Wild Women and the Blues

 Wild Women and the Blues by Denny S. Bryce 384 pages

I knew from the minute I saw the cover of the book that I wanted to read it. I find the 1920s period fascinating. I was hooked from the first page and didn’t want to put it down.

The books starts in 2015. Sawyer Hayes goes to visit 110-year-old Honoree Dalcour in her Chicago nursing home. She is the last living link to famed African-American movie director Oscar Micheaux. The fact that Oscar is a real forgotten Hollywood legend endeared me more to this story, and I spent an afternoon researching him (thank heavens for the internet!).

Sawyer thinks he has found a bit of lost film history---a snippet of a film from the 1920s that stars Honoree---in his grandmother’s long-ago box. Mostly, Sawyer is working in Paris with his dad, waiting for the film snippet to be restored and trying to finish his doctorate in media studies.

Honoree is guarded by one of the nurses, Lula. He smooth talks his way into see Honoree, and it doesn’t hurt that his grandmother has been paying the bills at Chicago’s Bronzeville Senior Living Facility since 1985. Honoree is a rather ornery old woman. She may be ancient, but she is still mentally alert and feisty. She loves to give Sawyer a hard time, questioning and accusing him at every opportunity.

The novels moves back and forth between 2015 and 1925, also in Chicago, and shifts from Sawyer’s point of view to Honoree’s. There readers are immersed in Honoree’s life and her ambitions, along with seedy bars, dancing girls and yes, gangsters. To start, she is a dancer at Miss Hattie’s…a seedy joint with its share of fascinating characters. Her dream, though, is to dance at the Dreamland Café…and that dream may be in reach.

But a lot happens to try to stop Honoree. The man she has always loved and disappeared from her life three years ago, Ezekiel, reappears. She has also become the quasi-guardian to the most innocent young woman she has ever met, Bessie Palmer.

Things really heat up when Honoree witnesses a murder at Miss Hattie’s. Now she not only has all those other things to worry about, but she has to keep a low profile to stay a step ahead of the Capone gang.

Author Bryce’s debut novel is a quick read. I look forward to more novels by her. I wish there had been more about Oscar Micheaux...something at the end. That would have deepened the story a lot...for me. Therefore, “Wild Women and the Blues” receives 4 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.

Juba!

Juba! by Walter Dean Myers     208 pages

This engaging historical novel is based on the true story of the meteoric rise of an immensely talented young black dancer, William Henry Lane, who influenced today's tap, jazz, and step dancing. With meticulous and intensive research, Walter Dean Myers has brought to life Juba's story.

A nice, short, historical-fiction read about the life of William Henry Lane, or Juba, a young African-American man who loved dance and wanted to practice it as an art form. Though his life is short, it is fascinating and I was surprised I hadn't heard of him before picking up this book, especially since he caught the attention of Charles Dickens and was even mentioned by Dickens in one of his books, "American Notes." 

Myers really captured the spirit and passion of Juba for dance and for making more out of his life through art. It was interesting to trace Juba's path through various productions and see him grow and yet still not make it as big as he should have. There is some really important discussion of race in early America. One of Juba's friends, who is a free African-American, gets captured and sold back into slavery. Juba is continuously confronted by his skin color and often asked to "coon it up" when he dances because that is the expected idea of what an African-American is like, that is what the audience wants to see. This would be a good school read, I think, to show a particular slice of American history and to teach about race relations in America.

All in all, it was very illuminating and I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in African-American history and to anyone who is not familiar enough with African-American history. This is a very important read, in my opinion. Please give it a look.

Incryptid Series

Discount Armageddon, Midnight Blue-light Special, Half-Off Ragnarok, Pocket Apocalypse, and Chaos Choreography by Seanan McGuire, 1766 pages total


So I tried to write a good summary of this series half a dozen times and could never quite get the right wording and vagueness that would compel an interested party to read further, but yet not spoil any of the books. Lacking the words I needed I went to Seanan's website for guidance, or in this case a nice neat summary.
"Cryptid, noun:

1. Any creature whose existence has been suggested but not proven scientifically. Term officially coined by cryptozoologist John E. Wall in 1983.

2. That thing that's getting ready to eat your head.

3. See also: "monster."

The Covenant of St. George was founded to uphold one simple ideal: anything that was not present on the Ark—anything they deemed "unnatural"—needed to be destroyed. Monsters. Creatures of myth and legend. All of them would be wiped from the Earth in the name of Man's dominion. Unfortunately for them, not all the monsters agreed with this plan...and neither did all the human beings.

After their rather abrupt departure from the Covenant, Alexander and Enid Healy found themselves alone in the world, but with a simple mission of their own: to protect the cryptids of the world from those who would harm them without just cause. It was a cause that would eventually claim both their lives, leaving their children, and their childrens' children, to take up the fight. Now in the modern day, their descendants struggle to stay beneath the Covenant's radar, while defending the cryptids from humanity—and humanity from the cryptids."

Thanks Seanan. 

Unlike most series this one is divided up between two different, but related main characters, siblings Verity and Alex. For books 1, 2 and 5 you will be with the ballroom dance loving Verity, and for books 3 and 4 with the reptile loving Alex. Since I am more into reptiles then ballroom dancing, I found Alex's books far more interesting. It could also be his actual love for being a cryptozoologist, unlike his sister who treated it like a day job. No matter which sibling the reader is with, there is plenty of danger, excitement, and weirdness. 

My final recommendation: This series is well worth the read, if nothing else for the cryptid world that Seanan weaves, that and the talking mice. Yes, talking mice, and they are awesome. 

Dance and the Soul

Dance and the Soul by Paul Valery, translated by Dorothy Bussy, 43 pages

In Dance and the Soul, Valery imagines a dialogue between Socrates, his disciple Phaedrus, and the physician Eryximachus as the three, having just enjoyed a sumptuous banquet, observe a dance by a woman named Athikte.  In the course of their discussion, the dance is found to express something ultimately ineffable - as Phaedrus exclaims, "By the Muses, no feet have ever made my lips so envious!"  For Valery, the dancer is, as the title indicates, representative of the soul as it moves through the vanishing present from a past that no longer is towards a future that is not yet, striving for realization and understanding and an escape from the tedium of the visible.

Juba

Juba by Walter Dean Myers, 201 pages

This is a fictionalized story about a real person.  Juba was a freeborn African American in the 1800s.  He grew up in New York and all he wanted to do was dance.  He was lucky enough to get a few breaks and actually was able to make a living doing what he loved, and became fairly well known in his time, especially in England.  Charles Dickens had seen him dance and written about him so many people were interested in Juba.  I really liked this story. I would probably call it a slice of life type of story, but kids who like historical fiction will probably enjoy it.