• Sci-fi legend Samuel R. Delany answers questions from io9 readers: http://is.gd/17yIF #

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• Awesome. RT @AdamSerwer Superheroes grouped by religious affiliation. http://tr.im/oGcY #

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• Heh. RT @elonjames Black people buying a Soulja Boy CD: Like telling ancestors “Your fight for equality was for naught…Oh & aye bay bay.” #
• Attica Locke’s “Black Water Rising” gets a good review http://is.gd/YRvf #
• Where are the black supervillains (and do we need them?) http://is.gd/YR7u #
• Methinks I’ll read Steven Barnes’s “Shadow Valley” next. I enjoyed “Great Sky Woman,” so I hope this lives up to its predecessor. #
• @skinnyblackgirl Definitely Method Man’s “Bring the Pain.” #
• @faboomama Fixin’ to/fidna/finna is among my favorite Southern-isms. #
• According to my Facebook feed, today is the birthday of underrated thriller writer Brandon Massey. Learn about him here: http://is.gd/UFoz #

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Some Like It Hot: Stories

Brenda Jackson

St. Martins Press

2009

I saw this anthology of five stories by my fellow Floridian Brenda Jackson in the bookstore recently and couldn’t resist picking it up. Most of the stories have appeared in other anthologies, but I’d only read one of them before, so it seemed like a worthwhile purchase. Plus, romance anthologies generally make me happy.

Sigh.

From the first story, which featured a young magazine writer who said one of her main goals in life was to win a Pulitzer Prize (I’ll give you two guesses why that was an extremely clumsy characterization that made me want to rip the story out of the book, and the first guess doesn’t count), to the last, about yet another career woman who’d formerly believed she couldn’t build a decent work life and have a man, my overall reaction to this collection is an unenthusiastic, shoulder-shrugging “meh.”

Some of the stories in Some Like It Hot have the dialogue and characters-who-clearly-have-low-IQs issues that have inexplicably occasionally shown up in Jackson’s work. The stories are set in the contemporary world, but some of the people in them speak in such a stilted, robotic fashion that I cannot imagine them sounding like anyone else on Earth.

That’s not to say that it’s all bad; Jackson’s strength is usually that she creates warm, likable heroes, and that’s the case throughout this collection. For example, Hunter Sloan of “The Hunter” was a complete horndog, but I couldn’t help smiling at his attempts to get the heroine, Mallory, back into his life.

But overall? Like I said before: meh.

Grade: C-

• In case you haven’t heard, @harrislacewell is awesome. http://is.gd/PAdb #
• @claudia_m I’m jealous that you have a copy of BAYOU. I need to order… #
• Toni Morrison: “Yay for free speech!!11!!” http://is.gd/Pxon #
• Seriously? A book about Barack Obama’s (not really) Blackberry http://is.gd/NuXW #
• @claudia_m We’re (!!!) OK, if incredibly tired. Baby apparently thinks it’s hilarious to kick for hours on end in the middle of the night. #
• @claudia_m On the other hand [sigh], If being shelved there gets her more sales, then I guess I shouldn’t complain… #
• @claudia_m Yes. And her work is in no way like what urban/street fiction I’ve read. ‘Twas weird. I made suggestion to management. #
• Disappointed that a Brenda Jackson anthology was shelved with “urban fiction” at my local bookstore behemoth. #

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I didn’t always agree with his historical analysis and the conclusions to which it led him, but professor, historian and author Ivan van Sertima did add something to the academic discourse about the history of Africans, in the Americas and otherwise.

R.I.P.