The Reading Diva

Can we please make this into a movie? Please Hollywood? Relax in Paradise Ellen Conford  and Martyn Goff . Congratulations to Akhil Sharma for winning the Folio Prize ! Congratulations also go out to Kwame Alexander for winning the Hopkins Poetry Award !  Did you catch him on PBS Newshour yesterday? The nominees for the Man Booker Prize were announced this week. The hills are alive...with a new Julie Andrews memoir ! A posthumous Nelson Mandela memoir will be released. Also releasing a memoir is Elvis Costello . Ethan Hawke is will be releasing his first book in over ten years . A new Dr. Seuss museum will be opening in Massachusetts. A grant is helping to digitalized works of African-American poetry . Here is an article about poet and Columbia native Terrace Hayes. If you have not read The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace, you need to.   Let this article convince you even more. New Toni Morrison essay ! Hear this interview  w...

Dear Oprah, How are you? Hope everything is well.  How are Stedman and the dogs? And the rest of your family?  And I see Gail on TV, and it looks like she is doing well. I am here to write to you about your latest book club selection, Ruby .  I have read several of your selections, even when you still have your daily talk show, and found many of them to be good books.  And I will be forever grateful that you featured Edwidge Danticat and the awesomeness that is Pearl Cleage. So when you named Ruby as your latest book club selection, I was surprised that you picked it.  When Ruby was released last spring, I started reading it.  And I admit that I wasn't impressed and got confused at the part when the main characters visited the voodoo woman.  About 60 pages in, I decided to put it back on my TBR list.  Which it remained until you named it as your book club selection.  So last month, I decided to give the book another chance. I ...

I found out earlier this week that Toni Morrison was coming to DC the end of April.  The more I thought about it, the more I felt that I could pull the trip off.  I could take off from my full-time job and my part-time job would be closing early that week (finals would be over by then).  I had looked at flights and hotel rooms.  I have even started to ask friends to come along.  All to find out yesterday that the event sold out .  The other two dates of her tour are in Philly and in NYC (which is sold out, but has a waiting list).  My friend Valinda is going to check to see if we can still get in to the DC event since she knows the owner of the bookstore who is hosting. Pray for a miracle. Saturday, I got a chance to meet motivational speaker Valerie Burton at this year's Charleston Black Expo.  Her speech was great and she was very nice. Congratulations to all of the Pen Literary Award nominees! I know this is comparing apples to...

As some of you know, my job allows me to travel all over the great state of South Carolina, exhibiting for the website I work on.  And this week, I found myself exhibiting at the South Carolina Association of School Librarians  Annual Conference.  And they had authors...and book signings! So I got a chance to meet Sharon Flake at the conference yesterday. It was great to have something different to do during the humdrum that is exhibiting. Relax in Paradise Terry Pratchett. Congratulations to all of the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Awards ! Also congrats to the nominees of the Baileys Women's Prize , Pen Faulkner Awards  and Triangle Awards ! Speaking of school libraries, James Patterson is donating over $1 million to them! And this comes at a good time after a report that not all school libraries are equal . A no-no at the library: making a sex tape . People were so concerned about Harper Lee that the state of Alabama was looking in ...

More books came in the mail, so it's time for another edition of Mailbox Monday! I won Power Forward  from Goodreads through Simon and Schuster .  Reggie Love talks about his experiences about being the President's right hand man. Harper Books sent me Diamond Head .  I requested some other ARCs, but they ran out! So they sent me this book in their place. Do you see anything you are interested in? Hit me up in the comments section!  Thanks to the publishers for the books!

My Friday Reads is the hit The Girl on the Train. I finally got it from the library this week after waiting over a month for to get it.  The library has to keep ordering copies because it's so popular and people keep putting it on hold. The hold list was in the 200s when I put it on hold and now there are over 500 holds.  I hope to start it today or tomorrow.  I hope it's worth the wait. Relax in Paradise  Mal Peet . Congratulations to all of the LA Times Book Prize nominees  and the Lambda Literary Award nominees ! The image for Maya Angelou stamp has been revealed . Hey Ya'll! Paula Deen is on the comeback trail with a new book deal . In today's "Crazy Politician Gets A Book Deal" post, Sen. Ted Cruz is releasing a book in June . Semi-retired NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw is releasing a book about his recent bought with cancer . Fresh off of the end of Parks and Recreation, fellow South Carolinian Aziz Ansari is releasing a book about moder...