetto, she was the worst kind of liar, and a friendship between the two of you was Not. Going. To. Happen. In a hundred years.
Famous last words, huh? Because you got to know her a little and danged if she wasn’t okay after all. But can she be trusted? As you’ll see in the new novel “Friends & Foes” by ReShonda Tate Billingsley and Victoria Christopher Murray, that’s up for discussion.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Throughout your life, you’ve dodged a lot of bullets.
By accident or design, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time but somehow remained unscathed: the almost-hazard while driving, the near-miss at work, the moment you caught yourself just in time from falling.
Things could’ve been worse – much worse - but you dodged a bullet. So did it make your heart pound, or did it change your life? For author Sampson Davis, it was the latter because, as you’ll see in his new memoir “Living and Dying in Brick City” (with Lisa Frazier Page), the bullets were sometimes real.
Sampson Davis hid his intelligence from his friends.
By Kam Williams
“Was there a time when civil rights protesters could be attacked by a club-wielding mob while police officers stood by? When the president of the United States had to mobilize 30,000 federal troops to put down an armed insurrection prompted by the enrollment of a single black man at a state university? There was…
Here’s a story about the integration and evolution of college basketball, set against the backdrop of the civil rights movement, one of the most convulsive periods of our nation’s history… My aim here is to persuade you that a pivotal moment in that transition was the improbable championship of the Loyola Ramblers, a black-and-white team that opened a lot of eyes and stirred a lot of hearts.”
-- Excerpted from Introduction (pages 14-15)
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Your child has caught some bug that’s going around.
He has a terminal case of The Gimmes, and he’s not getting any better. It’s “Gimme that” and “Buy me this” all day long. It’s GimmeGimmeGimme, usually accompanied by whining, pleading, and a maddening inability to understand the word “no.”
The Gimmes are enough to make any parent crazy. They make you wish there was some sort of doctor who had some sort of shot to prevent it. But there isn’t - so why not read “Do I Look Like an ATM?” by Sabrina Lamb instead?
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
The dirty glasses haven’t quite made it to the kitchen yet.
They’re still communing with last weeks’ newspaper in the living room, while dust bunnies dance with cookie crumbs strewn on the carpet. Forgotten toys lie everywhere and your sweatshirt is right where you left it, balled up as a pillow on the sofa.
By Terri Schlichenmeyer
Your mother scared the daylights out of you last week.
She said she was going for a quick walk but when she didn’t return three hours later, you went looking for her. You were frantic, she was confused, you were embarrassed. She has early-stage Alzheimer’s and you’re trying to cope but things are getting worse for her. Things are getting worse for you.
By Kam Williams
Film Critic
“SBF. Single Black Female. Walk through any major city in the U.S. on a Friday or Saturday night and you will find her. She’ll either be alone or with her girlfriends, but almost never, EVER with a mate…
The how and why of relationship status among African-Americans is a touchy subject… The black marriage gap has become such an open secret that it is now a source of endless bad jokes and fodder for prime-time reality shows such as “Basketball Wives” and “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”