In the morning, I’ll be on my way to the Romance Slam Jam Conference in Chicago.

I hope to have fun tidbits — and maybe even video — to put up here.

Beginning Thursday morning, you also can follow my exploits at the conference on Twitter.

In this week’s issue of The New York Times Book Review, there’s a review of John Edgar Wideman’s Fanon, which is about, uh, a writer who is writing about anti-colonialist revolutionary Frantz Fanon.

Also, John McWhorter (no matter what he does, he sets my teeth on edge, but at least this time he’s not writing about politics) reviews Jonathan Rieder’s The Word of the Lord is Upon Me, which is about Martin Luther King Jr.’s oratory.

After the jump, this week’s best sellers lists:

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The L.A. Times Book Prize winners have been announced.

Of interest: 

Dinaw Mengestu’s The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears has won the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.

Congrats to Mengestu!

*Photo from Nazret

Inspired by another blogger, I’ve been thinking, guiltily, about some posts I’ve been working on for what seems like forever, but that may or may not ever get done.

They’re still worthy of writing about — I think — but somehow I haven’t been able to pull the trigger the way I would’ve liked. But in the interest of at least getting the ideas out there, here are a few of the things I’ve been pondering:

• A post called “We have a problem,” which is about how somebody needs to find a way of regulating on these book covers. I can’t tell books by black authors apart any more just by looking at them.  Most sort of vaguely involve a man and a woman embracing, or a woman looking off in the distance. It doesn’t even matter what the subject matter is any more. There are a lot of cool things that can be done with book covers, and it’s a shame that publishers aren’t giving designers the kind of resources they need to put together some good stuff for books by black authors. 
• A post called “Could piracy be a good thing for authors?” Wait! Don’t throw stones at me for even bringing up the thought. This post, languishing for only a couple of weeks, is inspired by an article I read. I really have been trying to unravel how these ideas can work — or not — for black authors. 
• “How to get rid of street lit.” This post involves both my fantasy of alien death rays disintegrating some of the horrific books I’ve seen lately and some more realistic ideas about challenging publishers and authors to do better, figuring out what the real sales numbers are on these books, etc. 

In this week’s New York Times Book Review, Paul Devlin considers Colin Grant’s Negro With a Hat, a biography of Marcus Garvey.

The title is a reference to W.E.B. DuBois’s dismissive description of Garvey.

An excerpt from the review:

Grant’s book is not all politics, ideology, money and lawsuits. (Garvey was often embroiled in litigation.) It is also an engrossing social history that goes to such pains to set up contexts that Garvey is occasionally obscured. Grant also devotes a lot of space to Garvey’s marriages to formidable women — first Amy Ashwood, then her former friend Amy Jacques…Nonetheless, “Negro With a Hat” is an achievement on a scale Garvey might have appreciated.

After the jump, this week’s best sellers lists.

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You know, I am beginning to be really disgusted by so-called “street literature.”

Before, I was mildly annoyed, but after spending a little time in a bookstore last night, my feelings toward it now are approaching rage.

There’s no class here. No art. It’s just plain tacky.

(Also, could that cover look any more awful?)

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“Like all lifelong friends, they fell out of touch.”

Huh? Um, OK.

Anyway, this is the trailer for Bettye Griffin’s newest, Once Upon a Project. You know how I love a book trailer. The worse it is, the more amusement it brings me, of course.

• The graphic-novel industry is booming like never before.
• Aime Cesaire dead at 94. In his memory, I’ll pull out a copy of one of his books of poetry and again pretend to understand it.
• Is the influence of Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas still evident in black male characters today?
• Does a playwright’s race matter when the play is about black people?
• Toni Morrison will be honored at this year’s PEN Literary Gala

In this interview, Junot Diaz, he of the minty-fresh Pulitzer Prize, discusses ghetto nerds, psychic terrorism and cultural references.

So I got an e-mail from Mosaic Books. I usually scan Mosaic’s e-mails and delete them, because with rare exceptions the books they advertise don’t seem to be, well, good (Black Women Are Crazy As Hell, anyone?).

OK, that’s probably unfair. And makes me sound a tad elitist, which I’m not. Maybe I should just say the descriptions of them don’t make me want to pick them up. 

Anyway, I scanned the latest Mosaic Books e-mail, and a book called When A Man Loves A Woman, by LaConnie Taylor-Jones, caught my eye.

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