radical cookbooks, ideas & fiction of the salted peanuts variety

February 16-28, 1975

Angela Davis: An Autobiography

Like some other readers of this book, the shoe store scene sticks in my head--where as a young woman she and other young African American women went into a shoe store in the segregated south in the 1950s, spoke only French to the owners and were cordially received as foreigners--until they revealed that they were local African-Americans--not exotic French tourists. It reminds me of a Maya Angelou passage where she talks about being cordially received as a black American in France, and seeing black Algerians be rejected by the same people. Sigh...

The other Angela Davis story I have is really an Adelle Davis story. For years the only cookbook I had was Let's Cook It Right by Adelle Davis, a gift from my health nut grandmother. As a student, I rented a room from Mrs. P., an elderly, very conservative, very Caucasian lady--whose living room furniture consisted of a large armchair strategically placed in front of a large television set. She watched a lot of news and she knew that Angela Davis was in jail at that point. When Mrs. P. saw me using the Adelle Davis cookbook she commented that "she probably doesn't get to cook much WHERE SHE IS NOW." Of course, Mrs. P. might have been referring to Adelle Davis being dead, but I think she actually believed that noted black revolutionary Angela Davis had written a cookbook--which I, as a crazed radical student was using!


Play it as It Lays, Joan Didion
Dead Cert, Dick Francis
Nerve, Dick Francis
Odds Against, Dick Francis
Slayride, Dick Francis
Bonecrack, Dick Francis

Dick Francis is like salted peanuts as far as stopping goes

Yoga, Youth and Reincarnation, Jess Stern
Re-reading for about the tenth a book that I had first encountered as a teenager

The Essential Lenny Bruce, (John Cohen, ed.)
Selected Poems, Paul Verlaine (Trans. C.F. McIntyre)
Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Wilkie Collins
Asian Laughter, An Anthology of Oriental Satire and Humor (Leonard Feinberg, ed.)

February 17-28, 2005:

Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel, Mary Pipher (Foreword), Jean Kilbourne

This book was fascinating, and horrifying! My 1974 self would have been depressed by how far into our guts advertisers have been able to reach to manipulate us for profit

Bloody Bones (Anita Blake Vampire Hunter, Laurell K. Hamilton

After writing a vampire book, I wanted to go back and re-read an old favorite--I promise when I get the links together, I'll put a link to her blog--which is interesting.