• This weekend’s BookExpo America will give some insight into what’s happening next with the book industry
• Horrormeister Brandon Massey’s new book will be out in August
• Borders reported losses this week, but they were less than had been expected
• You may not be reading paranormal romance, but somebody near you is
• NPR discovers mystery fiction written by black authors
• Yawn. Another book on financial health written “for” black people. Does “spend less than you earn and save the rest” really need to be race-specific?
• Black Voices raves about Carleen Brice’s Children of the Waters
• Check the nominees for the 2009 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award

Some scenes from ECBACC ’09, where Jeremy Love, he of the extra super excellent Bayou, was a big winner.

• RT @AdamSerwer Michael Steele talks about Obama very differently depending on whether his audience is black or white. http://bit.ly/q0yPO #
• RT @mattyglesias Michael Steele: Obama wasn’t vetted bc he’s black: http://bit.ly/BgGqy [Does Steele have family? They need 2 pull him back] #
• @lovebabz She signed it 4 months before she died. We’re moving some bookshelves around, and it’s got to be in one of these piles… #
• I cannot find my autographed copy of Octavia Butler’s ‘Parable of the Sower.’ I will find it even if I have to rip this house apart. #
• RT @AlgonquinBooks NYT Home front feature of Amy Stewart and Wicked Plants http://is.gd/C1vA [I <333 Amy Stewart's books] #
• 13 fixes for Terminator Salvation http://is.gd/C1q2 with [sniff] a slam on my pretty, pretty Common. #
• RT @harrislacewell Happy Bday Lorraine Hansberry. http://bit.ly/Jm9rr [and Malcolm X] #
• RT @booksquare @sarahw It’s like Amazon doesn’t WANT you to buy books. RT @chapmanchapman screenshots from new #amazonfail http://tr.im/lLV6 #
• It’s raining here, and will be all day. It’s the perfect scenario to stay in bed with a book, and yet where am I? At work. Le sigh. #
• RT @LatinaLeader @LatinoBookNews http://xr.com/ake – Latino Books Examiner: Celebrate the launch of Hit List: The Best of Latino Mystery #

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If you’re a person of color who likes to read/watch sci-fi and/or fantasy, stand up and be counted.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the Harvard grad who is both Africa’s first female president and the most awesomely behatted lady east of Aretha Franklin at any given time, has written a memoir. This week, it’s reviewed in the New York Times Book Review.

This Child Will Be Great, reviewed by the New York Times’ own Helene Cooper, whom you may know from her role as the paper’s White House correspondent and the publication of her 2008 book about her own childhood in Liberia, tells how Johnson Sirleaf straddled Liberia’s complicated class divide on her way to the presidency.

Oh, and she tells the stories of her scary interactions with the power-hungry, intelligence-deficient certifiable nutjobs Samuel Doe and Charles Taylor.

When Charles Taylor invaded Liberia in 1989, Johnson Sirleaf met in the bush with this wide-eyed guerrilla, determining for herself, she says, that he was “not at all grounded in the very real consequences of the path upon which he had embarked.”

Ha. I’d say that’s a delicate way of putting it.

I’m thinking about putting this book on my library request list.

Liberia, as you’ll remember, was founded by freed American slaves, so the book also spends a lot of time on the complicated relationship between the two countries — which seems to involve a lot of wistful longing on the part of Liberians and little or no attention at all from Americans.

Johnson Sirleaf has been changing that, on what is clearly a conscious bid to raise Liberia’s profile in the West generally and  in the U.S. specifically. Just last month, for instance, she appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart:

*Photo of Johnson Sirleaf from the Center for Global Development

Farai Chideya is one of those women who seems so smart and with it that she almost intimidates me (I chickened out of introducing myself when I saw her wandering the halls by herself at a journalism conference a year or two ago). I was incredibly saddened when one of NPR’s last round of budget cuts swallowed her radio show, “News & Notes.”

Kiss the Sky is her first novel, about a young woman who is navigating love, life and music circa 2000.

The always-everywhere-at-once, always-connected conscious comic and vigilante pundit Baratunde Thurston, whom I had the pleasure to meet at South by Southwest Interactive, put this video together.

Happy Mother’s Day to all!

Today is a particularly special day for me because I am spending it with my beloved mother…and because my husband and I are expecting our first child early this fall.

Although I’ve basically spent all of 2009 in an exhausted haze due to the pregnancy, I’ve also been searching for — and in some cases, reintroducing myself to — some books about black mothers and children.

Here are a couple of the new-to-me things I’ve found, with quick ratings:

• The Mocha Manual to a Fabulous Pregnancy, Kimberly Seals Allers. Although I appreciated that it emphasized some of the issues affecting black pregnant women more than non-black pregnant women (preeclampsia comes to mind), it felt too short, and I actually had to buy one of those big-name pregnancy guides as a supplement. Grade: B-.
• Nine Months with Thomas, Shirley Hailstock. The hero was rendered infertile in a car accident (just go with me here), and the heroine has agreed to be a gestational surrogate for an embryo produced by the hero and his late wife. Since this is a romance, they fall in love. Although the book did give short shrift to some of the pain-in-the-ass details of assisted reproductive technology and the heroine’s complicated pregnancy and delivery, I was really pleased to see that this book existed at all. Problem: The hero, who is rich as Croesus, is boring as all get-out. Grade: C.

Since my parents found my name in a book of African names, I’m really eager to get a book of names. Among the ones I’m considering: African Names: Names from the African Continent for Children and Adults, by Julia Stewart, or Proud Heritage: 11001 Names for Your African-American Baby, by Elza Dunwiddle-Boyd.

And hey, if you’ve got any other recommendations on this subject or others that might be of interest to a more-than-slightly-anxious-(gulp! I can’t believe I’m saying this)-mom-to-be, I’m eagerly accepting suggestions.

*Photo from Black Soils. Eden Now.

If you’re in Harlem (sigh. I miss living in Harlem) on June 7, head to the AALBC.com Brownstone Gallery for wine, food and art for a good cause — Mosaic Literary Magazine and its programs.

The event is from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. at 64 West 119 St.

More details from Mosaic.

• RT @MissionMANNA Edwidge Danticat and Salman Rushdie Headline PEN World Voices Festival http://tinyurl.com/dj7bc9 Danticat read “Tourist” #
• @ToureX Seriously? I thought that question was bollocks. Best question was from WSJ about Obama’s philosophy as shareholder. #
• @Fledgist I’ll add to my TBR list. Thanks. I read Patterson’s “Rituals of Blood,” about the consequences of slavery, a while back. #
• Now reading: Denmark Vesey, by David Robertson. It’s about the U.S.’s largest slave rebellion. #
• @mosaicbooks I’m convinced e-readers will be as common as iPods within the next handful of years. #
• Note to new (and new-er) followers: Thanks for following! Yes, my following game has been lacking, but I promise to get up to speed soon. #

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