Which of course is nowhere near enough…but these are this week’s slightly random 15, in no particular order

Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen books you’ve read that will always stick with you. First fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag 15 friends, including me because I’m interested in seeing what books my friends choose. (To do this, go to your Notes tab on your profile page, paste rules in a new note, cast your 15 picks, and tag people in the note – upper right hand side).

1 Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
2 The Autobiography of Malcolm X – As Told to Alex Hailey
3 The House of Spirits – Isabel Allende
4 Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
5 The Lord of The Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
6 The Autobiography of Angela Davis
7 Roots – Alex Hailey
8 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
9 Othello – William Shakespeare
10 Parable of the Talents – Octavia E. Butler
11 The Dark Tower (1 – 7) – Stephen King
12 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman Knight
13 American Gods – Neil Gaiman
14 Brown Girl In The Ring – Nalo Hopkinson
15 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou

• Currently playing in iTunes: Giant Steps by John Coltrane

How wonderful it is to be completely swept up and taken along with such a powerful story.

I could not put it down, and inhaled it in two or three days, staying up until 2 am two nights in a row. I would find myself laughing out loud, in the bus, sitting in the bathroom at 2 am.

Henry and Clare are extraordinary characters. Niffenegger skilled telling of a truly implausible love story is awesome, and I for one eagerly await what else emerges from her impressive imagination.

Find this book. Read it. At least twice.

Technorati Tags: book, novel, writers, bestsellers, excellent, recommendations, #TECHNORATITAG#

I am very saddened by this… she was one of my favourite sci-fi writers next to Nalo….

Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer a gifted pioneer in white, male domain

By JOHN MARSHALLP-I BOOK CRITIC

Her father was a shoeshine man who died when she was a child, her mother was a maid who brought her along on jobs, yet Octavia Butler rose from these humble beginnings to become one of the country’s leading writers – a female African American pioneer in the white, male domain of science fiction.

Butler, 58, died after falling and striking her head Friday on a walkway outside her home in Lake Forest Park. The reclusive writer, who moved to Seattle in 1999 from her native Southern California, was a giant in stature (she was 6 feet tall by age 15) and in accomplishment.

She remains the only science fiction writer to receive one of the vaunted “genius grants” from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, a hard-earned $295,000 windfall in 1995 that followed years of poverty and personal struggles with shyness and self-doubt.

“People may call these ‘genius grants,’ ” Butler said in a 2004 interview with the Seattle P-I, “but nobody made me take an IQ test before I got mine. I knew I’m no genius.”

Read more: Octavia Butler, 1947-2006: Sci-fi writer a gifted pioneer in white, male domain

I just had a jolt…

I just realised that I’ve read 93 books this year, and back to back some more than once (hence counting towards my read count). I have not paused once this year to NOT READ. (I’m working on 93 & 94!)

I have written about my slightly obsessive reading habits, but last year I read 86 or so books, and I thought I had read more in 2005 than I had since the days of engulfing all books at and by sheer will in childhood. So it just wowed me this morning as I was perusing my year review over at 43people.

I also have about a dozen or so books in my pile of acquisitions from this year still to read. Shucks, it’ll take me a while just to get through what I acquired from my sojourn in Hackney.

Wonder what it will be like next year…..

Maybe one of my 43 things for 2006 will be to read 100 books.

See my list at allconsuming.

Chic Like You (feat. Allie Baba) — Raphael Saadiqlike WOW!
So time magazine released it’s top 100 books written between 1923 to the present. Many of the books on the list I knew not at all, some I had heard of and these are what I’ve read. Check out books for more on my adventures in literature.

The Complete List
In Alphabetical Order

Animal Farm (read more than once)
George Orwell
Read the Original Review

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret (read more than once)
Judy Blume

Beloved (read more than once)
Toni Morrison
Read the Original Review

The Grapes of Wrath (read)
John Steinbeck
Read the Original Review

The Great Gatsby (read)
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Read the Original Review

A House for Mr. Biswas (read)
V.S. Naipaul
Read the Original Review

Invisible Man (read)
Ralph Ellison
Read the Original Review

Lord of the Flies (read more than once)
William Golding

The Lord of the Rings (read more than once)
J.R.R. Tolkein
Read the Original Review

Naked Lunch (read)
William Burroughs
Read the Original Review

Native Son (read)
Richard Wright
Read the Original Review

1984 (read more than once)
George Orwell
Read the Original Review

Their Eyes Were Watching God (read more than once)
Zora Neale Hurston
Read the Original Review

Things Fall Apart (read more than once)
Chinua Achebe

To Kill a Mockingbird (read)
Harper Lee
Read the Original Review

Tropic of Cancer (read)
Henry Miller
Read the Original Review

White Teeth (read more than once)
Zadie Smith
Read the Original Review

Wide Sargasso Sea (read more than once)
Jean Rhys

The flat hunt continues… but as yet there is nothing to report.

Hoping to find somewhere and move in by this weekend, so some prayers and good vibes sent my way on this would be great.

I have very little to report today, as there is so little actually happening. Beyond the flat hunting, there is no animal sex to describe, no financial windfall to crow about… nada. My life is a little dull right now.

I have though, been indulging in some movie watching and avid book consumption. I read both of Colin Channer’s novels, “Waiting In Vain” and “Satisfy My SOul” in four days, (‘Satisfy’ in 24hrs.) Both were good reads, and I was moved by the characters, in that to read a uniquely West Indian story and characters being presented in an unvarnished way was wonderful. Channer is a dread literary writer, and his sentence construction is lush and redolent with the smell that is unique to the Caribbean, both the scents conjured and those remembered.

I must admit, I’ve been an admirer of Mr. Channer through his work with the Calabash Literary Festival, which I pushed heavily in the pages of the last project I worked on, and have the PDF pages to prove it. I had read he had written some published work, but in the Caribbean, it is often difficult to get one’s hands on books because of the way distribution is set up.

I had actually never seen any of his books to buy. It is only when I came to England, and in particular London, that I started to see more Caribbean writers and more interesting books to delve into.

I’ve become obsessed with reading everything by Isabelle Allende, and have gone through at least five or six books by her in the last two or three months.

But I digress. Mr. Channer impressed. See he’s done a collection of intertwined stories, “Passing Through” that I plan to hunt down sometime this weekend.

He writes the kind of stories I identify with, and truth be told, the kind of stories I’d like to write. Quite often I found myself thinking, he’s written what I wanted to read… what I wanted to write.

Find these two books and read them!

Publisher: WideThinker Books

WideThinker Books is publishing a collection of stories on women’s sexuality. Sitting in various waiting rooms, whether waiting for a checkup, a life changing test result, or a “procedure”, each of us has a story to tell, yet we don’t tell it, as we were told as children “not to put our business in the street”, and “young ladies don’t kiss and tell”. While privacy is a good thing, silence can breed shame, and a feeling of being the “only one” going through the challenges that coping with our sexuality can bring to our lives. Sharing our stories empowers us, and empowers other women who may be struggling with the very things you are brave enough to write about. If you are a woman over the age of 18, we want to hear your story.

This anthology will not contain detailed sexual encounters, but rather, each story will be an open discussion of how you have experienced sexuality in your life.

From: Erotica Readers Association

The Seven-Year Itch

http://www.scarletletters.com

On Valentine’s Day 2005, Scarlet Letters will be celebrating her seventh anniversary and to commemorate this event, we are paying homage to the Seven Year Itch.

No, not that Seven Year Itch.

This year’s V-Day is all about VD. Send us your fiction, nonfiction, random thoughts or artwork all about the itch we all love to hate – venereal disease.

For Scarlet Letters general submission guidelines, visit

http://www.scarletletters.com/current/submit.html.

Please note that we are also looking for submissions for future issues. There is no payment for stories (we don’t even pay ourselves) but we can offer advertising space and membership to the Scarlet Letters archives.

Submit fiction & nonfiction R. Gay at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Submit artwork to Heather Corrinna at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Deadline for the Seven Year Itch Issue: February 6, 2005