When the pandemic began, I started recommending a book a week online. I’m now on book number sixty-five, so I’m proud of my contribution to the cause of saving people from boredom who are stuck at home. What this process has forced me to do is gear up my o...

The first four books were recommended in April, National Poetry Month, so I chose to cover poetry books, a genre I had neglected. - THE HILL WE CLIMB by Amanda Gorman We were so taken by her performance on Inauguration Day, we missed some of the message!...

41. THE TRUTHS WE HOLD by Kamala Harris With all the celebration of Kamala Harris and her "chucks & pearls," I thought her book would be a great fit. It also comes in a young adult edition. From Vice President Kamala Harris, one of America's most inspirin...

Most people have seen the movie, The Color Purple, released in 1986, but they’ve never read the book. This is the movie that sparked the careers of Oprah Winfrey and Whoopie Goldberg as actors, rather than talk show host and comedian. The casting and actin...

--- - I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS by Maya Angelou In this first of six volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with...

21. BELOVED by Toni Morrison Beloved is another of my favorites, and it earned Toni Morrison the Pulitzer Prize in 1987. It was inspired by an 1856 article about a runaway slave who killed her children rather than have them taken back by slave catchers. T...

11. Ralph Ellison’s, INVISIBLE MAN With all that's been going on in our country and Juneteenth just around the corner, I thought I'd suggest a book that reflects our history. As my first male author, I chose Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, not to be confus...

Rose’s Bookshelf During the quarantine, I wanted to take the opportunity to read more, and I know many share that goal. But how many times have we spent hours scrolling on Amazon and Facebook pages, reading reviews, or even starting a new book and realizi...

I’m an avid reader, and what I love to read most are novels about Black love. One of my favorite books is Tumbling (1996), by Diane McKinney-Whetstone. I decided to revisit the text for my book blog and I found it just as enthralling as I did when I read i...

In August 2019, the world lost one of the greatest authors of the century. In any review of great American fiction, we cannot ignore the contributions of Toni Morrison who changed the landscape of literature. I first discovered Morrison as I perused the sh...