In preparation for reading week...

So, I headed to my uni library today in pursuit of Ntozake Shange's acclaimed play 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When The Rainbow Is Enuf' (I'm yet to watch the film, grr)
I found it, happy days and decided to take out the copy that included two other plays - 'Spell #7' and 'The Love Space Demands'. I noticed that I was in a pretty fly section of the library, plays and poetry and so my eyes began to wander across the shelves; drawn in by the old-school hardback and gold lettering, they stopped at 'The Collected Works of Effie Waller Smith'. I carefully pulled it out, opened to a page at random and it was filled with short poems and the line 'Our Father, whose unchanging love/ Gives soil and sun and rain.' I was sold, into my clasped arms it went, resting against the Shange play. Walked a little further down the aisle and happened upon Tennessee Williams' plays, I haven't read anything he's written which I think is terrible, and so I grabbed a title I knew well 'Cat On A Hot Tin Roof'. (Desperately wanted to see that on Broadway - Phylicia Rashaad, love her - but I missed it). This then reminded me of Langston Hughes who I love so I took out a biography of his life and his own autobiography 'The Big Sea.'

Content with my findings I proceeded to the checkout machine when my mind suddenly remembered Jeni's disso. bell hooks was someone whose essays I really needed to get my hands on, so I looked them up, wrote down the code and made my way to the 5th floor - sociology
section. On my way however, I passed world literature, sigh. I had now acquired Wole Soyinka's 'Ibadan', 'South African Short Stories' and 'Inside Black Australia - An Anthropology of Aboriginal Poetry' (Ridiculously hyped about that).

I finally make it to the 5th floor and locate all bell hooks' books. I think, okay, let me just get one cos you know, I've got enough already. But I was really struggling to chose, it didn't occur to me that I'm here for another month so I could always come back for a next one, so I got four. 'Black Looks', 'Sisters Of The Yam', Talking Back' and 'Ain't I A Woman'.

Twelve books in total. And I'm looking forward to a magnificent reading week of actually reading. (It doesn't matter that these books aren't part of my course...extra-curricular, mind-opening, all that jazz. Yeah.)

I'm yet to finish my book on The Hottenot Venus by Rachel Holmes. Brilliant by the way, highly recommended.