Kinky gazpacho: life, love and Spain by Lori L. Tharps

In ten words or less: Young black suburban woman comes to terms with her blackness.

Review: The author grew up in northern Milwaukee suburbs (Shorewood) and attended prestigious University School. She was usually the only black or one of a few in her school. She yearned to learn Spanish and to go to Spain. She spent her high school year as a foreign exchange student in Morocco and she was still singled out because of her race.

She attended Smith College but she did not blend in with blacks there either. Finally she went to Spain for her junior year abroad and met Manuel. After graduation, she went to New York, but still kept up a long distance relationship with Manuel.

Why bother? An engaging memoir by a young black woman seeking to fit in. Tharps has a refreshing voice that readers across race and class lines will enjoy.

January’s books 2009

Photographer Paul Lacy has compiled a book of color photos of Brooklyn storefronts—mom and pop businesses like bodegas, barbershops, auto repair shops, bait shops, etc. He focuses on hand painted signs; there is no text except for the address of the store. An interesting view of New York showing the neighborhoods and not the skyscrapers.

22,477 Big Macs by Donald Gorske
Brooklyn storefronts by Paul Lacy
Beat the reaper: a novel by Josh Bazell
White coat wisdom: extraordinary doctors talk about what they do, how they got there, and why medicine is so much more than a job by Stephen Busalacchi
Secret of the Great Pyramid: how one man’s obsession led to the solution of ancient Egypt’s greatest mystery by Bob Brier
Hell for the holidays by: a Christopher Miller holiday thriller Chris Grabenstein
Dewey the small-town library cat who touched the world by Vicki Myron
Step on a crack: a novel by James Patterson
Orphan train by James Magnuson
I was told there’d be cake: essays by Sloane Crosley
Christmas cookies: 50 recipes to treasure for the holiday season by Lisa Zwirn
So long at the fair: a novel by Christina Schwarz
Decline of sentiment: American film in the 1920s by Lea Jacobs
Bodyguard to the Packers: beat cops, Brett Favre and beating cancer by Jerry Parins
Martin misunderstood by Karen Slaughter
By heart: a mother’s story of children and learning at home by Kathleen Melin
Bright futures: a Lew Fonesca mystery by Stuart Kaminsky
Exxon and the Crandon mine controversy by Michael O’Brien
Windfall by James Magnuson
Lead-mining towns of southeast Wisconsin by Carol McLernon
Growing up Amish: insider secret from one woman’s inspirational journey by Anna Dee Olson
Take your characters to dinner: creating the illusion of reality in fiction: a creative writing course by Laurel Yourke
The sixth lobe by Michael Miller