Cormac McCarthy's early work Child of God is a great slice of Southern Gothic.
Oh yeah. As is Outer Dark .
Angel: Eve. So, I guess we should, I don't know, talk? Eve: About what? Angel: About what happened back there with us. Eve: Angel, it's not like this is the first time I've had sex under a mystical influence. I went to U.C. Santa Cruz.
'Life of the Party'
Literary Buffistas 3: Don't Parse the Blurb, Dear.
There's more to life than watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer! No. Really, there is! Honestly! Here's a place for Buffistas to come and discuss what it is they're reading, their favorite authors and poets. "Geez. Crack a book sometime."
lisah - Mar 10, 2009 9:27:14 am PDT #8565 of 28431
Punishingly Intricate
Toddson - Mar 10, 2009 9:32:20 am PDT #8566 of 28431
Friends don't let friends read "Atlas Shrugged"
Cavalier and Yankee by William R. Taylor
Pix - Mar 10, 2009 9:56:02 am PDT #8567 of 28431
The status is NOT quo.
William R. Taylor
Okay, that's creepy. That's my dad's name, middle initial and all. And though he is a published author (a filmography of Sydney Pollack published in the late 70s), that is definitely not his book. I guess it's not an unusual name, but it still made me look twice.
meara - Mar 10, 2009 11:10:17 am PDT #8568 of 28431
Wow, Corwood is all over that!
I'm just all excited about my public library still being Teh Awesome. I was linked to a random YA publisher that has cool books (but not a lot of them), and started seeing if my library had them, but since they're not a big one, wasn't hopeful...but then I realized I'd already read a few of their books. And lo and behold, the library carries most of their books! YAY. So I put a bunch of the interesting ones in their catalog on hold. From my house. At midnight. Cause I can do that too.
I love the future.
Ginger - Mar 10, 2009 11:15:00 am PDT #8569 of 28431
"It didn't taste good. It tasted soooo horrible. It tasted like....a vodka martini." - Matilda
More nonfiction:
20th century
Melissa Faye Greene: Praying for Sheetrock - racial politics in a microcosm
The Temple Bombing - While the subject is the 1958 Temple bombing (You may recall that Miss Daisy's response was "But the Temple is Reform."), it's a bigger examination of the Other in the South.
Janisse Ray: Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
As a Vanderbilt grad, I'll put a word in for The Fugitives' I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition. I think their basic tenet was wrong like a wrong thing, but they sure wrote pretty.
Civil War/Reconstruction
Albion Tourgée's A Fool's Errand, an 1878 memoir about Reconstruction by the man who later represented Plessy in Plessy v. Ferguson.
Mary Chesnut's Civil War (C. Vann Woodward, ed) - like almost any diary, it gets tedious at times, but it's a great contemporary source.
Hil R. - Mar 10, 2009 6:22:19 pm PDT #8570 of 28431
Sometimes I think I might just move up to Vermont, open a bookstore or a vegan restaurant. Adam Schlesinger, z''l
I second the recommendation of The Temple Bombing, and add And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank by Steve Oley. I've also heard good things about The Peddler's Grandson by Edward Cohen, but I've never read it.
Connie Neil - Mar 10, 2009 6:32:11 pm PDT #8571 of 28431
brillig
So I've got a e-copy of The Moonstone, and this is a good book. Which I guess is why people still keep reading it.
Fay - Mar 10, 2009 7:04:05 pm PDT #8572 of 28431
"Fuck Western ideologically-motivated gender identification!" Sulu gasped, and came.
It is a good book. Although my heart belongs to The Woman In White, if we're talking Wilkie Collins. I freaking ADORE that one. Well, more specifically I adore the awesome female protagonist (not the romantic girl, but her fabulous friend), and the villainous fella who appreciates her. FABULOUS BOOK.
Fred Pete - Mar 11, 2009 5:04:04 am PDT #8573 of 28431
Ann, that's a ferret.
I'm thinking of getting a Kindle before our next vacation so I can download my reading and not carry half a dozen books on the plane.
Willkie Collins will be on that reading list. But, as much as I love both Moonstone and Woman in White, I'll probably go with something I haven't read before.
Connie Neil - Mar 11, 2009 6:12:46 am PDT #8574 of 28431
brillig
I'll add Woman in White to my list of books to load on my Palm. I'm surprised at how un-Victorian the language is in Moonstone. Some Victorian-era books are pretty stuffy, but this has a sense of humor--though I'm wondering how much of what I perceive as clever is intentional. Such as the butler's reliance on Robinson Crusoe as a source of wisdom.