A couple of weeks back, an acquaintance of mine from my Yahoo! Messenger days asked me for a book recommendation. I recommended Hill Harper’s The Wealth Cure: Putting Money in Its Place. I acquired it in 2011 as the 3rd of the Hill Harper self-help motivational books in my library. My acquaintance acquired the book last week and asked if I would read and discuss it alongside her. I agreed to do so and went looking for it in the boxes of books I haven’t unpacked yet. I quickly gave up on that and looked through my Audible library to see if it was one of the digital books I’ve purchased over the years. I found the book but while sifting through the library, I found a book that instantly reminded me of how intrigued I was by it when I first read it. That brings me to this week’s moment in the Flashback Friday series: Carl Weber’s Lookin’ for Luv.
How I first came across this moment? I first came across the book while in Waldenbooks during the Honors Economics 12 Atlanta trip. The summary on the back of the book intrigued me. Something about it felt like a film I would see on Black Starz! during its heyday. Along with a postcard of the Atlanta cityscape, the book was my first purchase from the now-defunct bookstore. I read it when I wasn’t grading papers as a student aide for Mr. Isbell’s Physics class during the fall semester of my senior year at Huffman High.
What it meant to me then? Upon reading the first few pages, I honestly couldn’t put it down. There was a lot of drama in those pages…not the kind you see on Real Housewives of Atlanta or any of these other reality television shows but rather a real-life, I can see this actually happening everyday kind of drama. The book centers on 4 New Yorkers—all connected to each other in one way or another—who are looking for varying degrees of love and they find it via a phone chat line. I remember being absolutely floored at some of the stuff I was reading in that book. It felt too real…even more so when I used the BET Vibeline chat service in my own searches for love a few years later.
What it means to me now? It’s been close to 18 years since my first read of the book…at least 10 since my last read. Now that I’m reflecting on it, I purchased it on Audible back in October 2013 with the intent to read it but I spent much of the next several months trying to rescue a relationship the other party didn’t want. By the time that matter was put to bed, I was in graduate school and life kinda happened after that. Now that I’ve realized it’s in my Audible library, I’ll get around to reading it. In fact, I’ll set it aside for Summer 2021 reading.
