Bookin' It in 2025

For a plethora of positive reasons, I was only able to finish reading a mere five books in 2025.  They are as follows.

1. Emerging from the Cracks: My Journey to Authentic Living by C. H. Danton (second time)
2. Harbor Me by Jacqueline Woodson 
3. Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni (second time)
4. Keith Haring Pop Up Book 
5. 107 Days by Kamala Harris

Quote of the Day

My dream was not to publish or to even be a writer: my dream was to discover something no one else had thought of.  I guess that's why I'm a poet.  We put things together in ways no one else does.

-- Nikki Giovanni

Quote of the Day

Mommy had a wonderful library.  Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Paul Laurence Dunbar ... but she also read trashy books that she kept in the back of her closet.  I remember a nun once saying to me that Black Boy by Richard Wright was a bad book.  I knew better but I thank her for letting me know just because you are grown and a nun you don't necessarily know what is a good from a bad book.

-- Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni:

when i die i hope no one who ever hurt me cries
and if they cry i hope their eyes fall out
and a million maggots that had made up their brains
crawl from the empty holes and devour the flesh
that covered the evil that passed itself off as a person
that i probably tried
to love

First stanza from "When I Die"

Nikki Giovanni:

…life is precious, which is all we poets...are trying to say

"Poetry"