A Batch of Books & Another Anniversary

August 2017 Reading: photo by Cliff Hutson

Harlem Detectives Series

All of the books that I finished reading this August were from one series by the American author Chester Himes. Interestingly enough, my binge watching the Netflix series "Luke Cage" led to my discovery of the author. I read six of the eight books which feature two black NYPD detectives — Gravedigger Jones and Coffin Ed Johnson.

The stories are very well done, and can be said to rival the works of Raymond Chandler and Walter Mosley, as Luke Cage remarks more than once - this show is very clever in its allusions to culture and literature.

While the depictions of police brutality and blantant racism may be disturbing to many people, I highly these books to fans of the hardboiled detective genre. And, the TV show is not all that bad, either.

Jambalaya: photo by Cliff Hutson

10th Anniversary

"The general rule [is] that whenever anything artistic is described as a “journey,” you can be pretty certain of going nowhere. "

- Peter Schjeldahl

I began writing this blog ten years ago this week. The first post was on September 4, 2007. It has been an interesting journey, even if the progress is uncertain. This morning I scrolled through a list of all the posts and found that by a large factor, the most viewed post is "Jambalaya with Shrimp, Ham, and Andouille Sausage", from January 2008. Why that is I have no idea. I have, in my mind, written many more informative posts, and may be even a thoughtful one or two. But, I guess my reading public knows what it likes.