Lovesong


Book Description

'That is the story of our beginning. And this is the story of...the end' Lovesong is the story of one couple, told from two different points in their lives – as young lovers in their 20s and as worldly companions looking back on their relationship. Their past and present selves collide in this haunting and beautiful tale of togetherness. All relationships have their ups and downs; the optimism of youth becomes the wisdom of experience. Love is a leap of faith.




Lovesong


Book Description

Julius Lester was born the son of a black Methodist minister in the south. His book Lovesong is a beautifully written account of his spiritual journey away from the conventions of his Southern heritage and Methodist upbringing, culminating in his personal self-discovery through a conversion to Judaism. Growing up in the turbulent civil rights era South, Lester was often discouraged by the disconnectedness between the promises of religion and the realities of his life. He used the outlets available to him to try to come to grips with this split and somehow reconcile the injustices he was witnessing with the purity of religion. He became a controversial writer and commentator, siding with neither blacks nor whites in his unconventional viewpoints. He became a luminal figure of the times, outside of the conventional labels of race, religion, politics, or philosophy. Lester’s spiritual quest would take him through the existential landscape of his Southern, Christian upbringing, into his ancestry, winding through some of the holiest places on the planet and into the spiritual depths of the world’s major religious cultures. His odyssey of faith would unexpectedly lead him to discovering Judaism as his true spiritual calling.




Lovesong


Book Description

Winner of the 2011 Christina Stead Prize for Fiction Winner of T he Age Book of the Year Winner of thePeople's Choice Award at the NSW Premier's Literary Awards Strangers did not, as a rule, find their way to Chez Dom, a small, rundown Tunisian café on Paris's distant fringes run by the widow Houria and her young niece, Sabiha. But when one day a lost Australian tourist, John Patterner, seeks shelter in the cafe from a sudden Parisian rainstorm, a love story starts to unfold. John and Sabiha's becomes a contented but unlikely marriage-a marriage of two cultures lived in a third-and yet because they are essentially foreigners to each other, their love story sets in train an irrevocable course of tragic events. Years later, living a small, quiet life in suburban Melbourne, what happened to them in Paris seems like a distant, troubling dream to John. He confides the story behind their seemingly ordinary lives to Ken, an ageing, melancholic writer who sees in his neighbours the possibility of one last simple love story. Told with Miller's distinctive clarity, intelligence and compassion, Lovesong is a pitch-perfect novel, a tender and enthralling story about the intimate lives of ordinary people. Like the truly great novelist he is, Miller locates the heart of his story in the moral frailties and secret passions of his all-too-human characters.




Lovesong


Book Description

In Lovesong, three-time Whitbread Prize winner Geraldine McCaughrean has written what Philippa Gregory called "Probably the best historical novel I have ever read." At the centre of the story is a talented troubadour, Peter Oriole, and his daughter, `Princess' Ouallada. The opening sections of the book trace Oriole's journey from France to the Holy Land in the service of two very different crusader Knights, one a saintly aesthete, the other a cynical opportunist. The twelfth century was a time when men and women were inventing - or perhaps reinventing - the nature of love itself, and it was the troubadour's task to express that love in song - their fate either glory or scandalous ruin. What does love mean to Oriole? As he discovers both romance and passion in his own life we are introduced to an extraordinary cast of characters - rogues, mountebanks, villains, heroes, damsels both in and out of distress, soldiers and holy men, all working out their own destiny, each compellingly and convincingly drawn. This is the story of one man's wreck on the sea of passion - and his daughter's stormy voyage in his wake. With strikingly detailed imagery and characterisation that is totally convincing and compassionate, Geraldine McCaughrean has written a novel of ideas which is also storytelling at full pelt. "McCaughrean is well on her way to becoming one of the few great novelists to adorn our age." MAIL ON SUNDAY ÿ




Congo Love Song


Book Description

In his 1903 hit "Congo Love Song," James Weldon Johnson recounts a sweet if seemingly generic romance between two young Africans. While the song's title may appear consistent with that narrative, it also invokes the site of King Leopold II of Belgium's brutal colonial regime at a time when African Americans were playing a central role in a growing Congo reform movement. In an era when popular vaudeville music frequently trafficked in racist language and imagery, "Congo Love Song" emerges as one example of the many ways that African American activists, intellectuals, and artists called attention to colonialism in Africa. In this book, Ira Dworkin examines black Americans' long cultural and political engagement with the Congo and its people. Through studies of George Washington Williams, Booker T. Washington, Pauline Hopkins, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, and other figures, he brings to light a long-standing relationship that challenges familiar presumptions about African American commitments to Africa. Dworkin offers compelling new ways to understand how African American involvement in the Congo has helped shape anticolonialism, black aesthetics, and modern black nationalism.




Super Fake Love Song


Book Description

From the New York Times bestselling author of Frankly in Love comes a young adult romantic comedy about identity and acceptance. Perfect for fans of John Green and To All the Boys I've Love Before and now in paperback! When Sunny Dae--self-proclaimed total nerd--meets Cirrus Soh, he can't believe how cool and confident she is. So when Cirrus mistakes Sunny's older brother Gray's bedroom--with its electric guitars and rock posters--for Sunny's own, he sort of, kind of, accidentally winds up telling her he's the front man of a rock band. Before he knows it, Sunny is knee-deep in the lie: He ropes his best friends into his scheme, begging them to form a fake band with him, and starts wearing Gray's rock-and-roll castoffs. But no way can he trick this amazing girl into thinking he's cool, right? Just when Sunny is about to come clean, Cirrus asks to see them play sometime. Gulp. Now there's only one thing to do: Fake it till you make it.




The Love Song of Ivy K. Harlowe


Book Description

Ivy K. Harlowe is a lot of things. She’s my best friend. She’s the center of attention. She is, without fail, the hottest girl in the room. Anytime. Anyplace. She has freckles and dimples and bright green eyes, and with someone else’s energy she’d be adorable. But there is nothing cute about Ivy. She is ice and hot metal and electricity. She is the girl who every lesbian wants, but she has never been with the same person twice. She’s one-of-a-kind but also predictable, so I will always be “best friend Andie,” never “girlfriend Andie.” Then she meets Dot, and Ivy does something even I would have never guessed—she sees Dot another day. And another. And another. Now my world is slowly going up in smoke, and no matter what I do, the flames grow higher. She lit that match without knowing who or what it would burn. Ivy K. Harlowe is a lot of things. But falling in love wasn’t supposed to be one of them...unless it was with me.




A Lovesong for India


Book Description

From the Booker Prize–winning novelist and screenwriter of Howard’s End: “Cinematic” and “exquisite” stories of longing, loss, and redemption (Publishers Weekly). In this expansive story collection, Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, author of Heat and Dust and the screenplays for The Remains of the Day and A Room with a View, continues her lifelong meditation on East and West. Set in India, England, and New York City, A Lovesong for India reveals what unites us across oceans, cultures, and lifetimes. In “Innocence,” an older couple, whose social standing is marred by a decades–old scandal, rent out rooms in their Delhi home for both companionship and income. The couple becomes deeply invested in the lives of their two tenants, but with the addition of a third renter—a beautiful and provocative woman from India—tensions in the household push the story to its feverish conclusion. “Talent” finds Jhabvala in New York City reflecting on the friction between family and societal expectations. Magda is a talent scout whose work is her entire life until she meets Ellie, a singer whose immense ability and unguarded personality captivate Magda. Soon Ellie is integrated into Magda’s extended family—for better or worse. This remarkable collection is the hallmark of Jhabvala’s celebrated career and a testament to her “balance, subtlety, wry humor, and beauty” (The New York Times).




A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry


Book Description

One part mixtape, one part disorientation guide, and one part career retrospective, Kyle "Guante" Tran Myhre's debut looks you directly in the eye and doesn't let you flinch. Ranging from justice to love, community action to personal reflection, A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry is a dedication to craft. Clocking in before the rest of us are even awake, the book wastes no time. It does the work and beckons you to follow. A compilation of poems, lyrics and essays from the UN presenter, MC, and two-time National Poetry Slam champion, this book is a love song tucked into a grenade, a necessary call that demands a response.




Heard It in a Love Song


Book Description

From Tracey Garvis Graves, the bestselling author of The Girl He Used to Know comes a love song of a story about starting over and second chances in Heard It in a Love Song. Love doesn’t always wait until you’re ready. Layla Hilding is thirty-five and recently divorced. Struggling to break free from the past—her glory days as the lead singer in a band and a ten-year marriage to a man who never put her first—Layla’s newly found independence feels a lot like loneliness. Then there's Josh, the single dad whose daughter attends the elementary school where Layla teaches music. Recently separated, he's still processing the end of his twenty-year marriage to his high school sweetheart. He chats with Layla every morning at school and finds himself thinking about her more and more. Equally cautious and confused about dating in a world that favors apps over meeting organically, Layla and Josh decide to be friends with the potential for something more. Sounds sensible and way too simple—but when two people are on the rebound, is it heartbreak or happiness that’s a love song away?