Welcome to bookchat where you can talk about anything...books, plays, essays, and books on tape. You don’t have to be reading a book to come in, sit down, and chat with us.
I know these streets: the hot pavements with no shadows at noon and the streetlights coming on late at night one at a time as if some poor old lamp lighter is climbing slowly up a ladder with a torch in hand painfully bringing each one to birth.
In autumn, I see the lights blowing in the wind almost cross-wise, flinging their light helter-skelter across empty porches while in winter they are blurred by snow.
cfk
The title phrase came into my mind and I may use it in a story. To be honest, I wanted to try naming some books that I don’t know anything about for a change because it seems that I am talking about the same books over and over.
However, please take note:
I have not read more than a handful of these stories.
Buyer beware or please use the library. I hope readers will mention if they have read one on the list and what they thought about it. There are certainly many books about streets that do not have the word in the title so I hope you will mention those stories, and also stories about roads and highways such as Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon.
A Street Car Named Desire by Tennessee Williams.
Marlon Brando~'You Must Be Stanley' ~Streetcar Named Desire
http://www.youtube.com/...
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis
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Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Critics have written that there is very little plot to the novel: description and satire take prominence over strong characterization and obvious action. Characters tend to be static; they are archetypes to display that these people in Gopher Prairie are the same as in "thousands of small towns from Albany to San Diego". Humor and veritable facsimiles of small town life and personas made Main Street a commercial success.
Readers' fascination with the portrayal of petty back-stabbers and hypocrites in a small town was also probably a factor in the novel's popularity.
When the book was published, it was common to wish to live in a wholesome small town like Gopher Prairie; a notion hilariously denounced by Main Street's vicious realism and biting humor.
Though it was not expected to be extremely popular, in the first six months of 1921, Main Street sold 250,000 copies, becoming a major bestseller of its time.
The World According to Bertie (44 Scotland Street Series #4) by Alexander McCall Smith
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Synopsis
The World According to Bertie is the fourth in the series and revolves around the many colorful characters that come and go at No. 44 Scotland Street. McCall Smith handles the characters with his customary charm and deftness—the stalwart Tory chartered surveyor, the pushy mother, and, most importantly in this novel, the beleaguered Italian-speaking prodigy, Bertie. This is classic McCall Smith—clever, witty and entertaining—and beautifully illustrated. A chance encounter with Armistead Maupin in San Francisco inspired Alexander McCall Smith to write this series of novels based around the fictional No. 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh's New Town.
44 Scotland Street Series
2005 44 Scotland Street
2005 Espresso Tales
2006 Love over Scotland
2007 The World According to Bertie
2008 The Unbearable Lightness of Scones
Charles DeLint and the Newford stories:
Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Charles de Lint (born December 22, 1951) is a Canadian fantasy author and Celtic folk musician.
Along with writers like Terri Windling and John Crowley, De Lint popularized the genres of urban fantasy and mythic fiction which fall somewhere between classical fantasy literature, and mainstream fiction with a magical realist bent.
The Newford Series:
The Dreaming Place (1990)
From a Whisper to a Scream (originally credited to "Samuel M. Key")(1992)
Dreams Underfoot (1993)
I'll Be Watching You (originally credited to "Samuel M. Key")(1994)
Memory and Dream (1994)
The Ivory and the Horn (1995)
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Annotation
Charles de Lint began his chronicle of the city of Newford in Memory & Dream. In Ivory and the Horn, this uncommonly gifted craftsman weaves a new tapestry of stark realism and fond hope, mean streets and boulevards of dreams, where readers discover the power of love and longing, wishes and desires, and the magic that hovers at the edge of everyday life.
Trader (1997)
Someplace to be Flying (1998)
Moonlight and Vines (1999)
And more
Moonheart by Charles de Lint
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Synopsis
When Sara and Jamie discovered the seemingly ordinary artifacts, they sensed the pull of a dim and distant place. A world of mists and forests, of ancient magics, mythical beings, ageless bards, and restless evil.
Now, with their friends and enemies alike—Blue, the Biker; Keiran, the folk musician, the Inspector from the RMCP, and the mysterious Tom Hengy—Sara and Jamie are drawn into this enchanted land through the portals of Tamson House, that sprawling downtown edifice that straddles two worlds.
Sweeping from ancient Wales to the streets of Ottawa today, Moonheart will enchant you with its tale of this world and the other one at the very edge of sight ... and of the unforgettable people caught up in the affairs of both.
The Street by Ann Petry
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Synopsis
THE STREET tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of Lutie Johnson, a young black woman, and her spirited struggle to raise her son amid the violence, poverty, and racial dissonance of Harlem in the late 1940s. Originally published in 1946 and hailed by critics as a masterwork, The Street was Ann Petry's first novel, a beloved bestseller with more than a million copies in print. Its haunting tale still resonates today.
The Sellout: How Three Decades of Wall Street Greed and Government Mismanagement Destroyed the Global Financial System
by Charles Gasparino
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Synopsis
In the spirit of Barbarians at the Gate and Liar's Poker comes The Sellout, the definitive book on the recent collapse of Wall Street, one of the most dramatic and anxiety-ridden era in national socioeconomic history. In this powerful business narrative, Charles Gasparino, the author of Blood on the Floor and King of the Club, captures how avarice, arrogance, and sheer stupidity eroded Wall Street's dominance, made many of our country's most fabled financial institutions vulnerable to significant new foreign control, and profoundly weakened the financial security of millions of poor and middle-class American families.
Baker Street Letters by Michael Robertson
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Synopsis
First in a spectacular new series about two brother lawyers who lease offices on London’s Baker Street--and begin receiving mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes
In Los Angeles, a geological surveyor maps out a proposed subway route--and then goes missing. His eight-year-old daughter, in her desperation, turns to the one person she thinks might help--she writes a letter to Sherlock Holmes.
That letter creates an uproar at 221b Baker Street, which now houses the law offices of attorney and man about town Reggie Heath and his hapless brother, Nigel. Instead of filing the letter like he’s supposed to, Nigel decides to investigate. Soon he’s flying off to Los Angeles, inconsiderately leaving a very dead body on the floor in his office. Big brother Reggie follows Nigel to California, as does Reggie’s sometime lover, Laura---a quick-witted stage actress who’s captured the hearts of both brothers.
When Nigel is arrested, Reggie must use all his wits to solve a case that Sherlock Holmes would have savored and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans will adore.
The House on Tradd Street by Karen White
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Synopsis
A brilliant, chilling series debut, featuring a Charleston real estate agent who loves old houses—and the secret histories inside them.
Practical Melanie Middleton hates to admit she can see ghosts. But she's going to have to accept it. An old man she recently met has died, leaving her his historic Tradd Street home, complete with housekeeper, dog—and a family of ghosts anxious to tell her their secrets.
Enter Jack Trenholm, a gorgeous writer obsessed with unsolved mysteries. He has reason to believe that diamonds from the Confederate Treasury are hidden in the house. So he turns the charm on with Melanie, only to discover he's the smitten one...
It turns out Jack's search has caught the attention of a malevolent ghost. Now, Jack and Melanie must unravel a mystery of passion, heartbreak—and even murder.
Cry Mercy (Mercy Street Foundation Series #2) by Mariah Stewart
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Synopsis
After Ann Nolan, a California beat cop, adopts the daughter of a notorious drug dealer, the ruthless father vows to take back his only child. In response, Ann flees across the country, changes her name, and starts a new life as an investigator for the Mercy Street Foundation, the billionaire-endowed organization dedicated to finding missing persons. As Emme Caldwell, she takes the lead on the Foundation's first case: Nineteen-year-old Belinda Hudson disappeared from her sorority house leaving behind only one cryptic clue. Retracing the vanished student's steps leads Emme to Heaven's Gate, a fertility clinic, and the mysterious Donor 1735.
Belinda's legal guardian, Nick Perone, is determined to shadow Emme's every move as she searches for his niece. But the closer Emme gets to Donor 1735 and the chilling truth, the more apparent it becomes that she's escaped one dangerous man only to run head-on into another-one who's far more determined and every bit as deadly.
The Street Lawyer by John Grisham
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Synopsis
Legal intrigue, hair-raising suspense, rock-solid storytelling...it just doesn't get any better than John Grisham. The Firm, A Time to Kill, The Pelican Brief -- the list of modern-day classics that he's produced grows with each eagerly awaited release. And guess what? Grisham's well of inventive page-turners is nowhere near drying up. His latest blockbuster to see paperback is The Street Lawyer, a wickedly entertaining roller-coaster ride that'll keep the avid thrill-seeker wide-eyed and attentive all night long.
Cairo Trilogy: Palace Walk, Palace of Desire, Sugar Street by Naguib Mahfouz, William M. Hutchins (Translator)
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synopsis
Naguib Mahfouz’s magnificent epic trilogy of colonial Egypt appears here in one volume for the first time. The Nobel Prize—winning writer’s masterwork is the engrossing story of a Muslim family in Cairo during Britain’s occupation of Egypt in the early decades of the twentieth century.
The novels of The Cairo Trilogy trace three generations of the family of tyrannical patriarch Al-Sayyid Ahmad Abd al-Jawad, who rules his household with a strict hand while living a secret life of self-indulgence. Palace Walk introduces us to his gentle, oppressed wife, Amina, his cloistered daughters, Aisha and Khadija, and his three sons–the tragic and idealistic Fahmy, the dissolute hedonist Yasin, and the soul-searching intellectual Kamal. Al-Sayyid Ahmad’s rebellious children struggle to move beyond his domination in Palace of Desire, as the world around them opens to the currents of modernity and political and domestic turmoil brought by the 1920s. Sugar Street brings Mahfouz’s vivid tapestry of an evolving Egypt to a dramatic climax as the aging patriarch sees one grandson become a Communist, one a Muslim fundamentalist, and one the lover of a powerful politician.
Throughout the trilogy, the family’s trials mirror those of their turbulent country during the years spanning the two World Wars, as change comes to a society that has resisted it for centuries. Filled with compelling drama, earthy humor, and remarkable insight, The Cairo Trilogy is the achievement of a master storyteller.
Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Naguib Mahfouz (Arabic: نجيب محفوظ, Nagīb Maḥfūẓ) (December 11, 1911 – August 30, 2006) was an Egyptian novelist who won the 1988 Nobel Prize for Literature. He is regarded as one of the first contemporary writers of Arabic literature, along with Tawfiq el-Hakim, to explore themes of existentialism.[1] He published over 50 novels, over 350 short stories, dozens of movie scripts and five plays over a 70-year career. Many of his works have been made into Arabic and foreign languages films.
The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk by Randy Shilts
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Annotation
The definitive story of the man whose personal life, public career, and tragic assassination mirrored the dramatic and unprecedented emergence of the gay community in America during the '70s. 8 pages of photos.
Race Like No Other: 26.2 Miles Through the Streets of New York by Liz Robbins
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Synopsis
When 39,195 competitors thunder over the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge to begin the thirty-eighth running of the famed New York City Marathon, they experience one of the most exhilarating moments in sports. But as they cross five towering bridges and five distinct boroughs, carried 26.2 miles by the cheers of two million fans and by their own indomitable wills, grueling challenges await them.
New York Times sportswriter Liz Robbins brings race day to life in this gripping saga of the 2007 Marathon, weaving the unforgettable stories of runners into a vibrant mile-by-mile portrait of the world's largest marathon...
Street of a Thousand Blossoms by Gail Tsukiyama
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Synopsis
It is Tokyo in 1939. On the Street of a Thousand Blossoms, two orphaned brothers dream of a future firmly rooted in tradition. The older boy, Hiroshi, shows early signs of promise at the national obsession of sumo wrestling, while Kenji is fascinated by the art of Noh theater masks.
But as the ripples of war spread to their quiet neighborhood, the brothers must put their dreams on hold—and forge their own paths in a new Japan. Meanwhile, the two young daughters of a renowned sumo master find their lives increasingly intertwined with the fortunes of their father’s star pupil, Hiroshi.
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms is a powerfully moving masterpiece about tradition and change, loss and renewal, and love and family from a glorious storyteller at the height of her powers.
The House on First Street: My New Orleans Story (P.S. Series) by Julia Reed
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Synopsis
After fifteen years of living like a vagabond on her reporter's schedule, Julia Reed got married and bought a house in the historic Garden District. Four weeks after she moved in, Hurricane Katrina struck. The House on First Street is the chronicle of Reed's remarkable and often hilarious homecoming, as well as a thoroughly original tribute to our country's most original city.
The Ballad of West Tenth Street by Marjorie Kernan
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Synopsis
Once upon a time in Manhattan . . .
. . . there stood a pair of fine old brick townhouses on West Tenth Street. One had a blue door with a tarnished brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin. The other was empty. Behind the blue door lived Sadie, the widow of a famous British rocker who died of an overdose, and two of her children, Hamish and Deen.
The children manage to muddle along as best they can with a loving but distracted mother. But their whole world changes when the house next door gets a new owner—a mysterious Southerner who quickly endears himself to his new neighbors, taking them—and their friends—under his protective wing. In doing so, he transforms everything.
Magical, lively, lovely, and unique, The Ballad of West Tenth Street is a contemporary urban fairy tale that delightfully reimagines real life.
Streets of Laredo by Larry McMurtry
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Synopsis
In the long-awaited sequel to Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry spins an exhilarating tale of legend and heroism. Captain Woodrow Call, Augustus McCrae's old partner, is now a bounty hunter hired to track down a brutal, young Mexican bandit. Riding with Call are an Eastern city slicker, a witless deputy, and one of the last members of the Hat Creek outfit, Pea Eye Parker, now married to Lorena — once Gus McCrae's sweetheart. Their long chase leads them across the last wild stretches of the West into a hellhole known as Crow Town, and finally, into the vast, relentless plains of the Texas frontier.
The Fleet Street Murders (Charles Lenox Series #3) by Charles Finch
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Synopsis
The third book in the Charles Lenox series finds the gentleman detective trying to balance a heated race for Parliament with the investigation of the mysterious simultaneous deaths of two veteran reporters.
Biography
Charles Finch is a graduate of Yale and Oxford. His debut in the Charles Lenox series, A Beautiful Blue Death, was nominated for an Agatha Award and named one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2007. He lives in New York.
Young Adult
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
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Synopsis
Here is Sandra Cisnero's greatly admired and best-selling novel of a young girl growing up in the Latino section of Chicago. Acclaimed by critics, beloved by children and their parents and grandparents, taught everywhere from inner-city grade schools to universities across the country, and translated all over the world, The House on Mango Street has entered the canon of coming-of-age classics even as it depicts a new American landscape.
Sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes deeply joyous, The House on Mango Street tells the story of Esperanza Cordero, whose neighborhood is one of harsh realities and harsh beauty. Esperanza doesn't want to belong - not to her run-down neighborhood, and not to the low expectations the world has for her. Esperanza's story is that of a young girl coming into her power, and inventing for herself what she will become.
America Street by Anne Mazer
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Annotation
Fourteen stories by American authors from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, including Duane Big Eagle, Nicholasa Mohr, Lensey Namioka, and Robert Cormier.
Publishers Weekly
Mazer ( Moose Street ) presents a smorgasbord of multiethnic experiences with 14 slice-of-life stories featuring teens (mostly contemporary) whose parents or grandparents immigrated to the U.S. The sociocultural backgrounds of characters are diverse, yet all share the common goal of finding a place for themselves. Some (Toni Cade Bambara's Hazel Parker, a prize-winning runner in ``Raymond's Run,'' and Gary Soto's day-dreaming Fausto, of ``The No-Guitar Blues'') strive to rise above the crowd and to be recognized for their abilities...
The King of Mulberry Street by Donna Jo Napoli
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Synopsis
In 1892, nine-year-old Dom’s mother puts him on a ship leaving Italy, bound for America. He is a stowaway, traveling alone and with nothing of value except for a new pair of shoes from his mother. In the turbulent world of homeless children in Manhattan’s Five Points, Dom learns street smarts, and not only survives, but thrives by starting his own business. A vivid, fascinating story of an exceptional boy, based in part on the author’s grandfather.
Durango Street by Frank Bonham
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Rufus Henry survived incarceration in the Pine Valley work camp where he served time for grand theft auto. The question is will he survive freedom once he's released? While he's eager to see his younger brother and sister again, he's nervous about going home to a new neighborhood. "Any new neighborhood (is) like a cellar you enter with your hands tied.
Suddenly, the door slams behind you and the darkness quake(s) with danger." Danger is Henry's constant companion. He wants to turn his life around, get a decent job, and go back to school, but his is a world of poverty--ruled by gangs and marred by crime and violence. Henry sees no way out. Alex Robbins, with Group Service Council, wants to show him that he has choices, and his choices can make all the difference. It's a realistic, fast-paced, and compelling young adult novel.
Children’s books
Water Street by Patricia Reilly Giff
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Synopsis
Brooklyn, 1875: Bird Mallon lives on Water Street where you can see the huge towers of the bridge to Manhattan being built. Bird wants nothing more in life than to be brave enough to be a healer, like her mother, Nory, to help her sister Annie find love, and to convince her brother, Hughie, to stop fighting for money with his street gang. And of course, she wishes that a girl would move into the empty apartment upstairs so that she can have a new friend close by.
But Thomas Neary and his Pop move in upstairs. Thomas who writes about his life in his journal--his father who spends each night at the Tavern down the street, the mother he wishes he had, and the Mallon family downstairs that he desperately wants to be a part of. Thomas, who has a secret that only Bird suspects, and who turns out to be the best friend Bird could ever have.
A Street Through Time: A 12,000 Year Walk Through History by Anne Millard
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Synopsis
Have you ever wondered what a street was like hundreds of years ago? In A Street Through Time you can actually see what happens as you trace its development, spread by spread, through 14 time periods, from the Stone Age to the present day. The more you look, the more you'll see!—This totally absorbing pictorial story, annotated with labels, gives a fascinating look at life over 12,000 years—Crammed with details, every page is teeming with life. As you follow through history, you will recognize how buildings have survived the centuries and study how people lived, dressed, ate, and busied themselves all day—Spot the Time Traveler and plenty of historical artifacts and hidden details on every page.
The House on East 88th Street by Bernard Waber
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Synopsis
The first book in the Lyle series, this tells the story of how the Primms found Lyle the crocodile in the bathtub of their new home.
Adults
Not the sunny side of the street
If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin
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Synopsis
In this honest and stunning novel, James Baldwin has given America a moving story of love in the face of injustice. Told through the eyes of Tish, a nineteen-year-old girl, in love with Fonny, a young sculptor who is the father of her child, Baldwin’s story mixes the sweet and the sad. Tish and Fonny have pledged to get married, but Fonny is falsely accused of a terrible crime and imprisoned. Their families set out to clear his name, and as they face an uncertain future, the young lovers experience a kaleidoscope of emotions–affection, despair, and hope. In a love story that evokes the blues, where passion and sadness are inevitably intertwined, Baldwin has created two characters so alive and profoundly realized that they are unforgettably ingrained in the American psyche.
Cooked: My Journey from the Streets to the Stove by Jeff Henderson
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Synopsis
Jeff Henderson was just another inner-city black kid born into a world of poverty and limited options, where crime seemed to provide the only way to get out. Raised mostly by his single mother, who struggled just to keep food on the table, Jeff dreamed big. He had to get out and he soon did by turning to what so many in his community did: dealing drugs. But Jeff was no ordinary drug dealer; by twenty-one, he was one of the top cocaine dealers in San Diego, making up to $35,000 a week. Two years later he was indicted on federal drug trafficking charges and sentenced to almost twenty years in prison. Before he knew what had hit him, he was looking at spending most of his life behind bars. The street life had been the only one he'd ever known and even incarcerated he was too hardheaded to realize that no good would come of it.
That is, until he was assigned to one of the least desirable prison jobs: washing dishes. That job helped turn his whole life around. It gave him access to the prison kitchen and he became fascinated watching his fellow prisoners cook for the thousands of other inmates and prison officials. Henderson learned to cook in prison. Not cocaine, but food. And his dream was born: Once outside, he would become a chef.
It was a tough, seemingly impossible journey for an ex-con. Few chefs would give him the opportunity to cook in their restaurants. And once hired, he endured racism and sabotage in the kitchen. But Henderson refused to accept rejection. Driven by a dream and an unshakable will to succeed, Chef Jeff worked hard to overcome unimaginable adversity and eventually reached the top of his profession, becoming executive chef at Café Bellagio in Las Vegas.
Alive with the energy of the streets, the sober reality of prison, and the visceral thrill of being inside the fast-paced kitchens of great restaurants, Cooked is an intense, intimate tale of crime, punishment, and redemption -- a deeply poignant story of how the worst wrong can lead to the most extraordinary right.
Biography
Award-winning chef Jeff Henderson made history in Las Vegas when he became the first African-American executive chef at the world-renowned Bellagio Hotel. In fall 2008, his own TV show will debut on the Food Network and his first cookbook, Chef Jeff Cooks, will also be published. Chef Jeff lives in Las Vegas with his wife, Stacy, and their three children.
Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas
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Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Down These Mean Streets is the autobiography of Piri Thomas, a Latino of Puerto Rican and Cuban descent who grew up in El Barrio (aka Spanish Harlem), a section of Harlem that has a large Puerto Rican population. In the book, we watch Piri as he goes through the first few decades of his life, lives in poverty, joins and fights with street gangs, faces racism (in both New York and the South), suffers through heroin addiction, gets involved in crime, and ends up in prison.
Down These Mean Streets reads similarly to The Autobiography of Malcolm X in that both books are vivid, brutally honest memoirs of experiences of racial prejudice and discrimination, identity formation, and youthful involvement with crime that leads to life-altering prison experiences. One of the major themes of Down These Mean Streets centers on Piri Thomas's identity as a dark-complected Afro-Latino. Although he is of Puerto Rican and Cuban heritage, the larger American society takes him for African-American and fails to recognize him as Latino. His own family rejects the African aspect of their Latin-Caribbean ancestry, causing Piri to spend much of his adolescent and early adult life contemplating his racial and ethnic identity.
Mean Streets by Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Thomas E. Sniegoski, Kat Richardson
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Here are four novellas featuring Harry Dresden, John Taylor, Harper Blaine, and Remy Chandler...paranormal private investigators who walk the streets no one else can walk and take the jobs no one else will take...
Of course, if a case involves werewolves, zombies, demons, or other "unusual" circumstances, it may cost a bit extra.
Run Baby Run: The Explosive True Story of a Savage Street Fighter by Nicky Cruz
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Synopsis
This is the thrilling story of Nicky Cruz's desperate battle against drugs, alcoholism, and a violent environment, as he searched for a better way of life on the streets of New York City.
Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets by Sudhir Venkatesh
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The Barnes & Noble Review
From the fall of 1989 through the fall of 1998, Sudhir Venkatesh, now a sociologist at Columbia University, hung out -- often for many days in succession -- with a gang called the Black Kings, in the largest and most infamous of Chicago's large and infamous housing projects, the Robert Taylor Homes. Gang Leader for a Day is the third book by Venkatesh to grow out of this decade of immersive observation of life in these (now razed) buildings.
The first two were forthrightly academic: American Project: The Rise and fall of a Modern Ghetto took a global and historical look at the projects. Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor examined, with specific details and inside knowledge, the interconnected methods, licit and otherwise, by which the residents of Robert Taylor tried to make a living -- from drug dealing to back-alley car repair to prostitution to selling home-cooked meals. One aspect of his economic findings -- the discovery that many low-level, low-income drug dealers live with their mothers -- also found its way into Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner's huge bestseller Freakonomics. The success of that book might have provided part of the impetus for Venkatesh to return to this subject in a more literary way.
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville
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Synopsis
Beneath the towering bleached ribs of a dead, ancient beast lies New Crobuzon, a squalid city where humans, Re-mades, and arcane races live in perpetual fear of Parliament and its brutal militia.
Photography and miscellaneous
Vanishing America: The End of Main Street Diners, Drive-Ins, Donut Shops, and Other Everyday Monuments by Michael Eastman, Michael Eastman (Photographer)
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Synopsis
Think of the quirky buildings you pass every day but whose quiet beauty you take for granted—the moviehouses, juke joints, soda fountains, barbershops, roadside diners, and storefront churches. You don’t miss them until they’re gone. As suburban sprawl and strip malls conquer the country, these vestiges of a lost way of life are falling under the wrecking ball. Here the photographer Michael Eastman has made the ultimate road trip, crisscrossing the nation dozens of times, to capture these buildings on film before they vanish.
These dreamy images call us to question what we choose to let go in the wake of contemporary life, with a cool melancholy that evokes the work of Edward Hopper, Jack Kerouac, and William Eggleston. There is a wry sense of humor here as well. The book delights in the idiosyncracies of America’s vernacular styles, ranging from Depression Deco to New England clapboard in random juxtapositions that accrue over time in a town’s landscape. Countless visual puns arise among the book’s many detailed images of signs and statuettes. Vanishing America catalogues great everyday American architecture and design. But it also offers a provocative portrait of the silent emptiness that has descended upon vanishing small communities everywhere.
Biography
Michael Eastman’s work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, The Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant and has published two previous books of photography. He lives in St. Louis.
Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band by Bob Santelli
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Synopsis
Greetings from E Street celebrates the passionately loved group that has been entertaining the world for 35 years. Written with their cooperation, this fully illustrated informal biography combines rare photographs with 30 removable facsimiles of E Street memorabilia, including Bruce Springsteen's first business card and hand-written set list, and even two fabulous posters. Longtime band intimate Robert Santelli captures the ecstatic highs and devastating lows on the E Street Band's roller coaster ride to stardom.
He follows the band from the early days in Asbury Park, New Jersey, to the critical acclaim of Born to Run, the mania of Born in the U.S.A. and international touring, and each member's unique projects. Throughout, the band's signature combination of friendship, humor, and stellar musicianship is revealed in stories, snapshots, and the ephemera of life of the road. Warm and personal, Greetings from E Street is a postcard from the most famous address in rock and roll.
This is a series of all the interesting cities called Streetwise.
One example of dozens:
Streetwise Prague Map - Laminated City Center Street Map of Prague, Czech Republic - Folding Pocket Size Travel Map With Metro by Streetwise Maps
I couldn’t resist. There were so many versions to choose from, but I chose mellow.
On the Street Where You Live Nat King Cole
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Roads Go Ever On Glenn Yarbrough
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Now it is your turn to comment on books about streets, or any kind of book you wish to discuss, which is where the fun comes in.
Diaries of the week:
Write On! What's your writing problem?
by SensibleShoes
http://www.dailykos.com/...
New Molly Ivins Biography
by OMwordTHRUdaFOG
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Holiday Recipe Exchange or Where's a Troll Diary When You Need One?
by JaxDem
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Julie Wolf’s beautiful pictures plus a way to buy her calendars here:
DK Greenroots: Parker River
by juliewolf
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A beautiful poem here:
on the nature of memory: 11/22/1963
by sunspark says
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Basketry (graphics heavy)
by rserven
http://www.dailykos.com/...
A very Happy Birthday to someone who really knows many streets of the world:
Oldest Known Kossack Hits The Big Nine-Six -- Happy Birthday, Charlotte Lucas!
by Emmet
http://www.dailykos.com/...
Let's read a book together: Guns, germs and steel Chapter 17: Speedboat to Polynesia
by plf515
http://www.dailykos.com/...
NOTE: plf515 has changed his book talk to Wednesday mornings early.
sarahnity’s list of DKos authors has grown so much that she has her own diary.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
sarahnity says:
It turns out that we have quite a few authors hanging out here who have published books in the real world. A while ago, I started keeping a list of books by Kossacks, former Kossacks and Kossacks-once-removed. I was posting it each week to the diary series What Are You Reading and Bookflurries, but the list has grown long enough, that I've decided to turn it into a diary and post it as a weekly series on Tuesday evenings.
Not all Kossack authors may wish to lose their anonymity, so I am only including the author's UID if he has outed herself here (gender confusion intended). If you'd like to be included on the list, or if you know of an author who is left off, please leave a comment or email me.
(sarahnity@gmail.com)
Poll Quotations from:
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