Books Without Limits

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson in Missouri, 1928. She lived a tough life, which she later chronicled in her memoirs such as “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and “All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes”. When her parents got a divorce, she was sent to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas because her mother could not care for her.

Stamps, Arkansas was an important part of her life and featured prominently in her books, memoirs and poetry. Her grandmother and close childhood friend name to Mrs. Flowers helped her get through be shuffled from place to place by her mother, and being sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend. The pain she suffered in her youth is part of what gives her poetry and other writings such poignancy.

Maya Angelou is a shining example of someone who has overcome adversity. She also has been instrumental in the modern civil rights movement. Her writing brings hope to people who live in poverty, who have suffered abuse and who have any kind of daily struggle to overcome. Her writing especially speaks to women and African-Americans and the issues and struggles that they face.

She has been given several awards and accolades over the years, not the least of which was being asked to read a poem at a presidential inauguration – that of President Bill Clinton. She is only the second poet in history to read for President. The only other poet to receive that honor was Robert frost during President Kennedy’s inauguration. She was nominated for Pulitzer Prize in 1971 for her poetry in the volume “Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Die”.

Maya Angelou is completely self educated, and in spite of having no college degree has received honorary degrees and teaching positions from several colleges. In fact she has a lifetime chair at Wake Forest University. She has also taught at the University of Ghana and the University of Kansas. She speaks several languages including French, Spanish, Arabic, Italian and Ghanian Fante.
She has recorded spoken word and music albums; has danced, sung and acted on stages around the world and in films; and has written poetry, novels and memoirs. She’s even been nominated for a Tony Award. Her son, Guy Johnson, is a poet as well – following in his mother’s footsteps.

Bibliography:

I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, 1970.
GATHER TOGETHER IN MY NAME, 1974.
SINGIN’ AND SWINGIN’ AND GETTIN’ MERRY LIKE CHRISTMAS, 1976.
THE HEART OF A WOMAN, 1981.
ALL GOD’S CHILDREN NEED TRAVELING SHOES, 1986.
A SONG FLUNG UP TO HEAVEN, 2002.
THE COMPLETE COLLECTED AUTOBIOGRAPHIES OF MAYA ANGELOU, 2004
WOULDN’T TAKE NOTHING FOR MY JOURNEY NOW, 1993.
EVEN THE STARS LOOK LONESOME, 1997.
HALLELUJAH! THE WELCOME TABLE: A LIFETIME OF MEMORIES WITH RECIPES, 2004.
LIFE DOESN’T FRIGHTEN ME, 1993.
MAYA’S WORLD: Izak of Lapland, 2004
MAYA’S WORLD: Angelia of Italy, 2004
MAYA’S WORLD: Renée Marie of France, 2004
MAYA’S WORLD: Mikale of Hawaii, 2004
JUST GIVE ME A COOL DRINK OF WATER ‘FORE I DIIIE, 1971
OH PRAY MY WINGS ARE GONNA FIT ME WELL, 1975.
AND STILL I RISE, 1978.
SHAKER, WHY DON’T YOU SING, 1983.
NOW SHEBA SINGS THE SONG, 1987.
I SHALL NOT BE MOVED, 1990.
“ON THE PULSE OF MORNING,” 1993.
THE COMPLETE COLLECTED POEMS OF MAYA ANGELOU, 1994.
PHENOMENAL WOMAN: FOUR POEMS FOR WOMEN, 1995.
“A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH,” 1995.
“FROM A BLACK WOMAN TO A BLACK MAN,” 1995.
“MOTHER, A CRADLE TO HOLD ME,” 2006.
“CELEBRATIONS, RITUALS OF PEACE & PRAYER,” 2006.
CABARET FOR FREEDOM, 1960
THE LEAST OF THESE, 1966.
GETTIN’ UP STAYED ON MY MIND, 1967.
AJAX, 1974.
AND STILL I RISE, 1976.
MOON ON A RAINBOW SHAWL, 1988.
GEORGIA, GEORGIA, 1972.
ALL DAY LONG, 1974.

Find out more about Maya Angelou:

Her official website

Maya Angelou Wiki

Teacher resource file

Get your own copy

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

In a nod to changing technology, Harper Collins will offer content for the iPhone. Nice!

HarperCollins announced Wednesday that it had set up a special link, http://mobile.harpercollins.com, that will allow browsers to view excerpts from more than a dozen new releases, including Michael C. White’s “Soul Catcher” and Michael Korda’s “Ike,” a biography of President Eisenhower.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Madeleine L’Engle passed away on Thursday at age 88 of natural causes. Cyndy wrote a fitting tribute on Shakespere I Ain’t, and the NY Times has the obituary write up.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Are you a Harry Potter fan missing your Potter fix and wanting more Rowling scribbles? You could get your wish. JustJared celeb blog reports sightings in Scotland of Rowling working on a new series: a detective series. Speculation is rampant about the series, but so far all that seems certain is that it will most likely be set in Scotland. If it is half as good as Harry Potter, I don’t mind being clueless until the first book comes out.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

We went to Stephen King for his thoughts on the final Harry Potter book before. Now that he’s read it, have his thoughts changed? You can see for your self in his fantastic write up of the book for Entertainment Weekly.

But reading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it’s probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious ”literary novels” each year. While the bigheads have been predicting (and bemoaning) the postliterate society, the kids have been supplementing their Potter with the narratives of Lemony Snicket, the adventures of teenage mastermind Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman’s challenging His Dark Materials trilogy, the Alex Rider adventures, Peter Abrahams’ superb Ingrid Levin-Hill mysteries, the stories of those amazing traveling blue jeans. And of course we must not forget the unsinkable (if sometimes smelly) Captain Underpants. Also, how about a tip of the old tiara to R.L. Stine, Jo Rowling’s jovial John the Baptist?

I began by quoting Shakespeare; I’ll close with the Who: The kids are alright. Just how long they stay that way sort of depends on writers like J.K. Rowling, who know how to tell a good story (important) and do it without talking down (more important) or resorting to a lot of high-flown gibberish (vital). Because if the field is left to a bunch of intellectual Muggles who believe the traditional novel is dead, they’ll kill the damn thing.

It’s good make-believe I’m talking about. Known in more formal circles as the Ministry of Magic. J.K. Rowling has set the standard: It’s a high one, and God bless her for it.

I love what he had to say over all. He had some of the same criticisms of the book I did, with the extended camping scene being an issue, and the occasional odd sense of time. He left the ending alone, which disappointed me, because I’d love to know what he thought. However, he mentioned in his other write up before the book came out that he knows you can’t please everyone with an ending to a series, using his own Dark Tower series as an example. He gives Rowling high marks for reaching both children and adults, and I agree. Above all else, Harry Potter brought the magic of reading back for me.

Tags: Harry Potter, JK Rowling, Stephen King

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

For Harry Potter fans, this book was the much anticipated end. For me, the book as a whole was enjoyable, but the ending was a great disappointment. Rowling has been many things over the course of her infamous young adult series, but until this moment, trite was never one of them. Unfortunately, she chose to give an ending designed to make those fans that need rainbows and sunshine blown up their asses happy, instead of the right ending for the book. I appreciate that the right ending would have been the hard ending, and the most difficult choice(s), but it was needed. A friend and colleague mentions Rowling’s desperate need for an editor in her review of the book, and I think she is spot on – a good editor would have challenged this ending for the pablum that it was.

Now that you have my synopsis, this is fair warning of spoilers ahead for those who haven’t read the book. If you don’t like to know how things turn out before you read them yourself, or if you are still way back on one of the earlier books, stop reading.

As with any series, there have been other times when a choice made by Rowling sent the storyline in a direction I was not happy following, because it didn’t seem to fit. The other diversions (Using Cho and then Ginny as a love interest is one example that comes to mind) never took the story too far off course, however; and I always thought of them as Rowling’s way of giving a nod to that portion of her fans that thought Harry needed that kind of story arc to “make him more believable”. I much prefer a story that makes the harder choice, on the whole, but I am fully aware that not everyone is like that.

This book followed the path Rowling took with books five and six. That is to say it ran long overall, and had a few glaringly weak plot points that made the story stumble in places. In spite of these brief hitches in flow, I was going along swimmingly, as usual unable to put the book down. One thing Rowling has mastered is the art of making us want to know how each book ends, in spite of anything else. If you are a Harry Potter fan, you know what I mean. It is much more rare for a Harry Potter reader to draw out the reading over several days than it is to finish the book in as close to one sitting as possible. For the most part, Rowling’s words are like potato chips – you can’t have just one, you want them all. Have I tortured the metaphor enough yet in trying to make my point?

One of my favorite parts of the book happened within the first few pages of chapter three: the Dursleys were finally out of the picture. To say they outlived their usefulness to the plot several books ago would be too kind. I let out an actual whoop once it sunk in I wouldn’t have to read about them any more once I flipped to the next chapter. The first clue that I wouldn’t like the ending also happened in that chapter, when the hideous Dudley was given a pat chance to “redeem’ himself with a stumbled, red-faced pseudo “apology”. Little alarms began to ring in my head. Surely Rowling would have the courage it took to give the story a fitting end?

When we began to see what was happening with all of the major characters, I was distracted from my trepidation about the way the story would end. By the time we were at Fleur and Bill’s wedding I had quite forgotten it might be an issue. By the time Ron chickened out of the mission like a little brat, hurting Hermoine and possibly damaging his friendship with Harry, I had even forgotten this was to be the last book – I was quite immersed in the story unfolding. In fact, I was so engrossed I almost didn’t notice the odd constructs of time that went on while Harry and Hermoine were supposed to be spending weeks or months in hiding. I still couldn’t quite pinpoint what was wrong with the overall story arc’s timing there, to be honest. It just had an underlying weirdness of time to it that didn’t match the events in the story quite right. Luckily, by that time the fact that I was hooked kept me from dwelling on it too much.

Once Harry, Hermoine and Ron were captured and taken to Bellatrix and the Malfoys, I kept my fingers crossed that Draco, at least, would not be “mysteriously contrite”. Thankfully, he was the same sniveling coward he’s always been in the stories right up until the very end. I was worried, after the Dudley incident, that Rowling was going to try and redeem all of the “bad” major players, which would have been a crushing blow to the stories. Happily that was not to be the case.

One of her character decisions that made me sad was the short shrift she gave to certain characters, like McGonagall and Hagrid. Sure, they were in the story, but not as much as I felt they should be considering the major role they had played until now. Not only that, McGonagall, especially was written in a very different way this time – as if she was more coward than not. Since I’d never seen her as one to run and hide, or even to squeal at spiders, for example, the way she was portrayed truly surprised me.

Some people have complained that Rowling lied about how many people died in this book. Not really. It depends on our definition of death in relation to Harry Potter’s world. I believe she split hairs, especially on Harry. He technically “died”, she just didn’t leave him dead for whatever reason. If you take into account the hair splitting and the sudden compulsion for a happy ending that defied both logic and story line, then she killed off exactly how many characters she promised.

That brings me to the ending. What the heck was that all about? The strong way to end the story would have been having Harry die, then having Ron, Hermoine and Neville realize what was happening and complete the task after his death opened the door for them to do so. The end. None of the useless tripe about getting married, having kids and all that crap. Ron and Hermoine you already assumed would have a happily ever after, complete with traditional Weasley brood. We didn’t need that part spelled out. Harry should have never had a love interest in the first place – he was never that kind of hero. The clean ending would have lopped off the last chapter altogether and include a true hero’s death for Harry and hero’s actions for his cohorts, not the sniveling, puling, blowing-sunshine-and-rainbows-up-my-ass “Dallas” style “dream sequence” “not death”. Shame on you Rowling, for being chicken when it mattered most.

•••

If you are late to the game and want to see what all the fuss has been about, get your books here.

Tags: harry potter, jk rowling

Technorati Tags: harry potter, jk rowling

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Books and a scalpel – the thought makes my heart pound with agony, but that doesn’t make these artist any less talented or these photos any less beautiful. Take a look.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

The full article is here. Featured: GoodReads, LibraryThing, and more. They forgot BookCrossing, though.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Excellent memoir, click here.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Stephen King talks about Harry Potter’s final chapters at Entertainment Weekly today.

Did you think I meant the final Harry Potter tale? Don’t be a sillykins — not even your Uncle Stevie gets that one in advance (although I’m sure you agree that he should, he should).

Bookmark It

Hide Sites