Tayari's Blog: I've Been Tagged

1) My first real short story was a really autobiographical story called "The Pursuit Of Michael Thomas," which was based on my hard-core Jr. High crush on a bass drum player in the marching band named Forrest Timmons. The main character and under-appreciated girl named TANYA in in love with FRANK who leaves his acne scarred girlfriend in favor of TANYA. Of course, in real life, he did no such thing. The story won a prize and I gave my first reading.

2)I have not read The Catcher In The Rye. No real reason why I haven't. I just haven't. So often people describe a person or a character and a cross between Holden Caufield and __________. I pretend like I know what they mean. I sort of do, but not quite.

3) Like Nichelle, I often read in public. I was in a swanky restaurant in Baltimore with a really good book called The Only Girl in The Car. Anyway, as I was reading in the candlelit restaurant, the waiter offered me a clip-on book light. I declined. It's one thing to dine in a romantic restaurant alone. It's one thing to have a book as your diner companion. It is something else all together to use a book-light!

4)I don't read The New Yorker, Poets and Writers, or Publisher's Weekly. All that anointing makes me edgy.

5)Nichelle says her sweetie won her heart after waxing about James Baldwin. Well, I almost ended up in a stupid romance after a man pretended that he, too, loved Gayl Jones.

Okay, that's it. My turn to tag: Fred Smith and Nikki Woods... you're it.