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I do believe that International Blog Against Racism Week is coming up in August, so there's plenty of time for my mad plan: ask you all to read one book (or watch one movie) and then review it during the week.

I have dozens of relevant books around here, and there are plenty of movies and documentaries, all of which I'd love to review, but there's never enough hours in the day. But if a bunch of people read/watch one thing each and then give their thoughts on it, I reckon that'd be a great contribution - bringing books and films to peoples' attention, sparking discussion, etc.

Pretty much anything that seems relevant is fair game, fiction or non-fiction. Posts in past

ibarw have covered a broad range of topics, including anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and Whiteness (I might do a posting about Watching the English amongst the other stuff :-)

Life's busy; I'm not going to ask you to sign up or anything. If you don't think you'll have time, you could leave a suggestion here for a book or movie which you enjoyed or found thought-provoking.

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Doing this in the comments to avoid looking as though I'm bragging or fishing for a ghetto pass. I'm reading Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz and I have Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan in the queue (I want to compare it to the movie). I also want to get my hands on the movie The Business of Fancydancing (recommended by

qthewetsprocket IIRC) and to re-read The Chosen, the Chaim Potok book I studied in high school. I need to add some Australian stuff to the list - I've snagged a collection of Aboriginal short films from the library.

My eyes are always bigger than my stomach when it comes to reading and watching, so we'll see how much I actually manage to consume by August. :-)

Brilliant idea Kate.

Ray Lawrence's film Jindabyne is worth looking at.

What an excellent idea. I recommend Lion's Blood (http://books.google.com/books?id=niqxNJYJYh8C) by Steven Barnes.

Hi! Two things.

1. I typo'd deorsum as deorum when I left you that comment the other day, I am pretty sure. Sorry! I hope you haven't used it yet!

2. It would be really cool to do that. I will happily look for anything you suggest.

1. No, it's fine - here 'tis!

2. You're about 1000000 times better read than I am already! :-)

1. Eeeeee! Awesome.

2. Where by better read you mean I have read more children's and young adult novels than anybody else in the world, including probable actual children. No, no, please recommend me something!

No, man, all those CLASSICS!

I've only just started to read with a deliberate eye to diversity myself, so I'm not exactly a foundtain of recommendations. You could give bell hooks' Bone Black, Richard Wright's Black Boy, or Chaim Potok a squiz at the library.

Ooh, okay. Also, I remember reading this gorgeous book about desegregation called Belle Teal, a children's book, and it was really super. Anyway! I will look for those.

I come from a rather different perspective on this, but we've argued that to death.

So how about this: try reading a novel by a new (to you) author, chosen without seeing who the author is (i.e. search by title, and then search again if you've read the author). That's pretty much how I got turned on to both Greg Bear and Octavia Butler, and I found that I like their work a lot. Of course, the novel might suck, but hey, that's what random is, right?

I pick up books at random all the time (I read Slant because I liked the cover) but I also seek out particular books when a subject catches my attention (I read Dawn because it was feminist science fiction).

What do you read (other than SF)? How do you choose it?

I just read slant on my last business trip, and I'd give it an "eh": it had interesting potential, but never quite made it for me.

Other than SF, I tend to read history, technical books, philosophy, or graphic novels, and my pattern tends to be "random walk until something catches my eye, or I get a recommendation, and then read several things by that author."

I do that "gobble the back catalogue" thing with authors too! I'm currently very s l o w l y working my way through the novels of Niall Griffiths, and even m o r e s l o w l y through Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson.

Looking for Langston by Isaac Julien (1988) ;)
One Plus One (aka Sympathy for the Devil) by Jean-Luc Godard:

"There’s producer Iain Quarrier’s cut, entitled Sympathy for the Devil to cash in on the Stones’ popularity, and which has a completed version of their song playing out at the end (over footage of them playing something different). This is the cut that caused Godard to walk out its NFT showing, hitting the producer for good measure on the way and telling the audience to collect their admission money and give it to the Eldridge Cleaver Foundation before calling them all fascists." (Graeme Hobbs)

There's also lengthy scenes of black power activists discussing philosophy in a junkyard, but the above incident is the thing I wish most I'd been alive to see.

Ooh and Chocolat by Claire Denis (I think it's 1986ish). If you see Depp, Binoche and Dame Judi, you're doing it wrong.