I was accustomed to liars, bold-faced or wide-eyed, silver-tongued or pleading, often with the barrel of my gun directed at them as they babbled their last prayers to an indifferent god, squirted their last tears into the indifferent earth. A man will utter any falsehood, commit any debasement, sell his own children down the river, to avoid that final sweet goodnight.
BLACK GUYS DO READ - Book Reviews Blog
This is primarily a blog of book reviews. I simply just love reading and I like to record my informal thoughts and reviews on books that I come across. I prefer books with very high stakes so I mostly read crime, noir, and horror/sci-fi, but I enjoy any great story. I'll go for anything as long as it's good!
*Explanation of the Blog Title:
A friend mentioned that there is a stereotype that most black men don't read fiction. Well, I'm here to prove otherwise!
Monday, April 29, 2024
THE BEAUTIFUL THING THAT AWAITS US ALL: STORIES by Laird Barron
STAR WARS: INTO THE DARK by Claudia Gray
Saturday, April 27, 2024
STAR WARS: LIGHT OF THE JEDI by Charles Soul
Monday, November 20, 2023
BORN TO BLEED by Ryan C. Thomas
A TOUCH OF DEATH by Charles Williams
…looking like something the censors cut out of a sailor’s dream.
You’re a business proposition to me, a hundred and twenty thousand dollars’ worth of meat to be delivered on the hoof.
There were no days now. Time had melted and run together into one endless and unmarked second of waiting for an explosion when the fuse was always burning and forever a quarter of an inch long.
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
FEAR ME by Tim Curran
Saturday, September 30, 2023
SMALL MERCIES by Dennis Lehane
"We're not built for princesses down here."
It feels like it's been a while since I've read a novel by Lehane, one of my favorites. And everything here is all that you expect from a master crime writer. The man has such a strong command of his art form at this point. Not only is this a great time capsule documenting this tense time in Boston (and American) history, but it's also a fantastic portrait of these two lead characters.
Mary Pat Fennessy is finally confronted with how stuck she and her community have been in their ways, how malignant her environment can be, and how she has to reckon with how this toxicity could have tragically spilled into her daughter. And in contrast, Detective Bobby Coyness has grown up in the same way but somehow managed to keep on the right path, even though it's an everyday struggle to keep his morality and his sobriety.
He considers the possibility that maybe the opposite of hate is not love. It's hope. Because hate takes years to build, but hope can come sliding around the corner when you're not even looking.
Although this didn't have the raw power like some of his best novels have, this is still a great book, with its focus on the struggle to not allow hatred to be passed down from generation to generation.
GRADE: B+
Monday, September 11, 2023
ALL THE SINNERS BLEED by S. A. Cosby
True madness is like an aura around someone. It glows blue like the flame from a gas fire. That madness can spread. Become like a religion for the lost.
Friday, August 25, 2023
GOTHIC by Philip Fracassi
The setup is simple, introducing Tyson Park, a washed-up horror novelist with writer's block, who is gifted a new desk that ends up being a bit more than just new furniture. Turns out that the desk is made of material from an ancient occult altar and Tyson begins to succumb to its influence. It's pretty unnerving to witness Tyson's gradual corruption, rotating between seeing it from his POV and the view of others around him. I felt dirty being in his head with his thoughts as they became more and more disturbing until I realized that the person that I was reading about is not the same person I was introduced to earlier.
There are effective horror sequences in this book as well, right up there with the best of the best. So if you're looking for engaging classic King-style horror storytelling, by an author flexing his powers, check out this great novel.
GRADE: B+
Monday, August 14, 2023
CITY OF DREAMS by Don Winslow
...because the wounded find the wounded, washed up on the same sad shore.