Supper Club Planning and Two Southern Cookbooks

One of the things I really want to do this year is start a rotating supper club with some friends. I'd love to have a steady recurring themed evening of food and friendship. I've already roped one other family in on the fun, and would like to find a third. I think it would be interesting to pick a theme or a cookbook or a famous chef and use them as inspiration. I imagine an Italian night, a meal out of A Homemade Life, and riffing off the Chopped judges. I also imagine doing a full Southern meal for my decidedly Yankee friends. In addition to picking a few family favorites, I have two cookbooks from NetGalley that will help me find just the right dishes.

First is Besh Big Easy: 101 Home Cooked New Orleans Recipes. I love love love the blues and New Orleans, and I can't stop myself from requesting every book (fiction and non-fiction) set in New Orleans that I see, but I didn't think this through really well, as the majority of the recipes are, of course, seafood.  I am not a huge seafood fan and even if I were I live in South Dakota-- as far from the sea as you can get. That said, I did find a handful of potential candidates in the book, and the writing and reading is quite lovely, as is the photography.  I've bookmarked Bananas Foster, Mamma's Bread Pudding with Hot Buttered Rum Sauce, Sweet Corn Macque Choux, and Baked Cheesy Grits as potential dinner recipes. Besh Big Easy is released on September 29th.

The second book that I've requested is Nashville Eats: Hot Chicken, Buttermilk Biscuits, and 100 More Southern Recipes from Music City.  Mike and I love Nashville, and really Tennessee as a whole. When we first were together we visited Memphis several times, and I have family in Murfreesboro so this is right up our alley. Chess Pie is definitely on our list of recipes for Southern night and I was thrilled to see a recipe for that included (tho I do have a similar family version.) Nashville Eats is more than just recipes, it also includes beautiful descriptions of Nashville itself and the musical history. This one is a book you can just sit and read, much like A Homemade Life. If I had any complaint it would be that the Kindle formatting is awkward, but there's always the paper version to get around that problem. Nashville Eats will be released on October 6th.

I am really excited to get the Supper Club going and can't wait to kick it off with a meal from home.

The Sleeping Night by Barbara Samuel

A couple months ago I ran across a review of The Sleeping Night at Karen Knows Best. I kept it as unread in my Google Reader for weeks, until it occurred to me to request it from NetGalley, which I promptly did.  Barbara Samuel is one of the aliases of Ruth Wind, who wrote one of my favorite books, In the Midnight Rain. I was super excited to get this one and started reading almost immediately. And then stalled. See, this one is a actual .pdf which meant I couldn't adjust the font, and the font was tiny.  On top of this, the book is fairly intense. Here's the summary from Amazon.com.

An unforgettable romance in an unforgiving time.

They'll need love and courage to see the dawn.

He's a hometown native, returning from the war, determined to change the world he'd fought to protect. She's the girl who's been his secret friend since childhood, now a beautiful woman. Her war-time letters kept him alive. But he's black, and she's white.

In 1946 in Gideon, Texas, their undeniable love might get them both killed.

The book opens with Isaiah coming home from war. As many black American WWII soldiers discovered, integration wasn't the same in Europe as it was in the American South. Behaviors that were okay in Europe were absolutely NOT okay in 1946 Texas.  Isaiah plans to say hello and goodbye in one breath and get out of town before he gets into trouble. He knows that he has feelings for Angel Corey, he always has, and he knows that those feelings will get him (or them) killed.

Angel's father, Parker, has always operated the colored store on the wrong side of town. Unfortunately, Parker died a few days before Isaiah gets home, leaving Angel alone. With no guardian and no husband, Angel is immediately under suspicion. A proper woman would leave the store and move into town. Angel has lived there her entire life though, and can't see how there's anything wrong about being there. Angel loves the black side of town as much as the white side. Her beliefs were instilled in her by her father, who served in WWI with Isaiah's father. Isaiah is her best friend and she has a hard time hiding that he's important to her.

The summary from Amazon would lead you to believe that Isaiah comes home gung ho to shake things up ("determined to change the world he'd fought to protect".) While he does come home feeling the weight of integration and Jim Crow, the book is not about Isaiah's determination to integrate Gideon, Texas. The book is about the two of them realizing their love for each other and the impossibility of it.  Integration isn't even an option yet, it's not even under discussion. Jim Crow is still law. This book is, all the way through, a love story. A tense, haunting, beautiful, love story.

The climax is a bit rushed, and I have a couple little annoyances with the book, but I loved it. One thing Barbara Samuel does well (and does well as Ruth Wind too) is setting. You get a really great sense of post-war Texas and war-time Europe. You know what the humidity feels like. The river in Gideon is a character itself. At the end of The Sleeping Night there is an except of In the Midnight Rain and another book, Jezebel's Blues. It wasn't until I got to this, after I finished the entire book, that I realized that both books are set in the same town. In the Midnight Rain takes place in between the time periods of The Sleeping Night. I didn't pay close enough attention to notice if some of the characters appear in both, but you can bet I'll be going back to find out. I'm not sure yet when Jezebel's Blues takes place, but it too is set in Gideon. Overall, one of the best books I've read yet this year.


Disclosure: I received this book as an ebook from Net Galley.

Boy's Life by Robert R McCammon

A month of so ago Trish reviewed Boy's Life by Robert R McCammon. We were just about to leave for vacation and despite my misgivings on the size of it, I picked up a copy and took it with me. It's not very often that a review makes me pick something up immediately and then actually read it, but I'm glad I did. It's a huge book and there are a lot of things going on. For much of the book I was wondering how McCammon was possibly going to tie it all together, but I think he managed. I'm about to get very thinky with this review, so if your brain doesn't already hurt you might want to skip the long version.

So what's it about? The narrator of the story is 11 (12?) year old Cory Mackenson, resident of Zephyr, Alabama in 1964. As the story opens, Cory and his father witness the cover up to a murder. The murderer isn't found and the identity of the victim remains a mystery. Cory is, understandably, very curious about what happened and as the story progresses there are tiny little clues that start to add up to the big finale. In between there are four friends, a summer vacation, a ceremony for a river beast, a flood, some voodoo, a naked man, some deaths, a monkey, the Beach Boys, some ghosts, a story writing contests, a little girl named "The Demon", some Nazis, racism and a shiny new bike, among other things. It's a big book.

The short verdict? I enjoyed it. I didn't love it, but I very much want to talk about it, so go read it.

The long version: Did I like it? Did it work for me? I'd say it mostly worked. There are a few moments that are either magical realism or the fantasy of a 12 year old and if it's the former then no, but if it's the later then yeah, it worked. It's hard to say which it was because it's all told like fact, but I like to think that it's how a 12 year old remembered it when writing the story as an adult. There is a strong theme of not growing up too fast, and as a fictional adult writing from his perspective as a child, adding those elements would make sense. Cory is definitely writing a story. He wants to be a writer and he addresses the reader directly on occasion, both as an adult and as a child. For most of the book you can forget this (and are supposed to), but there are moments where you have to wonder if it "really happened" or not. (Ok, yeah, this is a hard thing to explain. Of course it didn't happen, this is fiction. But it's hard to tell if it really happened to Cory Mackenson, the writer of the story in the story. Follow?)

The writing is excellent. If he didn't write such large books, I'd probably read another McCammon to see if the voice is McCammon's or Cory's. The scenes are drawn well and I can easily put myself into Zephyr, Alabama and see it all happen (ok, almost all of it.) There were some events that didn't really affect the story that could have been left out, but in hindsight perhaps they are events that were important to the 12 year old narrator? It's hard to tell. There are moments of perfect description and moments of heart-stopping terror. There is even a little bit of romance, if you count The Lady and the Moon Man.

One of the plot lines in it is a bit about a local writer and how publishers, and by extension readers, didn't want books about local towns, they wanted something fantastic to happen in them and I wonder if the whole book isn't really that same thing? A great book with Southern flavor with a heavier murder plot to make the reader interested, but the book is really just about the town and growing up in it. This is all getting very meta, but are we really supposed to believe it all? The small Southern town part is very well done. The other parts are much more heavy handed, like maybe a 12 year old inserted them. But, intentionally heavy handed. I am REALLY bad at explaining myself here. Maybe this isn't how everyone else who reads it sees it. An example of this, for those of you who've read it, is the thing from the carnival. While still very well written, it seems an obvious departure from say, the description of his last day of school and his old teacher.

If you're at all interested in it, be sure to check Trish's review, as her's is much more about the book and not so much about my tired brain seeing things that probably aren't there. You could also read CJ's review at My Years of Reading Seriously. Neither of them got all thinky like I did, so perhaps I am seeing things.

Boy's Life by Robert A McCammon
Thorndike Press
1991
837 pages
Large Print

TBR Day: gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson

"THERE ARE GODS in Alabama: Jack Daniel's, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus."



With a first line like that, how can this NOT be a great book? I first put gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson on my PBS wishlist some time last summer. I wanted to read it for Maggie's Southern Literature Challenge. Well, I failed the challenge and I never read the book either. I did, however, add it to my list of books I was DEFINITELY going to read in 2008. I started reading it on Sunday, at the tail end of a perfect day spent on the back deck. From start to finish, I felt no urge to dip into any other book.



I've been reading Joshilyn Jackson's blog for a while. I knew she was funny, but I guess I just didn't expect her humor to carry over to the book so well. She has quite the way with words, and knows just how to turn a phrase to evoke a perfect picture. For example, her blog is called Faster Than Kudzu. Now, if you're not from the South this will mean nothing to do, but if you are from the South you know, that's FAST. There are trees under those vines.
Here's a little snippet from a recent blog post:

"WHAT RADICAL DOOM IS LIKELY TO HAPPEN IF WE PUT UP A PIER IN THE PLACE
WHERE A PIER HAS STOOD FOR HALF A CENTURY?

My patented radical Doom-meter needle barely moved. It didn’t even get
past diddly into SQUAT territory."

Here's Publisher's Weekly summary of the book, stolen from Amazon.com:

From Publishers WeeklyArlene Fleet, the refreshingly imperfect heroine of
Jackson's frank, appealing debut, launches her story with a list of the title's
deities: "high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus." The first
god, also a date rapist by the name of Jim Beverly, she left dead in her
hometown of Possett, Ala., but the last she embraces wholeheartedly when high
school graduation allows her to flee the South, the murder and her slutty
reputation for a new life in Chicago. Upon leaving home, Arlene makes a bargain
with God, promising to forgo sex, lies and a return home if he keeps Jim's body
hidden. After nine years in Chicago as a truth-telling celibate, an unexpected
visitor from home (in search of Jim Beverly) leads her to believe that God is
slipping on his end of the deal. As Arlene heads for the Deep South with her
African-American boyfriend, Burr, in tow, her secrets unfold in unsurprising but
satisfying flashbacks. Jackson brings levity to familiar themes with a spirited
take on the clichés of redneck Southern living: the Wal-Mart culture, the subtle
and overt racism and the indignant religion. The novel concludes with a final,
dramatic disclosure, though the payoff isn't the plot twist but rather Jackson's
genuine affection for the people and places of Dixie. Copyright © Reed Business
Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Now doesn't that sound good? Now imagine you're from Alabama, lived there for the first 27 years of your life, and have now been living in South Dakota for the past 6 years? Doesn't it sound great? Well, it is. The story alternates between the present and the past and hits both perfectly. Somehow she manages to tell you what happened and still keep you in suspense about.. what happened. The characters are great including the character of Alabama itself. I loved so many of the scenes with Burr and her family, Jackson totally nails the old home racism. Arlene has promised God she won't lie and some of the ways she gets around that are amazing. (Yes, I realize the author had plenty of time to think of creative ways of NOT lying. I'm still impressed.)


If you want a sneak peak, you can follow this link and read the first chapter at Amazon.com. I recommend that you do, and then, buy the book and read the rest. This is such a great debut book, once again I am amazed at what authors seem to have in their heads, just waiting to be written into a book. I have her second book (Between, Georgia ) sitting on my shelves, and I think I might just read it next!

You can see the other TBR Day participants here.

This is my fourth book for the July Book Blowout.

Southern Reading Challenge

Maggie over at Maggie Reads is hosting a Southern Reading Challenge this summer. After much deliberation I have decided on my three choices, and they are:

1. 1. gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson
2. 2. The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
3. 3. Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

All three of these are on my bookshelf already, so I can dive right in.

Randomness

Has anyone else seen this? I'm not sure how I feel about an 8th Harry Potter, even if it's not part of the storyline. While is is cool to see the rest of the details, it doesn't seem like a neat ending. It's the "we can still be friends" of breakups. I still need to re-read books 5 and 6 in preparation.

I'm reading The Westing Game for the Newbery Challenge. I'm over half through and really could care less. Good thing it's short.

I still need to decide on one more Southern title for the Southern Challenge.

If you came to see me last Thursday and I never made it back to see you, I'm sorry. I hope to be more friendly this week. In a related comment, can I just say how many tries it takes me to get letter verification correct on typepad accounts?

I went back to the library yesterday. I've suddenly become addicted to young adult novels. I have The Westing Game, Gathering Blue, A Mango Shaped Space, One of Those Hideous Novels Where the Mother Dies, The Silent Boy, I Am the Messenger, 13 Little Blue Envelopes ...

I am so ready for a vacation. 2nd week of June!

It's Friday, it's Friday!

It's finally Friday. It's been a very very long week at work, and today had promise of being super-sucky. So it was with mixed feelings that I had to call in sick (ok, call in late) to work with a sick child. Really! His fever was at 103 and there were disgusting things happening. So I'm home this morning and my husband will be home with the monkey this afternoon. And the monkey? Thrilled to be home with mom.

Here's a few little bits of stuff, none of which is quite enough for a full post.

First, do you watch American Idol? Have you been to Television without Pity to read the recaps? I about died laughing at the recaplet of this weeks results show. I can't wait for the full one.

A few weeks ago Michelle at 3M pointed out that I have all the ingredients to complete the Reading Through the Decades Challenge without adding any more books! So I'm headed over now to officially sign up.

And speaking of 3M, a month ago (or more, who can keep track of time any more?) she nominated me for the Thinking Blogger Award. This is an "award" that you give to 5 people whose blogs make you think. Then you link back to the originator of the award with a nice looking icon. I LOVE the idea of this, that you're singling out some blogs that you love, and in turn those people acknowledge 5 more. Here's the catch though- every time someone goes back to the originator he gets clicks, and his site has advertising. I am a bit cynical, and well, to me it seems a little bit like a very well thought out way to get thousands and thousands of visitors to click on your site. I am torn though, as I am honestly thrilled that I made someone's list. I want to continue it, I want to list five people that make me think, that I enjoy, but I don't want to link back. So I'm not. Here's my five blogs:

1. Mary Elizabeth William's neighborhood
2. Journeywoman
3. Maggie Reads
4. Random Musings
5. one plus two

And speaking of Maggie Reads, I still need to pick my choices for the Southern Reading Challenge- I had intended to do that now when I started this post, but got drawn into all the choices. The challenge doesn't start until June 1st, so I'll come back to it later.

Next, a friend emailed me a link to StandingWomen.org today. You can follow that link to read more of the background, but here the action part:

Please stand with us for five minutes of silence at 1 p.m. your local time on May 13, 2007, in your local park, school yard, gathering place, or any place you deem appropriate, to signify your agreement with the statement below. We ask you to invite the men who you care about to join you. We ask that you bring bells to ring at 1 p.m. to signify the beginning of the five minutes of silence and to ring again to signify the end of the period of silence. During the silence, please think about what you individually and we collectively can do to attain this world. If you need to sit rather than stand, please feel free to do so. Afterwards, hopefully you and your loved ones can talk together about how we can bring about this world.

If you are in Rapid City, South Dakota (as I am) the stand-in (stand-off? moment of silence? big event? bell ringing?) will take place at the Memorial Park Rose Garden by the Civic Center. This is on a Sunday, Mother's Day.

The only book I've completed lately was Plum Lovin' by Janet Evanovich. It was very short, and very typical Stephanie Plum. I did enjoy the book, but Morelli and Ranger were both absent, so it was not a favorite. I am glad that I did not pay for it (I got it from paperbackswap and have already mailed it on!)

This weekend will either be crazy busy with family stuff, including at least 8 hours in the car, or crazy sucky with a sick baby. Either way, I'm hoping for lots of reading time. I'm 30 pages from the end of my current book, and have big plans for others.

Southern Reading Challenge 2007

Maggie over at Maggie Reads has proposed a summer reading challenge that I can not resist. The challenge is to read three Southern books, by Southern authors, in Southern settings. This does not begin until June 1, so I have plenty of time to pick my books. Maggie has been posting a lot of stuff about Southern authors to help people choose their titles, and I'll be taking her advise into consideration.

Since moving to South Dakota (at least it's South Something!) from Alabama in 2002, I miss a lot of things Southern. Sweet tea. Chick-Fil-A. Kudzo. The Auburn/ Alabama rivalry. A couple of years ago I wrote a letter to an old college professor of mine at Auburn. Dr. Flynt was such a great teacher. His classes were just outright enjoyable. I just googled a little bit and found out that he has a (short) wikipedia page! A bookseller called Alabama Booksmith has a nice short bio of him that starts with- "Wayne Flynt is the leading authority on Alabama history. Author of eleven books, Dr. Flynt has actively devoted his life to bringing the issues of history and poverty and their social impact to the forefront of the public's consciousness."

I took two classes from him, one of which was "History of the South since 1877" which I took the winter quarter 1997. A quarter or so later I took Alabama History from him. During the History of the South class we all had to read a book off a list and present it to a small group of students, and Dr. Flynt. This event took place at his home, and his wife made us Mississippi Mud Pie. Ever since that class I have said that I wanted to read everything on his list, but I didn't keep the list. So in the fall of 2004 I wrote to him and asked if he would please send me a copy of the list. He replied immediately, and personally, and it sure seems that he remembers me. (Remember, I took 2 classes from him, for a total of 24 weeks, 6 years in the past, at Auburn, not a particularly small school).

The list is the back two pages of his syllabus, and the copy he sent me was clearly pulled off the back of a syllabus. Makes me wish I'd asked for the entire thing. I do not know how or why he chose these books.

His Key: @- Alabama writers, #-Pulitzer/ Nobel Prize/ National Book Award Winners, *- his favorites (the stars were added before he mailed it to me.)

POOR WHITES
Harry Crews, A Childhood
Eudora Welty, A Curtain of Green*
James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men@
Erskine Caldwell, Tobacco Road
Dorothy Allison, Bastard out of Carolina
Rick Bragg, All Over But the Shoutin' @*
Lee Smith, Saving Grace

RELIGION
Clyde Edgerton, Raney*
Flannery O'Connor, Wise Blood
-, The Violent Bear it Away
-, A Good Man is Hard to Find and Other Stories
Walker Percy, Lancelot @
William Styron, Sophie's Choice*
Will Campbell, Brother to a Dragonfly*
Dennis Covington, Salvation on Sand Mountain @*

WOMEN
Alice Walker, The Color Purple #
Vicki Covington, Bird of Paradise @*
Elizabeth Dewberry Vaughn. Break the Heart of Me @
Lee Smith, Oral History
-, Fair and Tender Ladies
Mark Childress, Crazy in Alabama @
Nanci Kincaid, Balls @*

RACE
Richard Wright, Native Son
-, Black Boy
Shirley Ann Grau, The Keeper of the House @#*
Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird @#*
William Styrom, The Confessions of Nat Turner *
Ralph Ellison, The Invisible Man @#*
Zora Nell Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God *
William Faulker, Intruder in the Dust *
Albert Murray, South to a Very Old Place @

POLITICS
Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men #*

COMMUNITY/ FAMILY
Olive Ann Burns, Cold Sassy Tree *
Ferrell Sams, Run With the Horseman *
William Faulker, The Unvanquished #*
-, Light in August #*
Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel *
John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces #*
Dori Sanders, Clover
Pat Conroy, The Prince of Tides *
Peter Taylor, A Summons to Memphis #*
Elise Sanguinetti, The Last of the Whitfields @
Eudora Welty, The Optimist's Daughter #*
Judith Patterson, Sweet Mystery @
Mary Ward Brown, Tongues of Flame @*
Clyde Edgerton, Walking Across Egypt
-, In Memory of Junior
Eugene Walter, The Untidy Pilgrim @
Walker Percy, The Movie Goer. @

In case you wonder, I read Dori Sanders' Clover. I do not remember it.