What’s in a seal? Prestige, praise, protection, a blessing. Seals have existed for many centuries. They date back to some of the world’s first civilizations. Today we use them mostly to award prizes. If you’re a book lover of literary prizes, then you’re used to seeing seals on winning books and runners-up. Seals are now also showing up on new releases and back list books for book clubs. Oprah’s Book Club, Reese’s Book Club, Emma Watson’s Book Club, even Jimmy Fallon, and the list goes on.
I hope this trend isn’t going to continue but it seems as though people are really catching the reading bug because of them . That’s fantastic! However the thing that annoys me about some of these celebrity book clubs is that when the book is published there has to be a giant seal printed on the front cover for the book club. This drives me mad! Why is it that publishing companies have to put Oprah’s seal on every book she chooses for her book club?
When the public decides to buy a book that happens to have the Oprah book
club seal, it looks like we’re all joining her book club when we aren’t. It’s great for the author who gets loads of publicity because his/her book was chosen to be discussed for the club. Sadly for collectors, like myself, the Oprah and Reese cover seals don’t cut it.
November 13th, 2018 Becoming by Michelle Obama was released. I was ecstatic but when I heard that Becoming was chosen for Oprah’s book club, I hoped that there would be some pre-orders that were published without the seal. First edition hardcover books with a book club seal on the front is just disheartening.
The 13th I looked at all of the pictures on Instagram that rolled through my feed of Becoming. Everybody was so proud and overjoyed by the release of this book. But there was a common feeling lurking under many of these posts. “I would have preferred that the cover didn’t contain a Oprah Book Club seal.” Now this is a very common thought contrary to what most people would think. It’s time that publishing companies start listening more to their customers, the avid readers and book collectors on this one. We are all prepared to buy books but we’d prefer you omit publishing them with book club seals.
I know publishers probably think that the seal of approval encourages the public to buy more books. Avid readers who buy a lot of books don’t need a seal of approval on a book to be convinced to buy it. Most of us do our research and we know what we want to buy and read. There are people who just refuse to buy any books with book club and literary prize seals on them. In my opinion, these so-called seals of approval make the value of the first edition decrease.
Now after pre-ordering my copy of Becoming from Amazon, it arrived sadly with the dreaded Oprah seal. So I had to hunt for a copy with no seal. I realized that the British copies do not have any seals on them. On the hunt for a British copy, I found and ordered a copy of Becoming from The Book Depository. My copy came from the UK and it doesn’t contain the Oprah seal of approval. Thank goodness was my sigh of relief once the box was finally opened. Becoming looking perfectly beautiful.
So what can we do to try to get books to not contain seals of approval from celebrity book clubs? I think we should all take to our computers and write letters to publishing companies, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc and urge them to stop printing book club seals on book covers or at least print only half of them with seals. At least this way there would be a possibility for book lovers to be able to buy a book without a seal. This could be done since now we know that they produced all of the UK copies without seals. What’s stopping publishing houses from publishing only half the books with seals? Comment below and let me know what you think about this.
Renaissance #1. This will be the first in a series of graphic novels featuring Zane Pinchback and continues to take place in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, giving the name to the series.
specifically father-son and father-daughter relationships, expectations of first generation African children, religion, moeurs, and most of all home. All of these subjects are catalysts for developing each of the main characters.
The Unkind Hours is the latest exciting thriller from Dwayne Alexander Smith, the author of terribly underrated 
Michael Eric Dyson is back with his newly released book today, What Truth Sounds Like. What Truth Sounds Like is Dyson’s continued discussion of race in America, carried over from his book last year called 
to shine a spotlight on some books that frankly, I can’t begin to understand why more people aren’t raving about them, particularly authors that are being read lately because of their new releases while their backlist novels remain untouched.
literary fiction. Having only read excerpts of 
about the characters. Gyasi is brilliant with writing male characters because they seemed to be more memorable than some of the female characters. I’d say this book felt like reading a linked short story collection more than a real novel. The characters have to share the pages since the voice changes every twenty or so pages. I still found myself having to look back at the family tree to remember the names. This being said it is well worth the read and sparked some passionate conversation at my book club. We could all agree that we could see how she was trying to make the family history go round 360° to give it depth and more historical meaning.
unapologetically real, from the words chosen to how they are printed on the page. She’s telling us about race, gender, beauty, death and more. It may not be the best collection for debuting poetry readers, being that it’s slightly experimental in its wording and structure, but for those who love poetry that touches you deeply and makes you think, Ordinary Beast is ideal.
as 
shortlist before the winner is announced. I even read this one in French. Now I’m curious to read a bit of the English version to see how the translator made out with all the French slang. As for the story it wasn’t really for me. The first 150 pages had me engaged with its critical, pessimistic view on society, the economy, and everything else having to do with adulting and living in the world. Vernon Subutex is ignoble, lazy, and misogynous. He used to own a record store called Revolver that went out of business. So in the beginning of the book he is being evicted from his apartment. He has to accept some generosity from past friends and eventually winds up having to live on the streets of Paris. Since he was a good friend with a famous rock star called Alex Bleach and possesses a last recording from him, everyone is trying to get their hands on it. Sounds intriguing right? However, past page 200 I checked out mentally and became bored with the all of the off the wall characters and the incessant rants (Virginie Descents’ rants). Vernon Subtext could win the prize though. It has all the right characteristics – being different from what’s expected, it critiques society heavily, and its divisiveness. There are 3 other books in the Vernon Subutex series and that idea alone tires me out just thinking about it.
have fond memories of reading his earlier works. I didn’t love this one. I feel like he’s abandoned the good story writing he used to do in exchange for trying to impress millennials to read his books these days. Bad Men and Wicked Women contains a ton of bad Men and only one true “wicked” woman. So the title needs to be reviewed.
#MarchMystery Madness has been in full swing since March 1st and I decided to participate for the first time. I’m also doing #ReadingBlackout this month for the second time. January was a #ReadingBlackout month and February was of course #ReadSoulLit, specifically in honor of African-American writers.
“passing” (=the ability for a fair-skinned black person to move in society as a white person because of his/her light skin color) through the storyline involving a journalist from the New Holland Herald newspaper. Zane Pinchback, alias icognegro, travels south as a “white” man from New York to report on lynchings. However, his last incognegro story almost goes wrong and he barely escapes when he is recognized as being black. He makes it back to New York to the unfortunate news that his brother has been arrested in Mississippi for brutally murdering a white woman. And the story unfolds……
some time in jail and that’s when Blanche’s bladder starts to nag her. You’ll just have to read the book for the rest of the details. Anyway, this novel will appear to be slow-moving but Neely is giving you the clues and information with her detailed storytelling, which may appear to be off the subject. It’s not. The reader follows the story through Blanche’s eyes and through her thoughts. She is hysterical but mostly she’s very intelligent and intuitive to people’s behavior. Neely uses the story to astutely talk about racism, sexism, and classicism. It’s brilliant! I can’t wait to pick up book 2 Blanche Among the Talented Tenth. You can already see from its title that it will be as vivid if not more than Blanche on the Lam. You can check out the video below where Barbara Neely talks about using her writing as a way to talk about her activism. There’s one thing I’d like to know and that’s where is Barbara Neely these days. Why hasn’t Neely hasn’t Neely written anything else since the Blanche White series? Her writing is a breath of fresh air in this genre. The Blanche White series is a must read.