Random Book Thoughts

Sometimes I have a lot of time on my hands. I could pick up a book and read but sometimes I just want to zone out in front of the computer screen, today was one of those days. I decided to be kind of productive and look for some books to a to my TBR pile. I noticed that in my reading list for 2009 there was lack of books by African-American writers. I think that is because I have signed up for a lot of challenges that are very specific in their instructions. But anyways, a while ago I decided to read 60 books in 2009. So, why not fill up the empty spaces with books by black authors and make them recent works (in the last couple of years).

Here are the problems that I ran into:
1) The black fiction market is swamped with a lot of urban fiction books. I try not to be prejudice with my books selection but I am sort of a book snob. I have tried to read about two urban fiction novels and had to stop reading before the first 50 pages. The writing was sub-par and the editing horrible.

2) All the sites that have review of books by black authors are mostly filled with urban fiction novels. So, I couldn't find anything that sounded interesting. The synopsis of the all the books sound great. But I think that is just because someone other than the author wrote it, so it is cleaned up for the internet. The reviews all sound great, but should I give much credit to a site that mainly reviews urban fiction and gives all the books high reviews?

3) I looked on a couple of the new 2009 releases that are coming out and guess what? Most of them are urban lit or romance. I want something with a little more substance. I have no problem with hood dramas but they have to be well written and in my past experiences urban lit is not often times well written.

Any one have any suggestions on good books (fairly recent) books by African-American authors?