About the Ultra Manly Book Club
The Ultra Manly Book Club started with a vision.
A vision:
- That one day we men of the world could be more educated, have deeper conversations, and connect with our fellow men.
- That one day we could step out of the shadow of our mothers’ book clubs and proclaim that yes, we too, are intellectuals.
- That no matter what the day, what the year, and what the movie, we could say “It was good, but the book was better”, making our dates weak in the knees from our total awesomeness.
- Maybe one day we could be in the elevator with our boss’s boss’s boss and casually mention an idea that we got from reading the latest business book and be promoted on the spot.
- And at last, just once, we wouldn’t look like an idiot when standing in a group of people at a killer party and shamefully having to admit, that no, I have not heard about the newest hit author’s book.
Yeah right.
We started this book club for the same reason you came to our site. We were looking for new, good books to read. Books suitable for our Ultra-Masculinity.
So take a look around the site. There are book lists, reviews, blogs, and more. You’ll see everything you need to find 1 or 100 great books to read.
We’d love for you to join us, go to the Book Club section to find out how to join.
Chuck Norris counted to infinity… twice…
I’d love for you to review Mr Bison’s Journal, a hilarious collection of stories and observations on subjects that are not suitable for mealtime discussions. Very funny. More details at mrbison.com
oh, i’d be happy to send you a review copy or you and your readers can download free on 2/14/13 from Amazon link above.
I am Paul Evans, a writer and poet living in Baltimore. I am writing to tell you that my book Song of My Soul: Poems by an American Man of Color to Commemorate the 2019 Harlem Renaissance Centennial is now in Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Library. Therefore, I thought that I would at least let you know what I am doing as a black man, among others, to continue the work of the Harlem Renaissance writers, my field of academic interest.
Were Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Richard Bruce Nugent, Countee Cullen, and so many others alive today, what would they write and from where would they get the support and audience that all artists, including writers and poets, so desperately need to encourage them to continue? They would write widely and would need the ongoing support of black readers of literature especially just as they needed them during the Harlem Renaissance era.
I am attempting to keep the spirit and work of the Harlem Renaissance alive in anticipation of its centennial in 2019.
“In short, I am trying,” the Preface to my book reads, “—in my time and in my way—to follow in the proud tradition of American poets of color who used their literary gifts to blow freedom’s horn and to sing its songs, never, ever forgetting the many sacrifices and privations endured by our black ancestors who are now at rest.”
Now that public and college libraries are beginning to add my book to their collections, you might be interested to know about Song of My Soul, which can be found and looked inside on Amazon. It is on other websites. Today, the book has a rather high ranking on Amazon in “The Harlem Renaissance” category of the books section.
SOMS pays a latter-day tribute in general to all of the musicians, writers, artists, and poets of the renaissance and celebrates the gay writers and poets of the era.
I now try to say authentically in my poems what the gay poets of the renaissance were not able to say, considering the era in which they wrote.
Among my book’s over 350 culturally diverse poems, something for almost everyone, are gay-oriented poems such as “What’s a Black Man to Do?,” “Black Sapphos,” “I Never Kissed Langston Hughes,” “Bourbon Street Blues,” “Brother Sister,” “Callin’ Names,” “Over the Rainbow in a Closet,” “From the First Day,” “My Wife, My Mistress, and My Boyfriend,” “I Wanted Her the Way a Lesbian Would,” “Satin Skin on a Black Prince,” “The Down Low Lowdown,” “Richardo Cory,” “Brokeback Blues,” “Say Goodbye with a Kiss,” “Such a Chance Meeting of You and Me,” “Playing on the Other Team,” “The Black Man’s Manhood Burden,” and a “A Good-looking Brown-Skin Man.” On Amazon, the “used books” section does not feature the revised edition of my book, but the “new books” section does. These poems may constitute the largest number of gay-themed poems in one volume of general American poetry.
The above poems and others are intended to offer a contemporary look at sexual and cultural expressions that always have been a part of American life, both black and white, however hidden or obscured.
I am a former reporter and managing editor at the Baltimore Afro-American and a former columnist at The Sun. A graduate of Morgan State and Johns Hopkins universities, I have been an
English department faculty member at colleges in Baltimore where I taught composition, American Literature, and black American Literature. I am working on another poetry book, a novel, a play, a collection of short stories, and a film script.
Sincerely,
Paul Evans
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