Welcome to Litsy!

This was my first Baldwin but it won‘t be my last. I‘m sorry it took me so long to discover!

October 9 & 10. Day 9 & 10. “Folks can change their ways as much as they want to. But I don‘t care how many times you change your ways, what‘s in you is in you, and it‘s got to come out.” -James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain Mr. Baldwin, I love you for simply being you! Bookmarks courtesy of my secret teacher pal #gotellitonthemountain #jamesbaldwin

#TemptingTitles #WithaSong

Every time I think of this book I hear my Grandma‘s voice singing …🎶over the hills and everywhere🎶

#withsong #temptingtitles @Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks @Eggs

#TemptingTitles
Day 11. With A Song
#WithASong

James Baldwin—voice of the 1960s💙

#WithASong #TemptingTitles

@Alwaysbeenaloverofbooks

This is well written- much like Giovanni‘s Room, the plot is spare and told slowly over time. The evangelist Christians do not come away well - John and Elisha have the benefit of you the on their side. But Gabriel‘s sins are many, and made worse by his righteous attitude towards his deeds. I‘m glad for his sister, setting him straight, and giving the story hope for Elizabeth and John.

my first time with Baldwin‘s fiction and I really really enjoyed this. It‘s plot-heavy but reaches down inside you with the questions it asks. The writing is beautiful but natural the dialogue is so authentic, you‘ll occasionally get goosebumps.

It‘s got a little of the southern gothic feel you get from Faulkner but spares his dry wordiness. And the plotted nature of it makes it a quick read, takes just a few days.

An honest semi-autobiographical novel about the journey of John Grimes, a teenager in the throes of a crisis of faith, navigating 1930s Harlem and the temptation of the vast expanse of metropolitan New York, a city he's been taught to despise and fear because of the sin it apparently crawls with. Will temptation outweigh the prospect of eternal damnation? James Baldwin's first novel is enrapturing and a triumph of the written word.
Extraordinary!

Powerfully written and intensely felt. Brilliant novel. But also dense, dark and depressing.

I read Giovanni‘s Room last year. The 2 books are both semi-autobiographies and share intense storytelling and brilliantly depicted characters. But Giovanni‘s Room is a much easier read. I hated to come to the end of Giovanni's Room. But this book left me drained. Glad I read it and also glad it's over.

Full review: https://tinyurl.com/yjcavsv4

Interesting.

#BookReport. This has been a weird reading week as I‘ve had the attention span of a gnat. With super long parts/chapters I struggled to get through Go Tell It. I appreciate Baldwin‘s writing and will continue to explore his work. I have DNF‘d a total of 4 books this month which is unusual for me. Hope this weirdness passes soon.

On its surface a family‘s struggles and their night going to pray, but underneath all that is a deep pool of human emotions, grief, hatred, pride. They all have their sins, guilts, shortcomings, & yet they all punish each other for both their own and the ones they perceive in others. Such a great reminder of not only are none of us free from sin, so don‘t cast stones, but also everyone is fighting their own battle that we cannot see, so be kind.

I normally like books that jump in time but I require some indication that we are now reading about a different person in a different time period. Then there are the characters with similar names. I spent much of the time lost and confused until part 3, which totally escaped my comprehension. What the heck happened to John? And despite keeping my brain buzzing in confusion I was also bored. Sadly, I wasn‘t the right audience for this style.

James Baldwin‘s semi autobiographical story of a young man‘s religious awakening in 1935 Harlem is powerful. John Grimes never met his birth father, and has been raised by a Pentecostal Church Pastor. Gabriel Grimes is controlling and physically abusive to his family. Themes include father-son relationships, racism, feminism and the role of the church. Strong characters. My heart was heavy for John and his mother. Superb writing. @Soubhiville

This scene feels like it could have been written yesterday, especially my having recently read this article and learning for the first time about sundown towns: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/adeonibada/sundown-tow...

Yet this book was written in 1953. I fear little has changed.

#authoramonth @Soubhiville

“Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.”
#firstlinefridays #ShyBookOwl

Starting #authoramonth.
@Soubhiville

While I enjoyed the look at religion and God, I found that I didn‘t particularly like any of the characters. While I know that the hypocrisy of the characters being “God-fearing people” is a part of the story, they were so hypocritical that I found it detracted from my overall enjoyment of the book. #AuthorAMonth #BookspinBingo

Baldwin tells the story of the stepson of the minister of a storefront Pentecostal church in Harlem one Saturday in March of 1935. Sad but extremely autobiographical - he said he had to write this before he wrote anything else.
#authoramonth2021 @Soubhiville
#bookspinbingo @TheAromaofBooks

My interpretation: I acknowledge that the dratted Elmer Gantry may influence my thoughts.

I think Baldwin is portraying why some people need religion - a faith that is bigger than themselves, bigger than the cruel father, bigger than their circumstances, bigger than their hatred, their anger - something that gives the oppressed, the weary, the beaten a little bit of hope. You choose faith or lose (drugs, bitterness).

#AuthorAMonth @Soubhiville

A powerful novel with intense writing that is based closely on Baldwin‘s own adolescent experiences. A story of 14-yr old John Grimes, how he grapples with his faith. I find the backstories of Florence, Gabriel, Elizabeth the most interesting..learning how their pasts shaped who they are. It‘s heavy with biblical symbolism & references, & the final part where John was ‘saved‘ didn‘t engage me. Great writing but a soft Pick for me.
#AuthorAMonth

I don‘t have anything new to add to the prevalent praise of this book—Baldwin‘s prose is fantastic. This story is gritty and infuriating. While it added to my appreciation for the author, it did nothing to help my poor opinion of organized religion and hypocrisy in general, but I don‘t think it was supposed to.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

#1001books and my #AuthorAMonth selection for July.

#BookSpinBingo @TheAromaofBooks #AuthorAMonth2021 @Soubhiville

My favorite Baldwin so far! 💚💚💚 This book is raw and gritty and full of dysfunctional family drama. I feel like Baldwin wrote a lot of this book from personal experiences.

A solid pick for my #AAM This book is pretty brutal as we learn about young John Grimes, living in 1930s Harlem, and his relationship with his family and his church. The novel also reveals the back stories of John's mother, his biological father, his heroic aunt and his violent, fanatically religious stepfather, Gabriel Grimes. Story felt very autobiographical which made the reading/listening extra painful 😣 Excellent narration

Saw this on Twitter today and thought my other #AuthorAMonth readers who are reading Baldwin this month might appreciate this bit of history too.

https://twitter.com/rlnave/status/1413130891568812033?s=21

#AAM #JamesBaldwin added audio narration to my previous #KindleDeal 💙powerful writing and wonderful narration but such a heavy book😔feels semi autobiographical, which is heartbreaking 💔

#AAM #JULY @Soubhiville Today #KindleDeal $1.99 #JamesBaldwin #AuthorAMonth

https://www.newsday.com/entertainment/celebrities/levar-burton-book-club-1.50244...

The tagged book is the first book along with two other choices. The article goes into that more. Has anyone used fable? I've never heard of it.

Edit: After some more research I found out you do have to pay a membership for fable incase anyone was wondering.

To be honest, there was way too much religion in it for my taste. Very intense and too heavy with religious fervor. The hypocrisy weighed heavy on me and listening to Gabriel go on and on and judge all those around him was exhausting.

At the same time, wow, I‘ve never heard anyone string such beautiful words together and create a tapestry of magic like his author can do. I‘m definitely going to be reading more James Baldwin.

I think not being Christian puts me a little bit of a disadvantage when reading this book, in some ways I understand the suffocating need to be right and moral and not to sin, but I keep asking myself why John just keeps excepting? About halfway through and I am loving James Baldwin‘s voice!

There‘s a reason it‘s a classic. God, man, family, sexuality, morality, all on display. Who is right or wrong? How do we learn to live with our sins? Or do we just placate ourselves in order to be able to live with who we are?

Read 2/2/2021

"But she understood, at least, that they did give him a kind of bitter nourishment, and that the secrets they held for him were a matter of his life and death. It frightened her because she felt that he was reaching for the moon and that he would, therefore, be dashed down against the rocks; but she did not say any of this."

Great introduction to the literary genius of Baldwin. Read the last part of the novel slowly and don't rush or you'll miss some real gems.

“Everyone had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father.”

My first Baldwin.

#firstlinefridays #classicschallenge2020 #currentread

I have read so much Baldwin but yet not this, his first major work? Let‘s make it right and read this!!

I finished Go Tell it on the Mountain today — I am using it as my first free space (21) #BookSpinBingo. Did not understand most of this novel, though I can appreciate some of Baldwin‘s poetic language. +5

Tackling another round of 🎧 short stories. I will comment with titles but I have done 3 so far +45

That makes 3 hours towards #Screamathon2020 reading +30 = 81 total
#Scarathlon2020 #TeamHarkness

My local library has finally opened back up 🖤 So I finally got a chance to pick up this novel, that I've been trying to read for forever.

Above quote from Edwidge Danticat writing in the New Yorker https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/james-baldwins-hypothetical-country

This is Baldwin‘s first novel and is thought to be semi autobiographical. Told from four POVs but beginning and ending with John on his 14th birthday - a preachers stepson, struggling with the pull towards the world versus the pull of his stepfathers church. It‘s short and intense ⬇️

New book review!
Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
http://www.athinsliceofanxiety.com/2020/08/review-go-tell-it-on-mountain.html?m=...
#athinsliceofanxiety #jamesbaldwin #gotellitonthemountain #bookreview #literaryfiction #semiautobiographicalnovel

Beautiful and crushing, this novel is filled with fraught family relationships. Gabriel, a preacher, is a cruel & selfish example to his children. We meet them as they struggle under his reign. Then we travel back to see how Gabriel's sins, his sister Florence's heartbreak & the women in his life have shaped the world in which the children are raised. Baldwin captures the pain in their world while telling their story with such passion and poetry.

Here‘s my June/second quarter spending log. I planned to go purchaseless last month, but #BlackPublishingPower was important and I wanted to participate.

To be honest, I mostly managed to keep to my get-book-read-book goal because the April Book Market was cancelled and all the thrift stores were closed, but still. I resisted many a discounted ebook and kept my purchases to stuff I knew I could read immediately. Gold star to me!

My list for July #bookspin. Hoping for the tagged book to win (or I‘ll read it anyway! 😉)
@TheAromaofBooks

For #pridemonth2020, I'm highlighting 30 openly LGBTQ+ authors. In addition to being a novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet James Baldwin was a social and political activist. #lgbtqauthors #lgbtq #lgbt #blackauthors #blackvoices #lgbtqvoices #pocvoices

It was a cauliflower steak night. This is what it looks like after I chop it up so I can eat and read at the same time.

I finished GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN shortly after supper. In some ways, it reminded me of ORANGES ARE NOT THE ONLY FRUIT, but GTIOTM is much more concerned with its religious aspect and with the flawed individuals involved. I didn‘t love it, but I do appreciate it.

#weeklyforecast time!

I‘m currently reading GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN. Once I finish, I‘ll dive into MATING THE HUNTRESS in line with my get-book-read-book lifestyle.

After that, it‘s on to my last two June Must-Reads: ATHYRA, then RACING THE DARK.

On audio, I‘ve got TRISTAN STRONG PUNCHES A HOLE IN THE SKY by Kwame Mbalia, to be followed by HERE FOR IT by R. Eric Thomas and maybe THE SEVEN HUSBANDS OF EVELYN HUGO by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

Breakfast with James Baldwin. His prose is gorgeous.

I finally made it to the bookstore this afternoon to find a serious dearth of Black-authored books on the shelves. From what they‘ve said on social media, I gather they ARE backordered on a lot of titles due to high demand. It still wasn‘t a good look.

They did have a few copies of this lovely, compact edition of GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN, though! I‘ll just have to go digital for my second #BlackPublishingPower title.

This book was pretty good...I had no idea what it was about before I started it, and I liked the way you got to know all the main characters, and how they became tied together. Last 25 pages or so were a bit blah, but not bad!

Currently reading. Powerful, challenging, compassionate.