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Almost finished The Old Drift by Namwali Serpell. It's about to be the fastest 600 page novel I've read lol. It's alot of moving parts but when the stories started to intersect I couldn't put the book down.

plot from the link:

"The novel follows three very different founding families across generations, from 19th-century Europe to the banks of the near-future Zambezi river. The first matriarch we meet is Silliba, illegitimate daughter of an Italian noble and his housecleaner, born covered in hair that regrows as fast as it is cut. Next is Agnes, a rising tennis star - until she loses her sight. She secretly flees her wealthy, British parents to return to the home of her Rhodesian lover...who notices small eyes growing on her that recede on closer inspection. We then meet Matha, a young African woman coming of age as Zambia becomes a nation in the 1960s. These intertwining stories are as steeped in a solemn strain of magical realism as they are in actual history: the plot’s fantastical elements reveal the cruelties and absurdities of real-world colonialism."

Read a great Sci-fi story collection, Exhalation by Ted Chiang. I appreciated the fact that each story read like it was written by a different author. My favorite was the The Merchant and the Alchemist:

"The story follows Fuwaad ibn Abbas, a fabric merchant in the ancient city of Baghdad. It begins when he is searching for a gift to give a business associate and happens to discover a new shop in the marketplace. The shop owner, who makes and sells a variety of very interesting items, invites Fuwaad into the back workshop to see a mysterious black stone arch which serves as a gateway into the future, which the shop owner has made by the use of alchemy. Fuwaad is intrigued, and the shop owner tells him three stories of others who have traveled through the gate to meet and have conversation with their future selves. When Fuwaad learns that the shop keeper has another gate in Cairo that will allow people to travel even into the past, he makes the journey there to try to rectify a mistake he made twenty years earlier."

Hi all,

If you've ever been told, "the world doesn't revolve around you" then you're already familiar with the inspiration for my latest novel because, for Arthur Lee Matters, it does.

It's set on a world very similar to ours, but about a century or so more advanced.

I really enjoyed writing this story and hope you just as much fun reading it!

Feel free to ask any questions, I'll answer them as best I can without spoiling anything.

Summary:

Samson Timothy Dillard just wants to live a normal life and to make his own choices, yet it's becoming increasingly obvious that the story of his life might not be his to tell.

During the scientific golden age of a world no longer burdened by war, famine, or scarcity; where all people are blessed with the freedom to pursue their heart's desires... their only real problem may be God himself.

Kindle Link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QW46CP4/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_B1QNDbWS3EMTD

Paperback Link:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1537562878/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_D2QNDb64JHFGK

I guess for me, it wasn't even the mega-popular stuff that I got sick of, but all the mediocre, Jim Butcher-, David Eddings-level stuff. At a certain point, it just got to be like, if I'm going to be reading crap, can it at least be crap written by a black person? Crap without weird racist undertones or overtones? Crap not set in a modern straight white male interpretation of medieval Europe?

And when I did that, I found entire galaxies of other stuff (ranging from genuinely excellent to sub-mediocre) that I never would have found if I'd spent more time trying to engage with books where all the dark-skinned people worship the evil god or w/e. (Relatedly, don't read David Eddings. Just... don't.)

> I struggle because I do enjoy mainstream popular shit too and then it becomes cyclical

It also may help somewhat to expand your range of "mainstream and popular" beyond the US. Frex, Legend of the Condor Heroes has been hugely popular in China for decades and gets 80-episode TV adaptations every five years; you can swim forever just in this one series and have endless things to talk about with others. And yet it's nearly unknown in the US.

There are quite a few actually, some are more social history, some are more art/fashion and some are more linking political movements and style. If it is okay here are some links from Goodreads:

Art/Fashion

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32925874-dandy-lion

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24795876-fashion-tribes

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29150485-africa-rising

Social History and politics:

https://www.amazon.com/Stylin-African-American-Expressive-Beginnings/dp/0801482836

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1084356.The_Birth_of_Cool

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26543329-liberated-threads

There are also a lot of books on hair:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/199831.Hair_Story

https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Black-Womens-Hair/dp/1897178875/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=The+Politics+of+Black+Women%27s+Hair&qid=1574109757&s=books&sr=1-1

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/733519.Hair_Raising

I'm trying to decide on a biography to read. It's either "Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom" or "W.E.B. Du Bois: A Biography 1868-1963". I don't read that much about black historical figures...or...figures at all, really; this will be my first biography. But I do read nonfiction generally.