Toya.La's Blog

• How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely

  October 20, 2009

  • How I became a Famous Novelist By Steve Hely is a novel about what the title suggests. Pete Tarslaw is the protagonist, an underachieving young man who decides to become a famous novelist and narrates this story about his plans. His plans are not to write a literary masterpiece or craft his skill at writing. Writing is not his passion; his only writing gig is taking poorly written college essays ...
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• quick update

  July 12, 2009

  • I have not been keeping up with my page being that currently I am taking a summer course and still working (And there was that hectic time when I was moving). I am still reading books for pleasure although not at the pace before being that most of my reading is spent on course work. There are still some interesting things going on in the lit world. One, at my job there are plenty of books on ...
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• Black gangster

  March 30, 2009

  • I finished reading Black Gangster by David Goines. I liked the book. It tells the story of Prince and his quest to have control over most street crime organizations after he gets out of the prison. As the novel was written in the 1970s, it had plenty of commentary  on prison life, relationship between law enforcement and predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods, street criminals, and the ...
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• Whispers in the Night

  March 18, 2009

  • I just finished reading Whispers in the Night. It is a collection of horror stories written by Black authors.  The last time I read a short story collection it was a collection of stories by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Those stories were great and consistently interesting being that they were from the same author (who is also one of the best novelist I have ever read). For Whispers in the Night I ...
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• Who's getting book deals?

  March 17, 2009

  • I work at Border's and during my breaks I usually read publisher's weekly. Part of my interest in reading the magazine is  I figured that before I finish the novel I'm writing I should get as much info on the literary industry before I try it. Yesterday I read that NeNe Leakes from the "Real Housewives of Atlanta" got a major book deal to publish her biography. And it is expected to be ...
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