8.16.2006

WHAT BOOKS DOES YA'LL SUGGEST?

Sweet Potatoes, Please hep me.

It fell to Aunty Belle ter host the annual Cracker Lady's Book Club plannin' luncheon fer the 2006-07 book season. Of course, lemonade is standard offering, but iffin' thangs doan progress well, Aunty will hit 'em wif Jewel of Russia swamp-water.

We meets on Friday --so hurry!!--ter come up wif 12 selections ter read fer the comin' year. I need some ideas --we'uns is eclectic (uptown word!) in our readin' habits, but we does try ter include one biography each year, one or more current events book, one play or book of poetry, the rest is open--fiction, travelogues, short stories, children's literature, classics, essays, cookin', gardening, memoirs...even art books. Most fun art book so fer is Welcome to India.

We's got us a habit of getting together fer lunch in the dead of summer to deal out reviews and recommendations, and it can git testy seein' as how we ain't rotatin' selections, but must come ter a consensus on each book chosen. This is how our most diverse membership of eight ladies skirts the dastardly trick o' sneakin' in a book others jes' hates. So it ain't organized by "yore turn-my turn" selections...no, we's like the yoo-knighted nations--we gots to reach a consensus on each book.

Now, ter hep me, mebbe ya needs to know a bit about the members.

Ya'll met Livvy (see previous post) so ya knows about her. She likes ter give airs 'bout her er-udition (Thelma thought she was braggin' on her air-condition all these years!!) So Livvy hauls in the fereign authors, an'we'uns read English Patient an' McEwan's Atonement, and most bizarre of all, The Fig Eater which ain't by no fereign author, but is only seemin'so as it is set in Austria. The writer is some lah-di-dah maven at Vogue, and the book is murderously weird.But very very visual.(fer you naughty lassies, this book is a close as Aunty Belle plans to ever git to erotica)

An there's Thelma who ya'll met two posts back in "Does ya'll go ter Dinner next Door?" so fer shur we's gonna git a book on eatin---Thelma done had us readin' MFK Fisher (too wonderful ter miss out on), and Ruth Reichl's Tender at the Bone (hilarious!)

An they's Miss Moribund who always wants to read the latest tear-jerkin' woe-is-me story (whar' me is some emotional exhibitionist thas' seen often on the front of Enquirer.) We tries ter gently substitute more literary sadness like Embers
or Anna Karenina.

We have Wombat Winnie, the local League of Wymym Voters Chairperson Emeritus Foreverist. She will come wif a sheaf of political harangues disguised as "popular reading" but Aunty done sandbagged Wombat onc't wif Clash of Civilizations.

Ya'll would find Trampin'Browne interestin'...our menfolk always wanna know what Trampin' suggests, and them menfolks read it too. She's "into" the Himalayas; she's got her own Sherpa family, now, after so many tramps. But she done got us'uns ter read The Great Game --about the exploration of Afghanistan, Indian, Iraq China in the 1800s, the biography of Beryl Markham (lady pilot in africa) and Into the Wild.

Mary Mahr-tha Peckinpaugh is jes' a true Southern lady. She offers us "let's remember who we are" selections. This is often Southern writers,so we's been all through Alice Walker, Olive Ann Burns (Must read Cold Sassy Tree)Walker Percy and Shelby Foote, Kaye Gibbons (ya gotta be tough ter read her), Peter Taylor, Zora Neale Hurston and even Kerouac's tedious self exploration. But ain't nobody toppin' Flannery O'Connor--not now, not never, not nohow.

Stanna (Stanhope) Lowell can slide a verbal stiletto a'tween yore ribs, and ya'll would think it is a lovey-dovey little tickle, until ya feel a bit o' stickiness under yore corset. Does ya' guess that she is partial ter murder stories, fact or fiction. So she's shur ter bring somethin juicy, but I'se done wif thangs like In Cold Blood. We read Turow's Burden of Proof, mayhap as crisp a "lawyer-author" murder plot as ya can git. It was Stanna who first thumbed Silence of the Lambs during a beach read-a-thon some years back.

Then there is the war-mongering religious zealot hostess....so of course Aunty had 'em ter read Murder in the Cathedral and recently, Gates of Fire (battle of Thermopylae), and to review how we got here from there, Tuchman's Guns of August.


(that was in two years ago when we fought like possums over our selections, so we jes' settled on readin' books wif the month in the title: Guns of August, When September Comes,April BLood...)

Well, ya'll, ya' can see I'se needin' some hep--ain't got one suggestion as yet, and it is only a few glasses of lemonade until Friday! What do ya'll suggest???

13 comments:

..................... said...

here's a couple of suggestions..
your reading group may have read them already, but perhaps not.

"The Kite Runner" by Khaled Husseini (fiction, set in Afghanistan and the USA and the original language is English. So this is not a translation). I looooved this book. finished reading it a few weeks ago.

"Aphrodite - a memoir of the senses"
by Isabel Allende (nonfiction)
It's about food and what makes food and other things pleasurable. I'm reading it right now and am enjoying it.

Mayden' s Voyage said...

I read the Mermaid Chair (Sue Monk Kidd) this summer and I enjoyed it very much.

I'm also reading "Age Proof Your Mind" (Zaldy Tan, MD)- definitely a self help book about memory- but if your friends are as sharp as you- you don't need it! :)

"Til' We have Faces" (CS LEWIS) is a wonderful turn on Cupid and Psyche...

Any childrens literature by George MacDonald is worth your time- the story "The Light Princess" is one of those fairy tales that makes most other stories seem worthless.

"Bud, not Buddy" was one of the best middle school books I have ever read...absolutely a wonderful story with rich characters and a kid you will love with all of your heart.

Hope this helped. Actually...more than that- I wish I could join you on Friday! :)

sparringK9 said...

/bark bark bark

dear war-mongering religious zealot hostess:
i never read!! thats what blogs are for. have you read all the umberto eco's? schaumi reminds me i need to pick up and allende book myself. what do you mean you need a dog story?

mayden: when do you have time to read! you are too much. xo

/grrrrrr

On My Watch said...

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

hilarious southern story with great dialect that you would have no problem pronouncing considering your style here.

Aunty Belle said...

Hey ya'll, why thanky!!

Schaumi, darlin', we'uns did read Kite Runner and it was really good (we had a Middle East run--we read Reading Lotlita in Tehran, Voices from Behind the Veil, and What Went Wrong, and KAren Armstrong's Islam.
But that Allende book sounds real good--will add that ter my list!

Missy Mayden Fair, The MErmaid chair was also suggested by a friend (not one of the 8 in the BC).Sounds good.
I kile yer ideas for cillen--read mine the MacDonald books--but they's some adults that need those lessons.

Now, I doan know Bud, not Buddy, but I want to--will put that on my to buy list. Thanks ever so much.

Dawg, what?? Ya paints but ya doan read??? C'mon, I thought yer suggestion would be Haddon's Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. A most curious story of an autistic boy who wanders around at night and found a neighbors poddle gigged like a frog wif a pitchfork...and sets out ter solve the murder mystery.

but Dawg, Aunty Belle is shocked--shocked!! What? Yer ain't frothin' ter tell yer war-mongering religious zealot Aunty about JAmes Reston's Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition and The Defeat of the Moors?? Whar' else is ya gonna git so much of my faults in one book??

MAyhap it has instructions for do-it-yore-self auto-da-fé!
HoWWWWWL!

Hi there ONMYWATCH, how's ya doin'? Yep, Confederacy of Dunces is dialect rich...uh huh. Did read it some years ago. Sorry he didn't live long enough to write some more--read Tim Gautreaux? Yer shure to like his Next Step In The Dance.(Some more dialect, star crossed lovers, very strong on reality vs. wishful thainkin'

THanky all ya'll!

Aunty Belle said...

Oh! Wait Dawg...what'cha mean ya doan read?? Umberto Eco?? heh==heh...youse SOME dawg....iffin' ya goes wif Eco, try Foucault.

sparringK9 said...

/bark bark bark

naw aunty, i doan know ecco i was jes tryin to impress yew. i did read curious incident of dog in the night and it ended up like all books do: half read and forgotten.

i did read the entire interview with francis bacon. twice. i read the kite runner in full. sorta hated it.
i read the entrie book on gaudi. but that was work.
i read collapse. loved it. i read another turn of the crank. twice. loved it. that pretty much sums up the last 10 years. howl!

aunty, i doan have time to read when i have your long posts and dogfights to slog through. jes kiddin. you know i love ya. now git outcha bible and when ya finish readin, go take some target practice with ya pistols.

grrrrrrherherhahaha!

/grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Bird said...

yeah, yeah umberto eco!!!!

yeah, yeah, til we all have faces - my fav c.s. lewis book.

the true story of hansel and gretel- louise murphy (WWII story)

i;'ve just begun to reread the illiad and the oddyseey. (dabbling on the reread - time is precious)

i'm also finishing up MrMuo's Traveling Couch - by Dai Sijie - it's quite a bizarre tale - Sijie also wrote Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamtress - which i enjoyed more.

David Maine's novel The Preservationist is a re-telling of the NOah and the Ark tale - I found it amusing and enjoyable -also a fast read.

excuse the numerous spellling errors.

Mr Q said...

Aunty, since I read no books, whole, entire books that is; I can only recommend that you start writing your own. For some reason I think that I am not intelligent enough or maybe I just don't care entirely about what others write, that one day I may have to write about that. Please take no offense to what I just said Aunty, I am a very naive when it comes to intellectuality, scholars and academia. I am one of those that yawns when a group of people are commenting on how "much better was the book than the movie", not hating, just not my cup of tea. I must be missing a lot from books, maybe that is why I still remain a little naive, ignorant, unsophisticaded and untactful.

sparringK9 said...

/bark bark bark

nice try Q.

"naive, ignorant, unsophisticaded and untactful?"
and then, the spaceship came down.

/howl

Mr Q said...

Hey dawg, go on and chase that stick i'm throwing on the other side of the fence. I can pretend to sound contrary to what I really think I am, but remember, "I think, therefore, I am".
Oh you brought it back already? Here is a cookie.

Aunty Belle said...

Hey Bird Jewel of the Air!! Jest lagges is cured by now?? Anxious to hear yore travelogue.

AN' yore books sound intriguing. CS LEWIS is always a good chopice and I like ter re-read too--but admit a recent attempt at Don Quixote went unfinished. As fer Eco--mostly I'se read his semiotic critiques, but Rose, too.

Hey Q Man, sugar pie....what sort of book would ya want ter read? (Other than short) Curious 'bout this--what young menfolk wants in a book (fiction or non-fiction).

Just finished a cyper-punk (is this a real genre??) recommeded by a young feller. All about cyber/virtual-world. Scared me good, it did.

sparringK9 said...

aunty,

i want you to come look at my chicken at native!
(please)