On the Southern Literary Trail discussion
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General Bookishness
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Retired: What are you reading?
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Diane, "Miss Scarlett"
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Aug 01, 2015 07:05AM
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what is this months group reads? under current reading it is last months group reads.
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Hi Erika, Our August reading includes Go Set a Watchmanand Big Bad Love by Larry Brown. Josh is also doing the moderator's choice of Tennessee Landscape with Blighted Pine: Poems by Jesse Graves.
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Tom, so good to hear your impressions of Go Set a Watchman. My initial thoughts are the same. Posting discussion topics this morning. I value your opinion.
I am currently reading Lonesome Doveand Go Set a Watchman. I started Lonesome Dove on vaction after finishing my vaction read.
Mod
Thanks for the kind words.
BTW: T. Geronimo Johnson got back to me and said he would be happy to participate in a discussion of Welcome to Braggsville: A Novel if we were to have one. How do you suggest we should handle that?
Ann wrote: "Bill, I loved Lonesome Dove."I would recommend Lonesome Doveto anyone. I am loving it. I loved the mini-series and I am just now getting around to reading it. The book adds even more depth to the mini-series.
Bill, I read it with a book group that was reading the Pulitzer Prize novels. It was one of the few novels that everyone seemed to like.
for the larry brown fans.
billy ray farm.
4 out of 5 stars.
I found this really good like writing , details and story telling.
I found most of book really good but the 2 longest essays was lacking and that they just drag on.
I think I would put it on to vote sometime.
billy ray farm.
4 out of 5 stars.
I found this really good like writing , details and story telling.
I found most of book really good but the 2 longest essays was lacking and that they just drag on.
I think I would put it on to vote sometime.
I am going to read face the music AND ON FIRE BY LARRY GROWN NEXT
I'm just starting into The Pecan Man, a north Florida book, and Everything I Never Told You (mostly because I e-checked it out from the library and have to get her done).If any of you like to theme your reads along with current events (I read The Martian during the recent Pluto fly-by and of course, TKAM to celebrate the release of Watchman), I do have a recommendation for y'all that ties into the 10th anniversary of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
Over 1,800 souls were lost during and in the aftermath of the storm, and as a New Orleanian & woman who has family that lived on the Mississippi coast, I can only say that the before- and after-snapshots of our lives can only compare with the before and afters of 9/11.
The kicker is that of those dead in the water and in attics, a local doctor, along with others, is accused of having murdered some of them, just hours away from rescue. Did she kill them, and if so, was it merely a "mercy killing" and therefore, somehow forgivable? Are some lives worth less than others?
This book is the best Katrina story I've read. It is non-fiction and set in the hospital where both my children were born, a mere three miles from our old home in Uptown New Orleans. My older boy was a micro-preemie and spent the first four months at this hospital, and I personally know some of the doctors who are written about. All I can say is WOW and highly recommend Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital.
The accolades for the book include:
-One of the New York Times’s Best Ten Books of the Year
-Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
-Winner of the 2014 J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize, the PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Ridenhour Book Prize, the 2014 American Medical Writers Association Medical Book Award (Public/Healthcare Consumers), a 2014 Science in Society Journalism Award, and the SIBA 2014 Book Award for Nonfiction
-An ALA Notable Book, finalist for the NYPL 2014 Helen Bernstein Award, shortlisted for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Award and the ALA Andrew Carnegie Medal
-An NPR “Great Reads” Book, a Chicago Tribune Best Book, a Seattle Times Best Book, a Time Magazine Best Book, Entertainment Weekly’s #1 Nonfiction Book, a Christian Science Monitor Best Book, and a Kansas City Star Best Book
This is not a happy story at all, but truly and utterly fascinating.
Mod
It's not Southern but Everything I Never Told You is an excellent book that tackles many of the same themes. It's one of my favorite reads of the year.
Leanne wrote: "All I can say is WOW and highly recommend Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital. "
This book has been on my radar for some time and I would love an opportunity to read it with a group.
Read that Leanne and it was very good. Agree Tom that is a very good book as well.
Mod
by Rick Bragg which is due out next month. I haven't read anything of Rick's since All Over But the Shoutin' so I'm really looking forward to this.
Have that one too, Tom. Looking forward to it.Finished Church of Marvels
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Mod
I'm on the wait list for this one at the library. However, when my number comes up I don't know if I'll be ready to read. I'm a little behind. Lots going on and reading is taking a backseat. I did like your review. It sounds very interesting and something I would like!
August 7, 2015Hey Y'all !
I am a bit behind because I am playing catch up with my other groups . I read Kristen Hannah's Nightingale by Audiables/ Whispersync! Love to read that way ! I follow my reading but someone reads to me ! I feel like a kid getting a bedtime story ! The book was great too . It is easier to write reviews that way too . Of course I did read TKAM again and now I am finishing Go Set A Watchman before I also finish The Paying Guest for my Bright Young Things Group . Keeping my eyes and ears open for new Southern Lit . Too! I do have some new movie news to share with you . I have pre- premier tickets to the new film which will only be shown in Oxford privately first for Nick Nolte's new film . The premier is August 17 th ! My good friend Susan McPhail plays Nolte's girlfriend ! I am so excited ! I have more news like the actual Title of the movie and some other book news but I am inside and my notes are in my car ! You will have to wait on the rest of my update ! Meanwhile , I am reading and I wish you all Happy Reading Too !
I can't wait to start Bull Mountain ! Also , our buddies Charles Dodd White , David Joy , and more great Appalacian writers are gathering at a local bookstore in Northern North Carolina to sign a new compilation of Appalacian fiction. It is called Appalacia Now . I am going to order it and hope I can have it signed . I will try to post the address in a bit if you are interested in the book. It is an Indie Bookstore !
Dawn
I read Doc by Mary Doria Russell and I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about that time and the people but Doc Holliday had a sad life.
Mod
It is very good, but then again, I haven't been disappointed by anything she has written. I particularly enjoyed The Sparrow.
Finished Make Your Home Among Strangers. 4 stars : My review : https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Ann wrote: "I read Doc by Mary Doria Russell and I really enjoyed it. I learned a lot about that time and the people but Doc Holliday had a sad life."Loved Doc, his life was so different from the way he was portrayed on the television.
It really touched me that Doc got sick so young and struggled to make some kind of life for himself.
Mod
Mike i just finished Big Bad Love also. I like how he imagined the punishment for plagiarists.Felt like i was thrown into Mississippi red mud, and the epitome of responsibility was not to spill the beer.
On to
A Miracle of Catfish
Catfish.....my favorite Brown to date, despite being unfinished. Perfect blend of grit, harshness, violence, love, hope, and perhaps the best use of humor (in places comedy).
We're diggin a big pond and riding a go cart. Ursula has been mentioned a few times.In Big Bad Love, 92 Days story down towards the second half started to read and sound like a Cormac McCarthy thing. I thought they were all terrific stories.
Brown has a way of making characters jump right off the page.
The Pecan Man is a super little book set in a small town in north Florida during the late 1970s - a town our elderly narrator compares to the fictitious Maycomb and Mayberry.Ora Lee dictates the story, 25 years later, as her confession to the part she played in the killing of a white boy - a boy who happened to be the only child of the town's police chief. A homeless old black man who Ora Lee once sheltered, called the "pecan man" by locals, is serving a life sentence for the stabbing death. Is he really guilty?
The narration of this audio book is one of the best I've ever heard, and it is available for free download from the library. If you've got a commute coming up, I highly recommend listening to Ora Lee, Blanche, Poopsie, and of course, the Pecan Man come to life.
The first chapter was the First Place winner of the 2006 CNW/FFWA Florida State Writing Competition in the Unpublished Novel category.
Mod
Easiest sell of the day....I added!
Laura wrote: "LeanneEasiest sell of the day....I added!"
Yippee! The audio is excellent if you can borrow it.
Mod
Laura wrote: "Yay, my library has it. It may be a bit before I get to it but I put on hold."Isn't that always the way? So many good books and limited time! I've been trying to find some of our recent group reads as e-books or audio books from the library, and darn it! They expect me to actually put on shoes and drive over there to get a real book! Nervy.
Mod
A Miracle of Catfish Well Josh I finished it. What a terrific boookWhat a perfect ending/no ending. Larry Brown has a heart attack; dies, his final notes remain, all these unresolved threads stay unresolved, no final story line fit get-together s, just another day.
Jimmy's daddy done Jimmy wrong again.
Evelyn is playing with fire and she doesn't realize how dangerous it can be.
Cortez has started to resolve himself to a relationship with Albert
The inclusion of Mr Brown's final notes let us imagine an ending calling upon our own imaginations. How perfect is that. This is reminiscent of Big Bad Love and how the ending of each short story is where the action really begins.
Just another day.
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CRISIS! My daughter's boyfriend's Los Angeles Public Library card just expired so I can't access their massive Overdrive/Kindle collection unless he goes down there and renews it. I guess I'll just have to be happy with the five other library cards that I have.
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My daughter lured him up to Northern California a year ago and he hasn't been back since.
Five library cards? You are a rich man indeed.Finished Villa America
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
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No, just cheap. I'm the eternal Scotsman.
The daughter-daddy rule kicks in. Young Man if'n you want to court my baby-daughter you gotta mow my lawn, or renew your LA Literary Access Device poste haste
Mod
I've been reading too much Larry Brown
Mod
He already lives with us. The better to keep an eye on them and all that. I'll just have to sell my wife on a trip down to LACMA and get my own card while I'm there.
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